SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 827 



plishments of Asiatic culture, there is no certainty that they would 

 not have gone as far, and had the Chinese been subjected to the en- 

 vironmental handicaps of the Australians, they might not have 

 advanced beyond the Australian level. 



All of the areas compared have this in common, that they lie out- 

 side of the greater central sources of civilization, which it may be 

 remarked parenthetically are not in the same climatic zones in the 

 Old and New Worlds. The area with which we are chiefly concerned 

 was dependent, as we have seen, on the New World civilization a 1 

 center to the south of it. Although the specific traits which it ex- 

 hibits seem to be peculiar to it, the great underlying cultural factors 

 belong clearly, as Kroeber maintains, to the civilizations of Mexico, 

 Central America, and Peru. Southeastern culture is an outlier of the 

 culture there. It is a suburb of the American capital region. Yet the 

 peoples within it present enough variety in language, culture, and 

 even physical type, and their movements, demonstrated and inferred, 

 enough of a sample of the workings of the mass mind to furnish the 

 student a fair picture of the greatnesses and vagaries of the great 

 humanity of which they and we form a part. 



Here we lay aside the pen — or rather the typewriter. Though stu- 

 dents of culture still have work to do here, the future study of the 

 Southeastern Indians rests mainly with the archeologists. 



SOURCE MATERIALS 



Our knowledge of the history and ethnology of these tribes varies 

 greatly. Of some we know little more than the names ; of others we 

 have a few notes by one or two early explorers and missionaries; of 

 still others we have at least one fairly good description ; and of a very 

 few, such as the Creeks, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Natchez, 

 we have several fairly detailed sources of information, but it must be 

 said emphatically that our records are imperfect in some particulars in 

 every case. I will review rapidly our principal sources of informa- 

 tion regarding the more important of these peoples. 



Material on the tribes of the Creek Confederation taken as a whole 

 is fairly extensive, but we have few details regarding the differences 

 between the constituent members of it which must once have been 

 marked. It included all of those given under the heads Muskogee, 

 Hitchiti group, and Alabama group, and at various times parts of 

 the Guale Indians and Yamasee, Cusabo, Natchez, Tawasa, Yuchi, 

 and Shawnee, and all of the Osochi, which were probably of Timucuan 

 origin. The adherence of the Natchez, Yuchi, and Shawnee was 

 comparatively recent. They were once large, independent tribes — 

 the Shawnee always remaining such — and we have considerable bodies 

 of material regarding them. The Seminole, including the Mikasuki, 



