ABSTRACT
SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS The Southeastern Culture Area extends westward from the Atlantic coast to East Texas and southeastern Oklahoma and includes Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Peripheral to this core area are parts of Missouri, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and the Ohio River Valley. Although the area includes a number of tribes with linguistic and cultural differences, there is evidence of cultural exchange, particularly along the Carolina Piedmont into Georgia. Another cultural concentration lies in a band through the Gulf Coast states from Louisiana to Florida. The categorization of the area as a distinct cultural region for Native Americans owes to a number of seminal anthropological and folklife studies in the early twentieth century, such as Frank Speck’s “Some Outlines of Aboriginal Culture of the Southeast” (1907) and John Swanton’s “Aboriginal Culture of the Southeast” (1924-1925).
