Indigenous peoples of the American Southeast
What was the significance of corn in the Southeastern Indigenous cultures?
How did the political organization of Southeastern tribes function?
What was the political impact of European colonization on Southeastern peoples?
How did the Indigenous peoples of the Southeast adapt to their forced removal to Oklahoma?
Indigenous peoples of the American Southeast, any of the Native American peoples of what is now the Southeastern United States. The boundaries of this culture area are somewhat difficult to delineate, because the traditional cultures in the Southeast shared many characteristics with those from neighboring regions. Thus, most scholars define the region’s eastern and southern boundaries as the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, although some assign the southern portion of aboriginal Florida to the circum-Caribbean culture area. To the west, the Southeastern peoples merge with those of the southernmost Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and the most easterly of the Indigenous peoples of the American Southwest. To the north, the traditions of the Southeast gradually transition to those of the Indigenous peoples of the American Northeast. When discussed jointly, the Southeast and Northeast culture areas are referred to as the Eastern Woodlands. This term is sometimes confused with that of the Eastern Woodland cultures, a term that describes a group of prehistoric societies rather than a culture area per se.
The Southeast’s environment is composed of a series of physiographic and ecological zones. A coastal lowland belt broadly encompasses the subtropical zone of what is now southern Florida. To the north, this gives way to the scrub forest, sandy soil, and savanna grassland of the coastal plains as well as to the alluvial floodplains of the Mississippi River. Moving inland, one finds the Piedmont, a landscape of rolling hills and major river systems that is predominantly covered with forests of oak and hickory. A third zone is characterized by the portion of the Appalachian Mountains that lies in what is now eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, and the western Carolinas, a land of high peaks, deeply etched valleys, hardwood forests, and, at high elevations, flora and fauna typical of more-northerly regions.
Traditional culture patterns
Scholarly knowledge of the Southeastern cultures relies on evidence from diverse sources, including artifacts, historical documents, ethnography, linguistics, folklore, and oral history. Many cultural traditions reported by the earliest European explorers, such as the use of ceremonial mounds, the heavy reliance on corn (maize), and the importance of social stratification in some areas, were clearly developed during the Mississippian culture period (c. 700–1600 ce). The Mississippians maintained fine craft traditions and also engaged in long-distance trade throughout the Southeast and the surrounding culture areas. The ceremonial center, Cahokia, was home to many thousands at its climax about 1100 ce (estimates range from 8,000 to 20,000 people). The Natchez are perhaps the best-known members of the Mississippian culture to survive relatively intact into the colonial period.
Language
The Indigenous peoples of the Southeast represent members of the Muskogean, Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan language families. The region was also home to several linguistic isolates, or languages that have only tenuous connections to a major language family (see also Indigenous North American languages).
Muskogean-speaking peoples constituted the largest linguistic group in the aboriginal Southeast and minimally included the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Apalachee, Muscogee, Seminole, Alabama, Koasati, Hitchiti, and Mikasuki branches.
Four tribes of the lower Mississippi valley—the Natchez, Chitimachas, Tunicas, and Atakapas—spoke languages with a distant affinity to Muskogean. However, their languages show sufficient divergence from the main Muskogean languages and from each other to warrant semi-independent status as linguistic isolates.
The Tutelos, Biloxis, Ofos (Mosopeleas), and Catawbas spoke Siouan languages. These tribes were widely scattered and probably represent different prehistoric penetrations of Siouan speakers into the Southeast. The Yuchi language demonstrates distant affinities to Siouan but is sufficiently distinctive to be classified as an isolate. Many small Piedmont groups were probably Siouan-speaking peoples, but surviving data are insufficient to make definite identifications.
The Cherokee represent the sole speakers of an Iroquoian language in the Southeast, although the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscaroras, Nottaways, and Meherrins, residing on the northerly margin of the region, are included in the Southeast in some culture area maps. The Caddoan speakers on the western boundary of the region belong to a distinctive language family that shows remote relationships to the Siouan and Iroquoian families.
The present status of the language spoken by the Timucuas, once the predominant tribe of northern Florida, is problematic; linguists have suggested that it is related to such diverse groups as the Muskogean, Siouan, Algonquian, and Arawakan families. Mobilian was an important trade language containing many Choctaw components and served as a lingua franca in the Mississippi valley.