The Region.

After the decline of the great Mississippian chiefdoms, the native population of the southeastern part of the present-day United States was dispersed into dozens of different bands and villages. Occasionally these small groups coalesced into larger cultural units called tribes. Through this process several large and powerful tribes, comprised of thousands of people, emerged about the same time that Europeans were beginning to colonize the Southeast. The Creek Indians were an example of this process of amalgamation. They were a conglomeration of formerly autonomous villages and peoples such as the Alabamas, Euchees, and Hitchitis. These peoples had their own cultural traditions and spoke different languages and dialects. Over time, though, these combinations of smaller groups developed common cultures and systematic methods of regulating behavior and preserving order. Although the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and other southeastern Indians maintained their own...