"A remarkable synthesis of history, anthropology, and cartography."--Choice. "A significant addition to a rich and growing bibliography of southeastern Indians in general and the Choctaws in particular ...[Galloway shows] the finest instincts of a careful researcher ...and she offer[s] a volume that is readable, enjoyable, even engrossing, and defensible."--Journal of American History. "Galloway's command of the sources is convincing, her scholarship is sound."--Western Historical Quarterly. "The arguments [Galloway] develops--many of them provocative and some controversial--will undoubtedly act as a catalyst to involve others in the study of this fascinating era."--Mississippi Archaeology. Starting with the basic archaeological evidence and the written records of early Spanish and English visitors, Patricia Galloway traces the likely origin of the Choctaw people, their movements and interactions with other native groups in the South, and their response to Euro-American contacts. She thereby creates the first careful and complete history of the tribe in the early modern period.This rich and detailed work--winner of the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize, the James Mooney Award, and the McLemore Prize--not only provides much new information on the Choctaws but illuminates the entire field of colonial-era southeastern history and provides a model for ethnographic studies. Patricia Galloway is Special Projects Officer, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. She is the editor of The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis (Nebraska 1989) and The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and "Discovery" in the Southeast (Nebraska 1997).