Notes on Tribal Materials

The materials in the upper right panel were organized by John Swanton based on modern connections to states. The locations on the maps show where the tribes were in about 1640, before the dislocations which followed. The state assigned to a tribe is represented in the upper left panel, with its surrounding area.

The materials are from The Indian Tribes of North America. It was John Reed Swanton's life's work, published in 1953 by the Government Printing Office, as Bulletin 145 of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, originally submitted in March, 1950.

Looking back over 50 years of increased interest in First Nations people, it may seem dated. But it was, and remains, the best jumping-off point for where everyone was, on this Turtle Island, at about the time of the European Immigration.