### q1 Mississippian civilization persisted long after Europeans arrived in the Americas > the transitions in the U.S. Southeast that saw the collapse of Mississippian cultures and the rise of coalescent societies like the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. Oral histories from these coalesced nations, and the historic accounts of the chiefdoms that persisted into the historic period like the Natchez, help us understand the Mississippian worldview, and how that culture transformed in the years following contact. > > Early Spanish explorers describe densely populated settlements surrounding monumental earthen mounds with *micos* (chiefs) able to control sufficient numbers of fighters to decimate the Narvaez *entrada* in Florida, and push Soto around the Southeast. While these early Spanish incursions might have destabilized a few chiefdoms, like Chicaza in Mississippi and Tascalusa in Alabama, stability continued, and some chiefdoms like the Caddo, Natchez, and Apalachee continued until the eighteenth century - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fgy1eatpfr7tdyfw2nbrwt2r) - [[Mississippian Culture#q1 Mississippian civilization persisted long after Europeans arrived in the Americas|View in Vault]]