Chaos Theory and the Contact Period in the Southeast

<p>This chapter provides an examination of the Contact era in the Southeast through the lens of Chaos Theory. Everyday life in the protohistoric Native American Southeast was guided by tradition, but it was also affected in seemingly unpredictable ways by colonial exploration, trade, missionization, and settlement. The authors focus on the Yazoo Basin in northwestern Mississippi, the Apalachee province of northern Florida, the Cherokee town areas of southern Appalachia, and the areas of Natchez and Taensa settlements in southwestern Mississippi and northeastern Louisiana. The authors found that everyday life for particular people at particular places was shaped not only by local history and local forces but also by the increasingly global forces of change that affected both native peoples and European colonists.</p>