The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

In 1540, a member of Hernando De Soto’s expedition described the mico of Coosa and his core territory (a place now known, oddly enough, as Little Egypt) in the following terms: The cacique came out to welcome him in a carrying chair borne on the shoulders of his principal men, seated on a cushion, and covered with a robe of marten skins of the form and size of a woman’s shawl. He wore a crown of feathers on his head; and around him were many Indians playing and singing. The land was very populous and had many large towns and planted fields which reached from one town to the other. It was a charming and fertile land, with good cultivated fields stretching along the rivers.51 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, petty kingdoms of this sort appear to have been the dominant political form in much of the Southeast. Their rulers were treated with reverence and received tribute, but their rule was brittle and unstable.