Traditional homelands of the Southern tribes.ĭrawn by Jon Snyder after Hudson 1976: Map 1. In 1907 Indian Territory became the state of Oklahoma this entailed the destruction of independent tribal governments and necessitated further accommodations to the dominant culture.įig. EuroAmericans referred to this migration as the Removal, but the Indians themselves called it the Trail of Tears, because of the unspeakable hardships they suffered. Beginning in the 1830s, the government forced most Southern Indians to move to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi River. Government agents encouraged the Southern tribes to adopt the English language and EuroAmerican customs the work of Christian missionaries supported this effort. In the early 19th century, the United States government formally initiated an aggressive campaign to assimilate the Southern Indians. Southeastern ethnology became further complicated through culture change, large-scale migrations, and shifting demographics, which occurred as a result of contact with Europeans during the 17th and 18th centuries. Other language families represented include Iroquoian (Cherokee and others), Yuchean (Yuchi), Siouan (Ofo, Biloxi, Quapaw, and others), Algonkian (Shawnee and others), Tunican (Atakapa, Chiti-macha, and Tunica), and Caddoan (Caddo and others). The dominant language family of the area is Muskhogean, dialects of which are spoken by the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Natchez, and many smaller tribes. Southeast Indian ethnology is extraordinarily complex, partly because of the tremendous ethnic and linguistic diversity of the region: there may at one time have been over 150 separate tribes and languages (Fig. Cultural Heritage of the Southern Indians Courtesy of National Museum of the American Indian. Feather boa and matchcoat made by overlapping layers of turkey feathers on a net woven from mulberry bark fiber by Molly Adams (Mataponi), ca. However, despite five centuries of intense and often traumatic culture change, feathers continue to play an integral, if subtle, role in Southeastern ceremonialism.įig. ![]() Today the Southern Indians appear to use feathers sparingly compared to other Native North Americans. ![]() Only the Parnunkey Indians of Virginia retained the technology for making the intricate feather mantles and headdresses that so impressed de Soto (Knifemen, Gregory, and Stokes 1987:157). By the late 18th century, most of the tribes were making their matchcoats, turbans, and other garments out of European cloth (Fig. The Southern Indians began to alter their style of dress soon after their first encounters with Europeans. Leaders among the Southern Indians also wore distinctive feather headdresses, such as crowns or turbans made of animal or bird skins decorated with eagle or turkey tail-feathers, tufts of down, or bird wings. The resulting garment was lightweight, warm, and very beautiful (Fig. Turkey, swan, or duck feathers could be used, and in some areas the heads of mallard ducks were also woven into the mantles. Feather matchcoats, worn by both men and women during warm weather as an emblem of social status, were made by weaving feathers into a fiber net. These garments were also called matchcoats, from an Algonkian word, matshîgode, meaning cloak, robe, or mantle. Joseph Harrison, Jr.įeather mantles like that worn by Tascalusa were made by Native Americans from Virginia to Louisiana. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Mrs. Portrait by George Catlin (1838) illustrating the use of European cloth in Southeast Native American dress. Osceola, Seminole leader of the early 19th century. His head was “covered by a kind of coif like the almaizal, so that his headdress was like a Moor’s which gave him an aspect of authority” (Bourne 1904, 2:120).įig. Tascalusa, seated on cushions and surrounded by attendants, wore “a pelote or mantle of feathers down to his feet. Of particular interest is the chroniclers’ account of de Soto’s meeting with Tascalusa, Chief of the Mobile tribe, in the autumn of 1540. Ironically, while de Soto’s men brutally attacked and plundered the Indians, his chroniclers amassed a wealth of information in their detailed descriptions of the Southern tribes. Before the expedition ended in September of 1543, several thousand Indians had been killed, as well as de Soto himself and half of his 600-man force. On May 18, 1539, the Spaniard Hernando de Soto embarked on an expedition to explore what is now the southeastern United States.
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