The Mississippian shatter zone describes the period from 1540 to 1730 in the southeastern part of the present United States. During that time, the interaction between European explorers and colonists transformed the Native American cultures of that region. In 1540 dozens of chiefdoms and several paramount chiefdoms were scattered throughout the southeast. Chiefdoms featured a noble class ruling a large number of commoners and were characterized by villages and towns with large earthen mounds and complex religious practices. Some chiefdoms, known as paramount chieftains, ruled or influenced large areas. The chiefdoms were ravaged by the de Soto and other Spanish exploratory missions in the 1540s through the 1560s and their decline began.
The chiefdoms all disappeared by 1730. The most important factor in their gradual disappearance was the chaos induced by slave raids and the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians. Other factors included epidemics of diseases of European origin and wars among themselves and with European colonists. The trade in slaves was stimulated by the demand of British colonists for slaves and the demand of the Indians for guns and other manufactured products. Some tribes, especially the Westo (of Iroquoian origin), specialized in capturing Indians to be enslaved. English and Indian raids on Spanish colonies in Florida and Georgia resulted in a larger number of captured Indians who became slaves. Indian slaves usually ended up working on plantations in the U.S. or were exported to islands in the Caribbean Sea. The city of Charleston, South Carolina was the most important slave market.
The Indian population in the southeast decreased from an estimated 500,000 in 1540 to 90,000 in 1730. The chiefdoms were replaced by simpler coalescent tribes and confederacies made up of survivors and refugees from the fragmenting chiefdoms, plus migrants from other areas who fled wars with the English and the Iroquois. These included tribes prominent in 18th and 19th U.S. history such as the Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Yuchi, Yamassee, and Catawba.
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The Mississippianshatterzone describes the period from 1540 to 1730 in the southeastern part of the present United States. During that time, the interaction...
Ethridge, the Mississippianshatterzone was a time of great instability in what is now the American South, caused by the instability of Mississippian chiefdoms...
Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540-1715 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) Mapping the MississippianShatterZone: The Colonial Indian...
Soto Expedition List of unrecognized tribes in the United States Mississippianshatterzone Muskogean languages Queen Anne's War Bobby G. McEwan, "Apalachee...
Prisoners American Civil War Fugitive Slave Act Mission Indians Mississippianshatterzone Native Americans in the American Civil War Native Americans in...
Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania Indentured servitude in Virginia Mississippianshatterzone Slavery in the colonial United States Ethridge, Robbie Franklyn...
Robbie Franklyn, and Sheri Marie Shuck-Hall. 2009. Mapping the MississippianShatterZone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the...
societal decline was possibly caused by the Little Ice Age. The Mississippianshatterzone describes the period from 1540 to 1730 in the southeastern part...
Indigenous peoples History of colonialism Indian indenture system Mississippianshatterzone The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in...
University of Oklahoma Press. Ethridge, Robbie (2009). Mapping the Mississippianshatterzone: the colonial Indian slave trade and regional instability in the...
Robbie Franklyn, and Sheri Marie Shuck-Hall. 2009. Mapping the MississippianShatterZone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the...
ISBN 978-0-8032-1557-3. Marie., Shuck-Hall, Sheri (2009). Mapping the MississippianShatterZone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the...
civil war plays a role in LeAnne Howe's 2001 novel Shell Shaker. Mississippianshatterzone Brescia, William (Bill) (1982). "Chapter 2, French-Choctaw Contact...
Ethridge, Robbie Franklyn and Sheri Marie Shuck-Hall. Mapping the MississippianShatterZone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the...
Symbolic Capital, and Social Power Cameron B. Wesson Mapping the MississippianShatterZone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the...
visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition Cusabo Mississippian culture Mississippianshatterzone Southeastern Ceremonial Complex Four Mothers Society...
sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition Mississippianshatterzone Natchez Taensa Tunica Ethridge, Robbie (2013). From Chicaza to...
escaped any metamorphic transformations and reaches right up to the Mississippian, but farther north in the Albigeois and in the Cévennes it progressively...
Kaskaskia between the full immersion of the Silurian and the early Mississippian. Finally, the Absaroka sequence emplaced into the early Pennsylvanian...
including the Archaic (8000–1000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC–1000 AD), and Mississippian (1000–1600 AD) periods. The Archaic peoples first domesticated dogs...
astrobleme ("star-wound") because of the concentric rings of fractures and zones of shattered rock that can be found beneath the surface. In 2002, Christian Koeberl...
Caddoan Mississippian culture peoples lived in the eastern part of the state. Spiro Mounds, in what is now Spiro, Oklahoma, was a major Mississippian mound...
Native-languages.org. Retrieved 2 January 2018. Jeter, Marvin D. (2009), "ShatterZone Shock Waves along the Lower Mississippi," edited by Robbie Ethridge and...
primitive agriculture. The increasing reliance upon agriculture during the Mississippian period (c. 900–1600 A.D.) lured Native Americans away from the game-rich...
Dead. The sculptures inside palatial structures, such as Xalla, were shattered. No traces of foreign invasion are visible at the site. Evidence for population...
Landman, Neil H. (2022-03-08). "Fossil coleoid cephalopod from the Mississippian Bear Gulch Lagerstätte sheds light on early vampyropod evolution". Nature...
(1,000 BCE to 100 CE), and the Mississippian Period (900 to 1500 CE). Archeological evidence indicates that Mississippian culture traits probably began...