810 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



usually made of rushes, elsewhere of cane. Similarly with baskets, the 

 eastern Algonquians and Siouans made their baskets mainly of rushes, 

 silk grass, and a kind of root, while the tribes west of them made 

 them of canes. Palmetto baskets were made in Florida, and by the 

 Alabama Indians if cane failed them. Some of the Creeks used 

 hickory splints, and the modern Natchez resorted to roots of the 

 buck bush. Wooden images were found upon sacred edifices from 

 western Florida to the Mississippi. The Creeks had them in their 

 Square Grounds. Towards the northeast, wooden images were used 

 inside of the sacred buildings or were set up in fields. Wind instru- 

 ments seem to have been somewhat more in evidence in the eastern 

 part of the section than the western. 



In the Algonquian region some evidences of the old family hunt- 

 ing territories apparently survived. Autocracy was highly de- 

 veloped in the Algonquian and Siouan sections, and occasionally 

 elsewhere, as by Tascalusa and by self-made men, but in Florida, 

 among the Natchez and their allies, and among the Chitimacha, 

 leadership was determined largely by descent. This was to some extent 

 true also of the Creeks, of the Chickasaw less so, while the Choctaw 

 were among the most democratic of all Southeastern people. The 

 Caddo operated under a theocracy. Totemic clans were most highly de- 

 veloped among the Creeks, Timucua, and Cherokee, and had extended 

 to the Chickasaw and eastern Caddo. Castes had developed or were in 

 process of developing among the Chitimacha, Natchez, and Timucua, 

 and had extended their influence to the Chickasaw, Creeks, and 

 western Caddo. Moieties were particularly prominent among the 

 Choctaw and Chickasaw but also important among the Creeks. 

 In the northeast and southwest we find female descent with few or 

 no divisions. The marginal Shaw^nce and Quapaw had totemic 

 divisions with male descent. The Yuchi combined both systems. 

 The terms of relationship resembled the Crow type most closely, 

 but those of the Shawnee and Quapaw were of the Omaha type 

 and the Caddo of the Mackenzie type. Timucua terms of relation- 

 ship featured prominently the fact of the status of the individual 

 through whom the relationship came, whether living or dead. In 

 cases of adultery the eastern Siouans punished only the man, the 

 Chickasaw only the woman, the Creeks both. 



Burial customs differed considerably and they are of particular 

 importance to the archeologist as well as the ethnologist. Bodies 

 of chiefs among the Virginia Algonquians were deprived of the 

 softer parts, sand was filled in inside the skin around the bones, 

 and then they were laid upon scaffolds at one end of the sacred 

 ossuary of tlie tribe, which also contained images of the gods. Spel- 



