The Genetic Legacy of the Mississippians

In this study, we examine the maternal relationships between Mississippian peoples and potential living Native American descendants in Eastern North America. First, we present new ancient DNA results from American Bottom and Illinois River valley Mississippians buried at the East St. Louis, Janey B. Goode, and Yokem sites in Illinois. Our results increase the sample size of Mississippian mitochondrial DNA to facilitate population comparisons with ancient and extant groups. Our results show that Mississippians were genetically diverse, with all five major Native American haplogroups represented (A, B, C, D and X). We show that within-hap-logroup diversity was maintained across an 800-year time span except in the case of haplogroup D, in which ancient lineages were more diverse. Finally, we show that Native American genetic diversity appears to have been structured geographi-cally, as Midwestern groups from all time periods are more similar to one another than those from outlying regions.