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Introduction xxxi were Natchezan and Tunican. Natchezan appears to have been spoken from just south of present Memphis southward down the valley on both sides of the Mississippi River, and this includes the lower Arkansas River. But around the northwestern rim of this area lay probable Tunican speakers , who also occupied the middle Arkansas River valley. The scenario that Jeter proposes is that in the late sixteenth century or in the early to middle seventeenth century the population of the lower Mississippi Valley was affected by Old World diseases and underwent sharp decline. Perhaps feeling the impact of middle to late seventeenthcentury native dislocations in the Northeast and Midwest, the Tunican and Natchezan survivors of these epidemics moved southward and coalesced into the societies encountered by the French: the Natchez, Koroa, Tunica, Taensa, and so on. Jeter's scenario contains yet another novel solution. He proposes that the Quapaw, who spoke a Dhegihan Siouan language, were derived from eastern Fort Ancient peoples living on the upper Ohio River and its tributaries , who had been dislocated by Iroquois attacks. This accounts for the Quapaw longhouses, covered with bark, and his scenario is consistent with other evidence that many of the people in seventeenth-century backcountry Virginia and the Carolina piedmont spoke Siouan languages. This intrusion of the Quapaw into the Mississippi Valley probably occurred relatively late, at about the same time other northern peoples, namely the Westos and the Shawnee, were entering the Southeast. This pattern of long-distance movements ofpeople from the north, it should be noted, is consistent with the broad patterns of population movements noted by Marvin Smith in his paper in this volume. The Plantation System and Indian Trade in the South. The English approach to achieving colonial supremacy in the South was to establish plantations with mainly indentured and coerced laborers who produced commodities for the world market. At first these plantations were established near the coast on navigable waterways. As the Indians were progressively displaced and subdued, plantations pushed gradually inland. A second prong of the English strategy was to engage the Indians at a distance in trade for European-manufactured goods such as guns, cutting tools, woolen cloth, and other items in exchange for commodities such as dressed deerskins and Indian slaves.39 Aconcomitant English strategy was to stimulate internecine conflict and attrition among the Indians to reduce and demoralize their population until the day when further agricultural xxxii Introduction penetration of the interior was possible, and the Indians could be pressured to cede their lands. As Helen Rountree shows in her paper in this volume, this was the approach of the Virginians. The Jamestown colony faltered and almost foundered before it hit upon the cultivation of tobacco along the alluvial soils of the James River and its tributaries. Tobacco was an almost archetypal growth industry; once its devotees were addicted to its charms, demand for the product would only grow. But even with this, the Jamestown colony at first withered because of a very high death rate among the colonists. It was with the beginning of the rule of Governor William Berkeley in 1640 that the Virginia colony got an infusion of new colonists, mostlyroyalists from southern England, and the colony began to expand vigorously. In 1646 the Powhatan paramount chiefdom was finally crushed and the Virginia colonists could begin paying more attention to Indians who lay to the west and southwest. Some Virginians penetrated to the south ofVirginia in the 1640s, but their activities are poorly documented. The activities of Abraham Wood, particularly at Fort Henry on the Appomattox River after 1646 were important. After 1650 the Virginia government began encouraging adventurers to explore to the south and to pursue trade with the Indians. This culminated in a series of explorations in the 1670s that produced written reports. What remains to be researched is to what degree and in what manner the Virginians affected Indians to their west and southwest between 1640 and 1670. Was this trade prosecuted by white traders going out with their wares? Or was it primarily conducted through Indian intermediaries, such as the Occaneechees, Tuscaroras, and others? What goods did the Virginians trade to the Indians, and what did they get in return? Was there a trade in Indian slaves, and if so, what was the volume? It is quite likely that a large chapter of this history will found in be the activities of Abraham Wood and his associates. In general, until Bacon's rebellion in 1676...

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