380 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 118 



5, and possibly on Site No. 17, there is a suggestion that both large- 

 log and small-log construction were used on the same site. And yet, 

 while on these two sites these important groups partially merged, yet 

 on all other sites the cultural traits definitely separated themselves into 

 two groups along this line of cleavage — the type of house construction. 

 This would seem to suggest the possibility that if there were two 

 different peoples in Norris Basin they may have been for some period 

 simultaneous occupants of the general region and probably had 

 friendly intercourse between all sites in the Basin. 



If it may be tentatively considered that the Creeks are responsible 

 for the large-log construction, one has the problem of trying to find 

 some separate and distinctly different people with whom the Creeks 

 were associated on terms of friendship whom we might possibly iden- 

 tify as the small-log town-house people. The fact that the Creek Con- 

 federacy took into its organization so many remnants of different 

 peoples in the early historic period would seem to make such a task of 

 selection quite impossible. 



However, there is one group — the Yuchi, perhaps the most problem- 

 atical of all the prehistoric people of the southeastern United States — 

 who were, in historic times, closely associated with the Creeks, and 

 while speaking a different language and maintaining their own cus- 

 toms, yet rose to a prominent and respected place as the Yuchi band 

 of the Creek Confederacy. 



One naturally wonders if this apparently sincere friendship of these 

 two peoples for each other began after the Yuchi "came south", as they 

 are known to have done, or could such a friendship have been the result 

 of close association in a northern home at a much earlier date than 

 when reported by Hawkins about 1796 in his travels on the Tallapoosa 

 Eiver? 



If Ave admit this possibility, we are prepared to look for evidences of 

 the Yuchi in Norris Basin. Since no known Yuchi site has ever been 

 carefully investigated and reported, their material culture complex is 

 wholly unknown, and there is no basis for any identification by use of 

 cultural material. However, it is possible that the migration of the 

 Yuchi took place just within that vague borderland of time between 

 the early settlement of white men on the Atlantic seaboard and the 

 beginning of written records of the Indian population of the interior. 

 If this be true, it suggests the bare possibility that there might be 

 some historical record, or tradition, of the occupancy of the region 

 by the Yuchi. 



In searching the early reports of Indian occupancy in the period 

 prior to 1700 one is struck by the story of Gabriel Arthur, 14 a servant 

 of Abraham Wood, of Virginia, who was sent with Wood's agent, 



"Alvord and Bidgood, 1912, pp. 212-214. 



