Printed in an edition limited to 750 copies from type. MANUFACTURED COMPLETE BY KINGSPORT PRESS, INC. KINGSPORT, TENNESSEE _United States of America_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EDITOR’S PREFACE James Adair’s _History of the American Indians_, published in London in 1775, has always been regarded and treated by ethnologists and historians as reliable authority on the Southern Indians, as well as on Southern history in a period of no little obscurity. The book has long been rare, selling in 1930 at one hundred dollars a copy. Recognizing its value as source material on Southern history of the colonial period, the National Society of Colonial Dames of America, in Tennessee, determined to bring out a reprint, which should be annotated to supplement in some degree Adair’s own detailed and vivid description of life among the Indians of the South, east of the Mississippi River; of the Indian trade and traders, and of intrigues and wars that involved both the red and the white races, in the years of struggle for the possession of the Mississippi Valley by the French and English. The writer was asked to undertake the editorial work. The task of annotation has proceeded on the basis of a reckoning that Adair’s book is not true to name—a history of the American Indians—but of its being an account of the principal tribes of the Indians of the Southeast and of their countries. His work is all the more unique and useful in that such is its real scope; and the editor’s notes, speaking generally, have been brought within the same limitation. The London edition carried no index—a lack that impaired its useability. One is supplied in this reprint. In the Introduction it is purposed to give as full and accurate an account of Adair, the man, and of his book, as is feasible. In order to compass this a fairly wide investigation of archives was entered upon and a correspondence conducted. To Professor R. L. Meriwether, of the Department of History of the University of South Carolina, Emmett Starr, of St. Louis, historian of the Cherokee Indians, John R. Swanton, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C., W. J. Ghent, of the staff of the _Dictionary of American Biography_, Judge Samuel Martin Young, of Dixon Springs, Tennessee, Dr. P. M. Hamer, of the Department of History of the University of Tennessee, and Miss Mary U. Rothrock, librarian of the Lawson McGhee Library, Knoxville, Tennessee, the editor is under obligations for aid given in its preparation. An expression of gratitude cannot be withheld. The editor, also, has had the hearty coöperation at all times of the officers of the Society which has promoted the enterprise, not with a view to financial profit, but under patriotic prompting.