Native American Cultures: The Southeast

By Encyclopaedia Britannica on 06.22.17

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Seminole children at the Brighton Reservation in Florida in 1948. Photo by: State Library and Archives of Florida

The Native Americans of the Southeast culture area traditionally lived in what is now the
southeastern United States. This culture area extends from the southern edge of the
Northeast culture area to the Gulf of Mexico. From east to west it stretches from the Atlantic
Ocean to somewhat west of the Mississippi River valley. The climate is warm. The land
includes coastal plains, rolling hills, and a portion of the Appalachian Mountains. As in the
Northeast, deciduous forests once covered much of the region. Coastal scrub forest and
wetlands were the other major ecosystems.

Peoples And Languages

The Southeast was one of the more densely populated areas of North America at the time of
European contact. Among the Southeast Indians were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw,
Creek, and Seminole, which are sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes. Other prominent
tribes included the Natchez, Caddo, Apalachee, Timucua, and Guale. The Natchez were
direct descendants of the prehistoric Mississippian peoples. Many other Southeast peoples
also inherited cultural traits from the Mississippians, such as the use of ceremonial mounds
and a heavy reliance on corn.

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Traditionally, most Southeast tribes spoke languages of the Muskogean family. Among them
were the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Apalachee, Creek, Seminole, and Alabama. There were also
some Siouan language speakers, including the Catawba, and one Iroquoian-speaking group,
the Cherokee. Some Caddoan speakers lived on the western boundary of the region.

Food

The economy of the Southeast was mostly agricultural. The leading crop was corn, followed
by beans and squash. Southeast Indians grew several varieties of corn. Some varieties were
baked or roasted on the cob, and some were boiled into succotasha dish of stewed corn
and beans. Other varieties were pounded into hominy or cornmeal. Some corn, beans, and
squash were dried and stored for later use. Southeast Indians also raised sunowers, which
were processed for their oil, and tobacco. Wild plant foods, including greens, berries, nuts,
acorns, and sap, were acquired through gathering.

Southeast peoples enhanced the fertility of their agricultural elds by burning o any stalks or
vines that remained from the previous harvest. The length of the growing season in the region
allowed many elds to be planted twice each year. The rst planting was done in spring. Some
produce was available by midsummer, when a second planting was undertaken. The major
harvest time, in late summer and early fall, was a time of plenty during which most of the major
ceremonies were celebrated. Most elds belonged to individual households, though some
tribes also cultivated communal elds. Communally grown produce was given to chiefs for
distribution to the needy and for use in ceremonies and festivals.

Wild game was abundant in most of the Southeast. The Indians hunted deer, elk, black bears,
beavers, squirrels, rabbits, otters, raccoons, and turkeys. In what is now the U.S. state of
Florida, the diet included turtles and alligators. Many villages emptied somewhat during the
winter months, when men took to the woods in search of game. In late spring and early
summer, after the rst crops had been planted, men went on a shorter hunt. Southeast tribes
also shed in the rivers and the sea and gathered oysters, clams, mussels, and crabs. Along
the coast, heaps of discarded shells mark the sites of many ancient camps.

The peoples of the Southeast altered the landscape signicantly by girdling trees and by the
controlled use of re. These activities created large areas of new growth, especially certain
types of berry bushes and other useful plants. This vegetation was essential for supporting the
large populations of deer, squirrels, rabbits, and wild turkeys on which people depended for
food.

Settlements And Housing

Southeast Indians usually built their settlements in places with good soil for planting. There
were two basic types of settlements. Most of the people lived in hamlets, or small villages,
located in river valleys. Each hamlet typically contained storage buildings and summer
kitchens in addition to a few houses. The other settlement type was the town, which was often

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surrounded with a protective timber palisade. Usually a number of hamlets were associated
with each larger village or town where the whole community gathered occasionally for
celebrations and ceremonies.

At the center of each town was typically a council house or temple. Often these structures
were set atop large earthen mounds, as were the homes of the ruling classes or families. The
heart of a town also included a central plaza or square and sometimes granaries or other
structures for storing communal produce. Among the Muskogean-speaking peoples, the plaza
was usually surrounded by benches or arbors pointed north, south, east, and west.

Housing styles varied in dierent parts of the Southeast. In much of the region people built
circular winter houses with cone-shaped roofs. These houses were sealed tight except for an
entryway and smoke hole. Summer dwellings were typically rectangular with a sloping roof
made of thatch. The walls were built using the wattle and daub methoda framework of
upright poles and woven branches was plastered with clay. In Florida the Seminole developed
the chickee, a house with a raised oor, palmetto-thatched roof, and open sides. To the west,
some groups lived in domed grass houses.

Clothing

Southeast Indian women were responsible for making clothing, most of which was made out
of deerskin that had been tanned into soft leather or suede. Men typically wore a breechcloth
and sometimes a shirt or cloak. Women usually wore a skirt with a tunic or cloak. Leggings
and robes of bear fur or bison hide provided warmth in winter. The feathers of eagles, hawks,
swans, and cranes were highly valued for ornamentation. Some people decorated their skin
with tattoos or body paint.

Technology And Arts

Like the peoples of the Northeast, the Southeast Indians made the most of the abundant
forests of their region. To make dugout canoes, they hollowed out a log by burning the inside
and scraping away the charred wood. They used upright, partly hollowed logs as mortars.
Other items made of wood included bows, arrow shafts, dishes, and spoons. The inner bark of
the mulberry tree was used as thread and rope and in making textiles.

Other important raw materials in the Southeast included bone and stone, which were used to
make arrowheads, clubs, axes, scrapers, and other tools. The Indians found many uses for
cane, a tall, treelike grass once widespread in the Southeast. They used its hollow stems to
make household goods such as baskets, mats, and containers as well as weapons such as
knives, blowguns, and shing spears. Southeast tribes obtained copper through trade with
western Great Lakes peoples. They worked the metal to create beads, rings, and bracelets.
Shells were used for beads and pendants and to decorate ritual objects.

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Fishing equipment included weirs (underwater corrals or pens), traps, dip nets, dragnets,
hooks and lines, bows and arrows, and spears. Poisons obtained from plants were released
into ponds and sluggish or dammed streams, creating a rich harvest of stunned, but edible,
sh.

Society

The village, with its associated hamlets, was the basic unit of social and political organization
in the Southeast. Some Southeast communities housed more than 1,000 people, but they
more often had fewer than 500 residents. A village might be linked to neighboring settlements
by ties of kinship, language, and shared cultural traditions. Generally, however, each village
was independent and governed its own aairs. In times of need, villages could unite into
confederacies, such as those of the Creek and Choctaw.

Most Southeast cultures were chiefdoms, meaning that they had social classes with
membership based on birth. Most cultures were structured around classes of elites and
commoners, though some groups had additional status levels. The ruling class consisted of
chiefs, who governed during peacetime, and war leaders. A chief inherited his power. The
degree of a chiefs authority varied among tribes. The Natchez were ruled by a supreme
leader called the Great Sun, who was treated as a god. Other tribes, such as the Choctaw,
Creek, and Cherokee, had chiefs with much more modest powers. A war leader had authority
in a village only when it was under the threat of attack.

Social ranking was highly developed in some parts of the Southeast and insignicant in others.
The Chitimacha, who lived in what is now the U.S. state of Louisiana, appear to have been the
only society to have had a true caste system. In such a system, the members of the ranked
groups are allowed to marry only within the group. Social ranking was also very prominent
among the peoples of Florida. Natchez society included strict rules for marriage and social
status. In other tribes, such as the Cherokee, social rank was relatively unimportant.

The practice of ranking could extend beyond individuals to include the organization of clans
and towns. Member towns of the Creek Confederacy were sometimes ranked in terms of their
tribal aliations or on the basis of outcomes of ball games between towns. The Caddo were
said to have ranked their clans on the basis of the strength of the clans animal ancestors.

Southeast tribes had contact with other peoples both near and far. At a local level, neighboring
groups took part in competitive activities, including ball games and hunting contests. Trade
relations reached much farther. A lack of geographic barriers to the north and west allowed
signicant trade with Northeast and Plains peoples. There is also evidence of overseas
cultural connections with the Antilles islands in the Caribbean Sea. Other cultural traits point to
contact between the Southeast and Middle and South America.

Because each household in the Southeast was fairly self-sucient, trade tended to center on
nonessential and luxury items. For instance, because not everyone had access to salt
deposits, salt became an important trade item. There was regular trade between the coast and

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inland areas. Coastal peoples exchanged shellsused for beads and pendants and to
decorate ritual objectsfor soapstone, int, furs, and other inland resources. Pottery made
with distinctive types of red clay and artifacts made of copper suggest that Southeast peoples
had trade connections with Indians of the western Great Lakes.

Family

Among Southeast peoples, descent was almost always traced through the mothers side of
the family. Many societies further organized kinship relations through clansextended
families in which all members could claim descent from a particular ancestor. Clans usually
included members from dierent villages. This arrangement created helpful links between
villages. For example, clan members were generally expected to oer hospitality to clan kin
from other villages. In addition, certain ritual knowledge and ceremonial privileges were
customarily passed down along clan lines.

The main division of labor in the Southeast was by gender. Women were responsible for most
farming, gathering wild plant foods, and cooking and preserving food. They made baskets,
pottery, clothing, and other goods. Women also took care of young children and elders. Men
were responsible for war, trade, and hunting; they were often away from the community for
long periods of time. Men also assisted in the harvest, cleared the elds by girdling trees, and
built houses and public buildings. Both women and men made ceremonial objects and took
part in building earthen mounds.

Marriage was often marked by a symbolic exchange in which the groom presented the bride
with game and the bride reciprocated with plant food. Among most groups multiple wives
could share a husband, though usually new partners could not join the marriage unless all the
existing partners agreed.

Childrens early education was the task of the mother. As they grew older, girls were trained in
duties such as the growing, preserving, and storing of food, receiving instruction from their
mothers and other female relatives. Boys received instruction from their fathers and their
mothers brothers. Boys enjoyed considerable permissiveness and spent much of their time
with other boys. They wrestled, played games that imitated adult activities, and stalked
rabbits, squirrels, and birds with blowguns or scaled-down bows and arrows. Girls, in contrast,
were watched closely. They took on household responsibilities from an early age.

Religion

Traditional religion in the Southeast reected the delicate relationship between humans and
the natural world. The peoples of this region believed that not only humans but also animals,
plants, and all other natural objects had spirits or souls. This belief system, called animism,
was common among Indian peoples.

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Southeast Indians believed that animal spirits were capable of harming human interests. Slain
animals sought vengeance against humanity through their species chief, a supernatural
animal with great power. The Deer Chief, for instance, was able to take revenge on humans
who dishonored his peoplethe deerduring the hunt. Hunting thus became a sacred act
involving ritual, sacrice, and taboostrict regulations regarding what was and was not
allowed. People thought that most disease was caused by failures in pleasing the souls of
slain animals.

The plant world was considered friendly to humans. The Cherokee thought that every animal-
sent disease could be cured by a plant antidote. Corn, the most important crop, was
celebrated in the midsummer Green Corn Ceremony. Also called the Busk, this festival of
renewal and thanksgiving was nearly universal throughout the Southeast. All res in a village,
including the central sacred re, were allowed to die. Then the sacred re was remade, and all
the village hearths were rekindled from the sacred ames. Keeping with the theme of renewal,
old clothing and stored food were discarded, and old debts and grudges were forgiven and
forgotten.

Not only plants and animals were believed to have spiritual power. Shamans, or holy people,
had stones, quartz crystals, and other items that were considered to be sacred. Other objects
that were treated as sacred came to symbolize the unity of a group. The Tukabahchee Creek,
for example, had sacred embossed copper plates. Natural objects could be infused with
sacred power in a variety of ways. One was contact with thunder, as in lightning-struck wood.
Other ways were immersion in a rapidly owing stream and exposure to the smoke of the
sacred re.

European Contact And Cultural Change

The peoples of the Southeast suered greatly as the Spanish colonized the region during the
1500s. Thousands of Indians were killed during warfare with explorers. Thousands more died
in epidemics of European diseases, for which the Indians had no immunity. Many other
individuals were captured and traded as slaves. Through the 1600s missionaries worked to
convert the remaining Indians to Roman Catholicism. Many native groups incorporated
elements of Catholicism into their traditional religious practices.

By the late 1600s Southeast tribes found themselves increasingly drawn into wars between
European powers over control of Europe and North America. Indigenous communities soon
realized that trade and diplomatic relations with Spain, France, and England were linked and
could be manipulated to their advantage. The Creek found it especially protable to set the
three imperial powers against one another.

The settlers began to call on the federal government for oppressive Indian policies. They
expanded their eorts after gold was found on Cherokee land in Georgia in 1829. In 1830 the
U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the president to grant Indian

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tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their desirable land in the East. The land
west of the Mississippi River that was designated for the Native Americans was called Indian
Territory (now Oklahoma).

The Indians of the Southeast responded in a variety of ways: The Choctaw arranged their
departure with federal authorities fairly quickly. The Chickasaw sold their property and
planned their own transportation to their new home. The Cherokee chose to use legal action to
resist removal. Perhaps the most determined to remain in place were the Seminole, who
ercely defended their homes. The Seminole Wars (181718, 183542 and 185558) came to
be the most expensive military actions undertaken by the U.S. government up to that point.

Ultimately, all the eastern tribes found that resistance to removal was met with military force.
In the decade after 1830, almost the entire U.S. population of perhaps 100,000 eastern
Indiansincluding nearly every nation from the Southeast and Northeastmoved westward,
whether voluntarily or by force. Encountering great diculties and losing many people to
exposure, starvation, and illness, those who survived this migration named it the Trail of
Tears.

In the early 20th century the native peoples lost the right to elect their own tribal governments,
which were replaced by federally appointed chiefs and tribal councils.

During the 1970s the federal government gave up the right to appoint tribal governments, and
Southeast tribes quickly reinstated their constitutions and held elections. From that point into
the early 21st century the Southeast peoples emphasized economic development, using the
revenue to support programs ranging from education to health care to cultural preservation.
For instance, the tribal-owned Chickasaw Nation Industries and Choctaw Management
Services Enterprise included rms providing construction, information technology services,
and professional recruiting. The Seminole of Florida instituted ecotourism programs that
brought visitors to the states wetlands.

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