The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760

Introduction

Preface ix Emeritus for Academic Affairs Gerald Walton, Dean of University Libraries John Meador, and Dean of Liberal Arts Glen Hopkins. For their guidance and help, we would like to thank Robert Haws, chair of the Department of History, Charles Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and Max Williams, chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. The conference also owed much to the contributions and professionalism of the panel moderators—Jay Johnson, Janet Ford, Robert Thorne, and Ted Ownby. Marvin Jeter graciously stepped in to read Tim Perttula's paper when Tim was unable to attend. We would also like to thank our copyeditor Carol Cox, as well as Craig Gill, Anne Stascavage, and Shane Gong at the University Press of Mississippi. Many others contributed in large and small ways to the success of the symposium and to the completion of this volume, and we would like to thank Ann Abadie, Alice Hull, Bert Way, Melissa McGuire, Ann O'Dell, Betty Harness, Rona Skinner, Denton Marcotte, John Samonds, Katie McKee, Jeff Jackson, Kirsten Dellinger, Karen Glynn, Bea Jackson, Dan Sherman, M. K. Smith, Billy Stevens, Toni Stevens, Dave Kerns, Kelly Drake, Shawna Dooley, Minoa Uffelman, Leigh McWhite, Virginia Howell , Kara Tooke, John Sullivan, Steve Budney, Jim Foley, Steve Cheseborough , Susan McClamrock, Debra Young, Patricia Huggins, Ben Flemmons , Sabrina Brown, Herman Payton, Russell Cooper, Peter Lee, Francine Green, Cliff Holley, and Terence Manogin. We are grateful to the University of Mississippi Department of History faculty for giving us the opportunity to participate in the Fortune symposia , and we gratefully acknowledge generous support from the Franklin College ofArts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. Robbie Ethridge This page intentionally left blank Introduction Recent research on the expeditions of sixteenth-century Spanish explorers —Hernando de Soto (1539-43), Tristan de Luna (1559-61), and Juan Pardo (1566-68)—has made it possible to link up the historical experiences and observations recounted in the documents of these expeditions with the voluminous archaeological information that has been developed over the past half century by archaeologists. At least in a partial way, that linkage has now been accomplished.1 We can now say with some confidence who lived where in the sixteenth-century Southeast, and we can also identify some rather large areas of land where no one lived. Previous to this research, the only way to map the Indians of the late prehistoric Southeast was as arbitrarily named archaeological cultures and phases. That is, the late prehistoric Indians of the Southeast could only be represented on a map by drawing circles or "jelly beans" around clusters of sites where archaeologists have found similar material remains.2 This research on sixteenth-century exploration allows us for the first time to represent on maps what may properly be called polities, i.e., clusters of communities of people who were politically aligned with each other, and who might, in turn, have been aligned against other such clusters.3 I am putting it mildly when I say that there is still disagreement over the particulars of this reconstructed sixteenth-century social landscape of the Southeast, but we now have the beginnings of a map where none existed before.4 When one compares this map with a map of the Indians of the early eighteenth-century South, the two (see Marvin Smith's maps #1 and #5 in this volume) are seen to be very different.5 Most of the named sixteenth-century native polities are absent from the eighteenth-century map. And on the eighteenth-century map, new names—Creeks, Choctaws , Cherokees, Natchez—appear. A few sixteenth-century place names seemingly continue into the eighteenth century, but often they are situated at significantly different locations, sometimes hundreds of miles distant from where they were located in the sixteenth century. Many areas that were densely inhabited in the sixteenth century were uninhabited or only lightly populated in the eighteenth century. And some areas that were wilderness in the sixteenth century—for example, the Savannah xi xii Introduction River basin—were populated in the eighteenth century. How are we to account for the differences between these two maps? The question now before us is this: What shaped the Indians of the eighteenth -century South? That is to say, what historical forces, trends, and events were attendant to the formation of the Indians of the colonial South? Answering this question requires us to...