Chiefdoms, Collapse, and Coalescence in the Early American South

Offers a new framework for understanding the transformation of the Native American South during the first centuries of the colonial era.

Robin Beck (Author), Charles M. Hudson (Foreword by)

9781107022133, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 June 2013

322 pages, 22 b/w illus. 21 maps 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.6 kg

'Robin Beck's study traces the origin of the Catawba Indians from precontact Appalachian Mississippian chiefdoms through their emergence as a nation in the eighteenth-century Southeast … a compelling argument that combines the best aspects of anthropological and historical methodology grounded in a thorough discussion of its theoretical implications … This book is sure to open new avenues of inquiry not only for North American case studies but also for similar sociopolitical geneses elsewhere.' George Edward Milne, The Journal of American History

This book provides a new conceptual framework for understanding how the Indian nations of the early American South emerged from the ruins of a precolonial, Mississippian world. A broad regional synthesis that ranges over much of the Eastern Woodlands, its focus is on the Indians of the Carolina Piedmont - the Catawbas and their neighbors - from 1400 to 1725. Using an 'eventful' approach to social change, Robin Beck argues that the collapse of the Mississippian world was fundamentally a transformation of political economy, from one built on maize to one of guns, slaves and hides. The story takes us from first encounters through the rise of the Indian slave trade and the scourge of disease to the wars that shook the American South in the early 1700s. Yet the book's focus remains on the Catawbas, drawing on their experiences in a violent, unstable landscape to develop a comparative perspective on structural continuity and change.

Part I. Chiefdoms: 1. The desert of Ocute
2. The quartermaster's list
Part II. Collapse: 3. The stranger Indians
4. The Waxhaws' burden
Part III. Coalescence: 5. The color of war
6. The deerskin map.

Subject Areas: Archaeology by period / region [HDD], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK]