GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

The area occupied by this family was very extensive. It may be described

in a general way as extending from the Savannah River and the Atlantic

west to the Mississippi, and from the Gulf of Mexico north to the

Tennessee River. All of this territory was held by Muskhogean tribes

except the small areas occupied by the Yuchi, Ná’htchi, and some small

settlements of Shawni.

Upon the northeast Muskhogean limits are indeterminate. The Creek

claimed only to the Savannah River; but upon its lower course the Yamasi

are believed to have extended east of that river in the sixteenth to the

eighteenth century.[70] The territorial line between the Muskhogean

family and the Catawba tribe in South Carolina can only be conjectured.

[Footnote 70: Gatschet, Creek Mig. Legend, 1884, vol. 1, p. 62.]

It seems probable that the whole peninsula of Florida was at one time

held by tribes of Timuquanan connection; but from 1702 to 1708, when the

Apalachi were driven out, the tribes of northern Florida also were

forced away by the English. After that time the Seminole and the Yamasi

were the only Indians that held possession of the Floridian peninsula.

Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891 · 第 112 / 361 题