A full elucidation of the history and antiquities of the subject of our inquiries, the Creeks, is possible only after having obtained an exhaustive knowledge of the tribes and nations living around them. The more populous among them have preserved their language and remember many of their ancestors' customs and habits, so that active exploration in the field can still be helpful to us in many respects in tracing and rediscovering their ancient condition. Three centuries ago the tribes of the Maskoki family must have predominated in power over all their neighbors, as they do even now in numbers, and had formed confederacies uniting distant tribes. Whether they ever crossed the Mississippi river or not, the Indians of this family are as thoroughly southern as their neighbors, and seem to have inhabited southern lands for times immemorial. The scientists who now claim that they descend from the mound builders, do so only on the belief that they must have dwelt for uncounted centuries in the fertile tracts where Hernando de Soto found them, and where they have remained up to a recent epoch. In the territory once occupied by their tribes no topographic name appears to point to an earlier and alien population; and as to their exterior, the peculiar olive admixture to their cinnamon complexion is a characteristic which they have in common with all other southern tribes.