In this sweeping regional history, anthropologist Robbie Ethridge
traces the metamorphosis of the Native South from first contact in
1540 to the dawn of the eighteenth century, when indigenous people
no longer lived in a purely Indian world but rather on the edge of
an expanding European empire. Using a framework that Ethridge calls
the "Mississippian shatter zone" to explicate these tumultuous
times,
From Chicaza to Chickasaw examines the European
invasion, the collapse of the precontact Mississippian world, and
the restructuring of discrete chiefdoms into coalescent Native
societies in a colonial world. The story of one group--the
Chickasaws--is closely followed through this period.