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This webpage reproduces part of The Southern Indians by R. S. Cotterill University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma, 1954 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 1

 p. ix  Preface

This book has been written in self-defense. The writer on beginning his teaching of Southern history found that he needed a knowledge of Southern Indians and failed to find it in the books then in print. He was forced, therefore, into an investigation of source material which before it was completed, spread out over some twenty-five years and carried him into practically all Southern states as well as into several in the North.

The Southern Indians, with the exception of Alexander McGillivray, were singularly inarticulate; the records of their history are records by white men. They deal chiefly with the relations of Indians and whites and are marred by prejudices and misunderstanding. Anyone attempting, as in this case, to write a history of the Indians, as distinguished from a history of their foreign relations, will find his labors multiplied by these characteristics of his sources. The writer finishes his task with no boast that his portrayal has been precise or his account complete. He hopes that he has moved at least a little toward the goal of depicting Indian history as it was.

There are several schools of thought concerning plurals of Indian tribal names; in this book, plurals have been formed in accordance with the policy of the University of Oklahoma Press.

In the course of his investigation the author has received undue aid and courtesies from so many people that it would be impossible  p. x even to enumerate them here. To Miss Louise Richardson and her staff of the Florida State University Library, to the Lawson McGee Library, the Filson Club, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the United States Archives, the Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi departments of archives and history, the state historical societies of Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Florida, the writer can make only this blanket expression of gratitude for manifold favors received.

Finally, the writer is grateful to President Doak S. Campbell and to Dean Edwin Walker for release from teaching duties at Florida State University so that he could complete this book.

R. S. Cotterill

Tallahassee, Florida
December 15, 1953

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