History concerning the following American Indian tribes: Timucuan, Apalachee, Guale, Natchez, Houma, Chitimacha, Cherokee, Seminole, Catawba, Chickasaw, Caddo, Choctaw, Upper Creek, Alabama, Koasatis, Lower Creek, Yuchi.

Materials collected from early writings about the Creek Indians and other Southeastern tribes, notes accumulated about the material cultures of these peoples, new material gathered by the author, and sketches of the later histories of these tribes have been combined with published information to study the histories and cultures of these Indian tribes. More than 175 tribes are considered.

The authors of these essays are an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists and historians who have combined the research methods of both fields to present a comprehensive study of their subject. Published in 1979, the book takes an ethnohistorical approach and touches on the history, anthropology, and sociology of the South as well as on Native American studies. While much has been written on the archaeology, ethnography, and early history of southern Indians before 1840, most scholarly attention has shifted to Oklahoma and western Indians after that date. In studies of the New South or of Indian adaptation after the passage of the frontier, southeastern native peoples are rarely mentioned. This collection fills that void by providing an overview history of the culture and ethnic relations of the various Indian groups that managed to escape the 1830s removal and retain their ethnic identity to the present.