Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal by Gregory D. Smithers

Abstract

Reviewed by: Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal by Gregory D. Smithers F. Todd Smith Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal. By Gregory D. Smithers. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. Pp. 260. Notes, bibliography, index.) Employing the voluminous amount of secondary works dealing with southern Native Americans that have been published in the last two decades, Gregory D. Smithers has written a short and accessible overview of the southern Indian experience up to 1840 that will have great value for college students and professors alike. Although the book includes details concerning numerous different Indigenous groups of various languages—Muscogean, Southern Iroquoian, Siouan, and Caddoan—the author has done a fine job in clearly presenting his main theme of Native cultural continuity in times of extreme hardship and change. Smithers defines the Native South as extending eastward from the Louisiana-Texas border to the Atlantic Ocean, and southward from the Tennessee River to the Gulf of Mexico. (Although Texas is not included in his definition, the author does provide a bit of information on the Caddo Indians—the Tejas of Spanish Texas—due to the groups that resided in western Louisiana). Chronologically, the book begins with the question of origins and examines how these interrogations relate to issues of storytelling and identity among Native southerners. Throughout the entire work, Smithers intersperses Native oral traditions and viewpoints with the findings of modern secondary research. The author also makes sure to demonstrate how Native southerners coped with fluctuations in climate and local ecosystems, adopting new technologies and agricultural innovations as they saw fit. One of the highlights of the book is Smithers' explanation of the Mississippian chiefdoms that emerged in the centuries prior to European contact, along with concise descriptions of how kinship networks and clan systems functioned while buttressing chiefdom societies, subjects that are often baffling to the modern reader. Smithers also discusses the "Mississippi Shatter Zone" in the early eighteenth century, demonstrating how disease, warfare, and European colonial endeavors that inspired slave raiding caused the chiefdoms to decline and splinter. However, tribes such as the Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees built on their communal identities to coalesce during this period, enabling them to overcome the dangerous situation they found themselves in. [End Page 361] The situation became even more threatening for Native southerners during the era of the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. The violence and warfare that resulted between Indigenous polities, combined with their involvement in the various wars, caused small-scale migrations within the Southeast, notably among the Cherokees. The author also charts the history of the development and migration of the Seminoles into northern Florida as a complex story of ethnogenesis, demonstrating how their emergence amounted to something more than a group of Lower Creeks migrating out of the Creek Confederacy. Instead, he shows how these dynamic communities had their ethnic origins among smaller tribes such as the Oconees, Yamasees, and other Florida Natives. The discussion of the Seminole emergence is an example of the author's commitment to investigating the smaller, forgotten Southern tribes, highlighting how the book is not just concerned with the so-called Five Civilized Tribes that usually dominate the discussion of Native southerners. Late eighteenth-century wars provided the backdrop for rekindling Native religious revivals and attempts to forge pan-Indian alliances as a means of countering the growing power of the American republic. Although these movements failed, ultimately leading to removal in the 1830s, Smithers shows how the Native southerners were able to hold onto their social and cultural traditions, maintained their Native languages, and worked to nurture bonds of kinship and community in Indian Territory. Native Southerners is a sophisticated overview of the history of the region's Indigenous groups, combining the latest historical research with Native oral traditions to provide an excellent introduction to the subject for students and teachers. F. Todd Smith University of North Texas Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association