Native American Culture of the Southeast
A regional overview of the Southeast from Khan Academy.
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Place and Time: The Mississippian Period
This region stretches down the Mississippi River and into the area around the Gulf of Mexico. It runs through some of the most fertile lands in North America. Native Americans were the first to take advantage of such promising farming conditions.
The well-known Native American groups in this area were the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. They were known as the Five Civilized Tribes. Mississippian culture was the main culture from 1000 CE onward. It grew out of the beginnings of farming in Hopewellian culture, which had been the main culture in the Northeast a few centuries before.
Food: Corn Farming
The Mississippian peoples were excellent farmers. Cherokee women planted and harvested crops, including beans, squash, corn, tobacco, and sunflowers. They added acorns, nuts, seeds, and fruits to their diets. They did not use any fertilizer. So they had to burn the fields and create new ones every season. This took huge amounts of time and labor. But it led to large crop yields.
The Mississippians were great farmers. But Southeastern Native Americans also kept hunting and fishing. They hunted deer with bows and arrows. They fished in rivers and in the Gulf of Mexico for protein. In southern Florida, the Calusa people developed complex systems of fishing and trapping for clams, mussels, and saltwater fish.
Mississippians also made detailed pottery and arrow points. They made fancy serving tools and dishes for food. They also made weapons for hunting larger animals.
How People Lived: Urban Centers
Mississippians continued the mound-building traditions of the Hopewellian people. They spread them to the south and west. Mississippian mound societies were larger and more complex than earlier communities. This shows a huge growth in population and wealth.
Cahokia, near modern-day St. Louis, was home to an estimated 40,000 Cahokian people, after whom the city was named. It became the major urban trade center along the Mississippi River. It remained the largest city ever recorded in North America until Philadelphia passed its population 500 years later. Monk’s Mound is at the center of Cahokia. It is the largest pre-contact earthwork in America today. It is 955 feet long and 100 feet high. Cahokia’s population fell sharply around 1250. This was probably due to environmental factors such as overhunting or deforestation.
Poverty Point was another mound city. It linked large trade networks throughout the Americas. It is in the northern part of modern-day Louisiana. The city was a place to export stone and clay items on dugout canoes up the Mississippi River. In return, flint and soapstone came to the South from the Ohio River Valley. Historians think that Poverty Point also had religious meaning. They point to its large plazas, which were most likely used for worship.
Most people lived in hamlets, or villages. These formed political units of under one thousand people. The Seminoles, in modern Florida and Georgia, built villages of chickees. These were buildings with thatched roofs and open sides.
Beliefs and Social Order: Wealth Divides Society
The farming boom of the Mississippian culture gathered wealth at the top. The Creek people in Georgia practiced slavery. They forced prisoners of war to work their fields. Southeast Native Americans were the first to organize villages around chiefdoms. In a chiefdom, families were ranked by social status and by how close they were to the chief himself.
Chiefs lived in elaborate wooden buildings on top of large mounds. This showed their power. Societies often had both peace chiefs and wartime chiefs. They had different purposes and leadership strengths.
Historians know little about the religious practices of the American Indians in the Southeast. But they agree that the groups had a spiritual connection to the land. They used the mounds for ceremonies honoring natural features, including the sun, corn, and water. These were the elements that sustained them.