People of the Prairie uncovers a previously unknown population of thousands of Native people living in the Alabama Black Prairie in the sixteenth century. Descendants of the great Mississippian mound-building society of Moundville, these people colonized a region that previously had been only sparsely populated by adapting farming culture to the particulars of the prairie environment. The authors contend that these people entered the Prairie environment primarily due to regional intertribal hostilities. At some point during their occupation, they came into possession, perhaps through direct contact, of an abundance of medieval Spanish metal. The research presented here documents the resilience of Native people in the wake of Spanish entradas, as populations surged in the late sixteenth century.
