Growing Communities
The Mississippian culture in the Southeast region of the United States was a collection of different societies that shared similar ways of living and traditions. During its peak, the Mississippian period was considered to be the highest cultural achievement in the Southeast. They built more permanent communities, farmed extensively, made marvelous pottery, and maintained vast trade networks in addition to continuing their ancestral tradition of hunting and gathering.
NPS Photo
NPS Photo
NPS Photo
With the explorations of European explorers came the end of the Mississippian peoples' history. Armies of Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León and Hernando de Soto devastated the native populations from the 1500s to the 1540s, which was already in decline due to newly introduced European diseases from previous encounters as well as prolonged drought, crop failures, and internal warfare. Most of the larger Mississippian sites were abandoned or in decline by the mid-1400s.