In the northwest, between the Ohio and the Lakes, were the Algonquin tribes, generally banded loosely together; in the southwest, between the Tennessee--then called the Cherokee--and the Gulf, the so-called Appalachians lived.

Between them lay a vast and beautiful region where no tribe dared dwell, but into which all ventured now and then for war and hunting.
The southwestern Indians were called Appalachians by the olden writers, because this was the name then given to the southern Alleghanies.

It is doubtful if the term has any exact racial significance; but it serves very well to indicate a number of Indian nations whose system of government, ways of life, customs, and general culture were much alike, and whose civilization was much higher than was that of most other American tribes.
The Appalachians were in the barbarous, rather than in the merely savage state.

They were divided into five lax confederacies: the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles.

The latter were merely a southern offshoot of the Creeks or Muscogees.