The Southeastern Indians


Book Description




Early Art of the Southeastern Indians


Book Description

Early Art of the Southeastern Indians is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full color, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centers for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America. Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods--from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600--Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeast--from Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahoma--the pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators’ widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds. The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles consisting of symbolic colors, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centers that were noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales. Power comments on the widening of artists’ subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a piece’s artistic “language” could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody an iconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of these southeastern artists delight the senses and engage the mind while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings.




Southeastern Indians Since the Removal Era


Book Description

The authors of these essays are an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists and historians who have combined the research methods of both fields to present a comprehensive study of their subject. Published in 1979, the book takes an ethnohistorical approach and touches on the history, anthropology, and sociology of the South as well as on Native American studies. While much has been written on the archaeology, ethnography, and early history of southern Indians before 1840, most scholarly attention has shifted to Oklahoma and western Indians after that date. In studies of the New South or of Indian adaptation after the passage of the frontier, southeastern native peoples are rarely mentioned. This collection fills that void by providing an overview history of the culture and ethnic relations of the various Indian groups that managed to escape the 1830s removal and retain their ethnic identity to the present.




William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians


Book Description

William Bartram traveled throughout the American Southeast from 1773-1776. He occupies a unique place as an American Enlightenment explorer, naturalist, writer, and artist whose work was widely admired in his time and thereafter. Coleridge, the Wordsworths, and other leading romantics found inspiration in his pages. Bartram's most famous work, Travels has remained in print since the first publication of the book in 1791. However, his writings on Indians have received less attention than they deserve. ø This volume contains all of Bartram's known writings on Native Americans: a new version of "Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians," originally edited by E. G. Squier and first published in 1853; a previously unpublished essay, "Some Hints and Observations Concerning the Civilization of the Indians, or Aborigines of America"; and extensive excerpts from Travels. These documents are among the most valuable accounts we have of the Creeks and Seminoles in the last half of the eighteenth century. Several illustrations by Bartram are also included. ø The editors provide information on the history of these documents and supply extensive annotations. The book opens with a biographical essay on Bartram and concludes with a thorough evaluation of his contributions to southeastern Indian ethnohistory, anthropology, and archaeology. The editors have identified and corrected a number of errors found in the extant literature concerning Bartram and his writings.




The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast


Book Description

Though they speak several different languages and organize themselves into many distinct tribes, the Native American peoples of the Southeast share a complex ancient culture and a tumultuous history. This volume examines and synthesizes their history through each of its integral phases: the complex and elaborate societies that emerged and flourished in the Pre-Columbian period; the triple curse of disease, economic dependency, and political instability brought by the European invasion; the role of Native Americans in the inter-colonial struggles for control of the region; the removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes" to Oklahoma; the challenges and adaptations of the post-removal period; and the creativity and persistence of those who remained in the Southeast.




The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760


Book Description

With essays by Stephen Davis, Penelope Drooker, Patricia K. Galloway, Steven Hahn, Charles Hudson, Marvin Jeter, Paul Kelton, Timothy Pertulla, Christopher Rodning, Helen Rountree, Marvin T. Smith, and John Worth The first two-hundred years of Western civilization in the Americas was a time when fundamental and sometimes catastrophic changes occurred in Native American communities in the South. In The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540–1760, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists provide perspectives on how this era shaped American Indian society for later generations and how it even affects these communities today. This collection of essays presents the most current scholarship on the social history of the South, identifying and examining the historical forces, trends, and events that were attendant to the formation of the Indians of the colonial South. The essayists discuss how Southeastern Indian culture and society evolved. They focus on such aspects as the introduction of European diseases to the New World, long-distance migration and relocation, the influences of the Spanish mission system, the effects of the English plantation system, the northern fur trade of the English, and the French, Dutch, and English trade of Indian slaves and deerskins in the South. This book covers the full geographic and social scope of the Southeast, including the indigenous peoples of Florida, Virginia, Maryland, the Appalachian Mountains, the Carolina Piedmont, the Ohio Valley, and the Central and Lower Mississippi Valleys.




Southeast Indians


Book Description

Introduces the history, dwellings, artwork, religious beliefs, clothing, food, and other elements of life of the Native American tribes of the Southeast.




Indians of the Greater Southeast


Book Description

"If you have ever wondered about the Indian tribes who lived in the American Southeast at the time of European settlement, this book is for you. . . . Eleven of the nation's top historical archaeologists tackle eleven of the Indian nations that occupied the territory from Florida to Texas. They include some of the best known but little-understood American tribes--the Cherokee, the Natchez, and the Caddo."--American Archaeology "A critically needed summary of current knowledge of southeastern Native Americans during the colonial encounter. . . . For historians, archaeologists, and ethnohistorians, this is a valuable source of information which was previously hard to find."--Elizabeth J. Reitz, University of Georgia "This important volume will be of interest to anyone, whether scholar or layman, who wants to learn about the Indians of the southeastern United States. The authors are among the most respected authorities on the Indian societies chosen for inclusion."--Chester B. DePratter, University of South Carolina This volume brings together a stellar group of scholars to summarize what we know of the development of native American cultures in the southeastern United States after 1500. The authors integrate archaeological, documentary, and ethnohistorical evidence in the most comprehensive examination of diverse southeastern Indian cultures published in decades. Contents Introduction by Bonnie G. McEwan 1. The Timucua Indians of Northern Florida and Southern Georgia, by Jerald T. Milanich 2. The Guale Indians of the Lower Atlantic Coast: Change and Continuity, by Rebecca Saunders 3. The Apalachee Indians of Northwest Florida, by Bonnie G. McEwan 4. The Chickasaws, by Jay K. Johnson 5. The Caddo of the Trans-Mississippi South, by Ann M. Early 6. The Natchez of Southwest Mississippi, by Karl G. Lorenz 7. The Quapaw Indians of Arkansas, 1673-1803, by George Sabo III 8. Cherokee Ethnohistory and Archaeology, by Gerald F. Schroedl 9. Upper Creek Archaeology, by Gregory A. Waselkov and Marvin T. Smith 10. The Lower Creeks: Origins and Early History, by John E. Worth 11. Archaeological Perspectives on Florida Seminole Ethnogenesis, by Brent R. Weisman This title is published in conjunction with the Society for Historical Archaeology Bonnie G. McEwan is director of archaeology at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, Florida. Her publications include The Spanish Missions of La Florida, The Apalachee Indians and Mission San Luis (with John H. Hann), and numerous monographs and journal articles.




Native American Log Cabins in the Southeast


Book Description

"Waselkov's collection of essays on Native American log cabins in the southeast stems from a session presented for the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) in Athens, Georgia. The essays range in focus from Cherokee domestic space to Seminole architecture to the influence of enslaved Africans in the region"--