Southeast Indian



Traditional culture patterns









Subsistence and material culture












Diorite bowl in the shape of a crested wood duck, found in Moundville, Ala., c. ad 1500; in the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, New York City.Courtesy of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New YorkAs each household was fairly self-sufficient, the economic specializations and trade networks that developed tended to centre on subsidiary and luxury items. For instance, as salt deposits were unequally distributed, salt became an important trade item. There was regular trade between the coast and the interior; shells, which were used for beads and pendants and to decorate ritual objects, were exchanged for soapstone, flint, furs, and other inland resources. Pottery made with distinctive types of red clay and artifacts made of native copper suggest important trade connections with the western Great Lakes groups that controlled the locales where these raw materials were found.

Settlement patterns and housing





Political organization




Ball-play of the Choctaw—Ball Up, oil on canvas by George Catlin, c. 1846–50; in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe complementarity of peace chiefs and war leaders and the occurrence of competitive activities between neighbouring groups—including ball games, hunting contests, and trading expeditions—imbued traditional social structures with a characteristic dualism. The peace chief held sway in the village, whereas the war leader was ascendant in areas external to the village; he had authority in the village itself only when it was under the threat of imminent attack. Young men adjusted their behaviour according to the context of war or peace; they also prepared for the psychological and physical rigours of battle through extensive rituals in which war and peace were symbolically represented by the colours red and white, respectively.



Kinship and marriage




Socialization and education




Belief systems









Cultural continuity and change

The 16th century: European exploration and conquest

Although permanent colonial settlements were not established in the region until 1565, when the Spanish founded Saint Augustine in present-day Florida, the peoples of the Southeast suffered greatly during the 16th century. The earliest expeditions, by Juan Ponce de Léon (1513, 1521) and Panfilo de Narváez (1528; best known for the narrative produced by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca), were short-lived but exposed indigenous peoples to the devastating effects of European diseases to which they had not been previously exposed. Epidemics soon decimated the native population; mortality rates for these nonimmune populations are estimated to have been as high as 50 to 90 percent (these rates generally combine deaths due directly to disease with those resulting from subsidiary causes, such as famine).

Hernando de Soto, who had proved instrumental in the conquest of the Inca (1532), was eventually commissioned by Spain to conquer La Florida; from 1539 to 1543 his expedition traveled through what are now the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Some Southeastern tribes greeted de Soto as they would a paramount chief, offering food, tribute of pearls and copper, sexual access to women, and porters. Other towns in de Soto’s path attacked the expedition. However, as the Spanish group included some 600–700 heavily armed professional soldiers, the conquistadors’ counteroffenses left few settlements intact.

By the close of the 16th century, several factors had combined to disrupt traditional life in the Southeast. Thousands of individuals were killed during direct warfare with explorers. European diseases caused thousands more deaths. The subsidiary effects of these losses further devastated the Southeast: groups with too few people to plant and hunt were forced into starvation or refugee status; much practical and ritual knowledge was lost; and indigenous political structures were weakened. The final and perhaps least well-known factor was the trade in indigenous slaves, who were generally captured by rival tribelets and sold to the Spanish for export to New England, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Many groups on the coast and in the piedmont lost their political or social viability during this period; their surviving members generally became part of larger, more powerful tribes such as the Choctaw, Cherokee, or various member tribes of the Creek Confederacy.

The 17th century: missionization

During the 17th century, trade, particularly in deerskins, grew tremendously, as did indigenous reliance on European firearms and ammunition. European exploration of the inland Southeast generally ceased, and colonial settlement began in earnest on the coasts. The most important development in this century, however, was the establishment of missions and the propagation of Roman Catholicism among native peoples. Jesuits attempted to missionize coastal Georgia and South Carolina in 1565–66 but abandoned those areas after several friars were killed. Spain replaced the Jesuits with Franciscans in 1573; by 1700 more than 100 missions had been established in northern Florida and southern Georgia, particularly among the Timucua, Guale, and Apalachee peoples. Reports to Spain describe these groups as almost entirely Christianized by 1670.

The Southeastern missions drew (or were assigned) fewer Spanish soldiers and civilians than missions in other areas; their absence allowed the friars to proceed with their work unhindered by the rapes, kidnappings, and beatings that such individuals commonly visited upon native peoples elsewhere. The indigenous power structures of the region had been weakened, and the surviving hereditary chiefs and war leaders had proved incapable of ending the losses caused by disease, warfare, and slavery. As they were accustomed to accepting leadership that combined religion and politics, many people realized that allying themselves with the Franciscans would afford a measure of protection against further military and slaving raids; they may have also hoped that the presence of a new deity would bring some relief from disease. Finally, the friars themselves were careful to limit their mandate to those aspects of culture that were overtly religious, such as baptism and attendance at mass; other aspects were left alone and might incorporate Christianity (or not) depending upon the wishes of a given community. Among the Apalachee, for instance, the late-summer Busk quickly incorporated celebrations of the feast day of San Luis Rey, which occurred at the same time of year.

In 1706 the last missions were abandoned because of the conflicts that were arising between Europe’s imperial powers. However, the friars’ work was enduring; during the 20th century, many indigenous groups from the Southeast persisted in practicing more or less syncretic religions that combined indigenous and Catholic practices, as well as preparing the ground for later conversion to Protestant sects.

The 18th century: international turmoil

By the late 17th century the indigenous peoples of the Southeast (and the Northeast) found themselves increasingly drawn into foreign struggles over the control of Europe and North America. Local theatres of war and their instigating European conflicts included King William’s War (1689–97) and Europe’s War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97); Queen Anne’s War (1702–13) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14); King George’s War (1744–48) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48); and the French and Indian War (1754–63) and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). The American Revolution (1775–83), in which France, Spain, and the Netherlands supported the colonies in their fight against England, was yet another conflict with at least some origins in European politics.

By the early 18th century many smaller indigenous groups had merged with larger tribes, and especially with major groups such as the Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Cherokees. Each of these large polities engaged in alliances with the European powers, and they often found themselves pitted against one another. Indigenous communities soon realized that trade and diplomatic relations with Spain, France, and England were intertwined and could be manipulated to their advantage; the Creeks found it especially profitable to set the three imperial powers against one another.

By mid-century, however, the Southeastern Indians’ ascendancy in trade, military might, and diplomacy was being overshadowed by an increasing mass of European immigrants. Many were fleeing homelands torn by war; some were fleeing religious persecution; and others sought to escape depressed economies or were transported as punishment for petty crimes. The colonizing population in the Southeast alone had grown from perhaps 50,000 Europeans in 1690 to approximately 1,000,000 individuals by 1790; the enslaved African population in the region grew from about 3,000 to 500,000 during the same period.

Previous colonizers had built most of their settlements near the swampy, malarial wetlands of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts; most Southeastern peoples found these locations relatively undesirable. As coastal locales could not support the enormous increase in European and African populations, an inland development boom ensued. This ultimately proved more dangerous to the Southeastern tribes than epidemics or war.

The early 19th century: forced removal

During the first 300 years of colonization, the Southeastern peoples had adopted what new practices they found useful without completely altering their traditional cultures. This was a very successful strategy, and they often became the owners of large, prosperous farms and plantations. As the pressure to cede land to settlers increased, the tribes opted to negotiate with the nascent United States in the belief that treaties and other agreements would be enforced by this government, as they had by Spain, England, and France.

The land hunger of the burgeoning Euro-American population was fierce. Tensions were heightened by the envy that those building new farms had for those with established operations; the latter were almost all members of the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, or Chickasaw tribes, who with the Seminoles became known as the Five Civilized Tribes. The Seminoles were a multiethnic group that included Creek and other native refugees who had fled the mid-18th century conflicts, as well as Africans and African Americans who had escaped slavery.

The settlers’ desire for more land and their envy at indigenous prosperity caused them to agitate for oppressive Indian policies. Violence eventually erupted in the form of the Seminole Wars. The first war (1817–18) was fought in part to defend individuals of African descent from capture and a return to enslavement. American forces led by Andrew Jackson invaded northern Florida, kidnapped a few individuals, and destroyed many Seminole settlements. In response, the tribe moved south and rebuilt their society.

The Cherokees preferred to use legal strategies to maintain their property and the political independence guaranteed them by treaty. Sequoyah’s 1821 invention of a syllable-based writing system for the Cherokee language enabled the wide circulation of a draft Cherokee constitution; tribal members voted to adopt the new constitution in 1827. At the same time, settler agitation regarding the primacy of state versus tribal sovereignty was accelerated by the discovery of gold within the Cherokee Nation lands, and the Georgia legislature in turn passed a law extending state authority to tribal lands; many Euro-Americans felt that tribes should not be allowed to maintain separate governments within state boundaries. Instead, they proposed that tribal members choose between regular citizenship or tribal sovereignty; Indians could either give up the protections provided by treaty agreements or remove themselves to territories outside the states. The Cherokees saw this as a vacuous argument, as their sovereign status was very clearly delineated in the treaties they had negotiated with the federal government. They chose to file suit against the state in federal court.

While the Cherokee lawsuit moved through the judicial system, the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act (1830). This enabled the government to designate as Indian Territory land in the trans-Mississippi West; it created a process through which land in the new territory would be exchanged for tribal land in the East and provided funds for the transportation of tribes to the new domain.

Massacre of the Whites by the Indians and Blacks in Florida, woodcut from An Authentic Narrative of the Seminole War, by Daniel F. Blanchard, 1836.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.The native peoples of the Southeast responded in different ways to the realpolitik of this event. The Choctaw agreed to removal relatively quickly, hoping to leave the conflict behind them. Federal corruption and incompetence ensured that their journey was poorly provisioned, however; inadequate food, sanitation, shelter, and transport caused many deaths.

In the meantime, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia had made its way to the United States Supreme Court. In 1831 the court decided that indigenous peoples living within the United States were no longer independent nations and that as a domestic sovereign nation—in other words, one that depended upon the United States to uphold its political independence—the Cherokees had no right to sue in the federal court system.

A related suit, Worcester v. Georgia, involved a Euro-American missionary who refused to take a state loyalty oath and visited native property without the necessary state permit. The Supreme Court decision, made in 1832, stated that the right to regulate tribal affairs was exclusive to the federal government—states had no similar right to extend their laws to the tribes. President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the Worcester decision. This allowed the states to enact further legislation damaging to the tribes. Notably, these two cases have formed the basis for most subsequent Indian law in the United States.

The Creeks agreed to removal in 1832, but delays in their departure resulted in great hardship on their journey westward. A few Seminole leaders signed an agreement of removal in 1832, but the majority of tribal members declared that the agreement was not binding and refused to go; this provoked the Second Seminole War (1835–42), a conflict that the Seminoles eventually lost, with many being forcibly removed to the west.

Learning of the hardships suffered by other indigenous groups, most of the Chickasaw tribelets took matters into their own hands. Many of these groups sold their land at a profit and moved west in the late 1830s. Having for the most part planned, provisioned, and paid for the journey themselves, they fared better than other tribes. Their journey was difficult nonetheless, and they suffered many casualities from smallpox and malnourishment.

Most Cherokees refused to depart, and many were forced from their homes at gunpoint beginning in 1837. In the most infamous of the forced relocations conducted under the Removal Act, some 15,000 Cherokee were evicted and marched westward on a harrowing journey causing the deaths of some 4,000 of their people.

The Removal Act was enforced throughout the Eastern Woodlands, and very few native individuals remained there after 1840, with some notable exceptions: groups of Seminoles in Florida; the Eastern band of Cherokees in North Carolina; some Catawbas and many Lumbees in the piedmont area of North and South Carolina; the Poarch Creeks in eastern Alabama; the Mississippi Choctaws; the Tunicas and Chitimachas of Louisiana; small remnant groups in the coastal Carolinas; and, scattered throughout the Southeast, innumerable unrecognized groups claiming Indian descent. In all, historical demographers estimate that some 100,000 people from the Eastern Woodlands were forced from their homelands and that some 15,000 died while on what has become known as the Trail of Tears.

The late 19th century and beyond: fighting to regain sovereignty

Once in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), the Five Civilized Tribes worked to rebuild their economies. Most individuals focused on farming, with some providing other services such as blacksmithing. Economic revitalization was very successful, but it was later interrupted by the Civil War. Surrounded by states committed to the war, Indian Territory became a crossroads of conflict. Many residents suffered at the hands of the Union and Confederate armies; people were assaulted, farms and outbuildings burned, and crops and livestock stolen, destroyed, or dispersed. After the war, the tribes worked to rebuild their communities yet again. The United States, having allowed indigenous owners to retain slaves during removal, now insisted that all former slaves be freed and recognized as official members of the tribes of their owners; known as freedmen, this population experienced various phases of acceptance and rejection from others in the Native American community, and their status remained controversial in the early 21st century.

During Reconstruction (1865–77), conflicts in the West resulted in the movement of a large number of displaced Plains tribes and others from their traditional homelands to Indian Territory. The United States took land assigned to groups already resident in the territory and transferred it to the newcomers. By the 1890s, continued Euro-American land hunger had resulted in allotment, a federal policy under which land held in common by tribes was divided into parcels and dispersed. Each indigenous head of household was assigned a parcel, as were orphans and a few other categories of individuals. The remaining land was made available to settlers, railroads, and others for development. Although the Five Civilized Tribes were immune from the initial enforcement of the new policy because they held clear title to their property, an act of Congress brought them under allotment jurisdiction in 1898. Like the other indigenous residents of the territory, they lost tens of thousands of acres.

Under policies initiated in 1906, indigenous peoples lost the right to elect their own tribal governments, which were replaced by federally appointed chiefs and tribal councils. The administration of schools and other institutions formerly managed by the tribes of Indian Territory also devolved to the United States. With allotment, these policies paved the way for Euro-American settlement of the territory and thus for statehood. In 1907 Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory combined to become the new state of Oklahoma.

These and other pressures on traditional culture were clear abrogations of tribal sovereignty, but tribes from the Southeast culture area saw just as clearly that fighting them head-on would prove unproductive. As a result, many engaged in passive resistance. Families refused to sign up for or receive their allotments; former tribal council members revitalized traditional governance and ritual activities away from the geographic seats of power; and children were schooled at home. Ironically, the United States’ efforts to complete the assimilation of the Southeastern peoples had resulted in a grassroots movement that strengthened traditional cultures considerably.

Cherokee dancers performing in traditional regalia.Kevin Fleming/CorbisDuring the remainder of the 20th century, Southeastern peoples were affected by a number of events of global importance, such as the oil boom of the 1920s; the Great Depression; the World Wars and the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars; and the advent of the civil rights and counterculture eras of the 1960s. In 1968 three Southeastern groups that had long been in bureaucratic limbo allied themselves to gain greater traction with the federal government. They included groups that had escaped removal—Cherokee communities in North Carolina and Seminole groups in Florida—as well as a tribelet of Choctaw that had traveled only as far as the state of Mississippi during removal. Having avoided removal and undertaken efforts to escape governmental scrutiny, they had seen many of their rights as native peoples abridged; their efforts eventually led to federal recognition of their status as tribes.

During the 1970s the federal government relinquished the right to appoint tribal governments; the Southeastern tribes quickly reinstated their constitutions and held elections. From that point into the early 21st century, the Southeast nations emphasized economic development, the revenues of which were used to support programs ranging from education to health care to cultural preservation. For instance, Chickasaw Nation Industries and Choctaw Management Services Enterprise, each owned by its constituent tribe, included firms providing construction, information technology services, and professional recruiting. The Florida Seminole instituted ecotourism programs that acquainted visitors with the state’s wetlands. Many tribes also turned to casino-based gaming (see Native American gaming); these operations often included hotel and restaurant facilities that generated income and provided employment to tribal members. Casino revenue, sometimes referred to as “the new buffalo,” lifted many tribes above the poverty line and encouraged a revival of traditional cultural practices.See also Native American: History; Native American: Developments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.