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SECTION IX IDENTIFICATION OF SITES FROM DOCUMENTARY SOURCES IDENTIFICATION OF SITES FROM DOCUMENTARY SOURCES I N THE original outline of this report the opening section on physiography was to be followed by an equally comprehensive presentation of the ethnography of the Survey Area so far as it is known. At that time we were unaware of the great uncertainty that surrounds much of what is "known in the ethno-historical field." We were likewise unaware of the special difficulties our point of view as archaeologists would get us into. The obvious starting-point for the American archaeologist venturing into the unfamiliar field of ethnography is to attempt to localize the earliest encounters between red and white men in his area. To him, the direct historical approach is not a choice of method but a categorical imperative. Unfortunately, it sounds a great deal simpler than it is. After several months of concentrated effort, we failed to get beyond this starting-point. It was clear that the section on ethnography would have to wait. The most we could hope to do was to expose our ignorance of the exact locality of such encounters and the reasons therefore. Such an exposure, nevertheless, seems worthwhile . It was a salutary experience for us, and it might be for others. We have referred to the special difficulties inherent in the point of view of the archaeologist . These may perhaps be best expressed in terms of scale. For the ethnographer, concerned with questions of culture and culturecontact , often on a regional or continental scale, approximate locations are generally sufficient . He can easily show that two groups have been in contact sufficiently to have affected their culture without knowing precisely where either was at any given time. The archaeologist, on the other hand, in his capacity of field worker, thinking in terms of site or small groups of closely linked sites, works within the narrowest possible limits of space and time. The ethnographer quite naturally tends to place more reliance on documentary and cartographic sources than we, as archaeologists , are able to do. We, on the other hand, are likely to give more weight to local topographical and archaeological considerations than might be regarded as reasonable by the ethnographer. This is advanced by way of excuse for what may appear to be an unconscionably critical and detailed treatment of certain longstanding ethnographic problems in the pages to follow. In the Lower Mississippi Valley there are two "contact" periods separated by I32 years of utter blankness so far as the historical record is concerned. Narratives of De Soto's brief entrada of I54I-43 afford a vivid but tantalizing picture of Mississippi culture at a time which must have been very close to its peak of development - tantalizing because the long interval of darkness which followed makes it so very difficult to identify the peoples involved - or even to locate them. Because of this long hiatus in the historical record, the really practicable contact period is that of the early French penetrations and establishments on the Lower Mississippi, beginning with the "discovery" of Jolliet and Marquette and extending roughly over the next half century. Here, we have a real chance to identify late archaeological complexes with living peoples in terms of site, so dear to the archaeological mind. The French of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are often credited with a flair for ethnography, which signifies probably less in the nature of a national characteristic than a result of the fact that their explorations were made by - or accompanied by - intelligent and articulate men, generally of the clergy. Whatever the cause, we have a wealth of documentary and cartographic material for this period of Missis_ sippi Valley history. We have learned to our cost, however, that it must be used with circumspection and shall be careful to point out, in the proper place, the reasons why. English penetrations during this period were negligible so far as documentary results are concerned, with one notable exception, that which resulted in Adair's classic "History of the American Indians," the chief source for the ethnography of the Chickasaw and Choctaw . Overland trade from the English settlements in Carolina was opened up with these 347 348 ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY IN THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI ALLUVIAL VALLEY tribes as early as 1698, the Chickasaw remaining solidly in the English interest from that time on. These contacts were primarily commercial , however, and it is a rare traderAdair is the exception that proves the rulewho is also an...

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