the Toltecs, artisans, scholars, priests and fearsome warriors

There were distinct differences in the advanced indigenous societies of the Mississippi Basin and Lower Southeast.  They shared many religious symbols, but their architectural and cultural traditions were quite different.  There is considerable evidence of human sacrifice in the Mississippi Basin.  The Natchez and Pawnee Indians still practiced human sacrifice in the 1700s.  There is no evidence or cultural memory of human sacrifice among the ancestors of the Muskogean tribes of the Southeast.  The Timucua of northeastern Florida and the southeastern tip of Georgia DID regularly practice human sacrifice, but their cultural heritage was Arawak – from the Caribbean Basin.

The architecture and town plans of towns along the Mississippi River are very similar to those of the Toltecs.  These towns were planned to ridged orthogonal geometry.  Almost all platform mounds were rectangular truncated pyramids. All plazas were rectangular.

In the lower Southeast, however, there was a much greater diversity of architectural traditions. The very first platform mound of the “Mississippian Period,” Mound A at Ocmulgee National Monument (c. 900) was a Toltec style truncated, rectangular pyramid.  After 925 AD, however, the vast majority of mounds in Georgia and the Carolinas were NOT this shape. During the Middle Mississippian Period, all of the principal mounds in Georgia and North Carolina towns were pentagonal pyramids. After 1250 AD,  most mounds in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama were oval-shaped.  During the Early Mississippian Period Lower Southeastern plazas were linear like Teotihuacan. In the Middle Mississippian Period, they were rectangular, but in the Late Mississippian Period, most plazas were either oval or circular.

The cultural differences between the regions in the United States closest to the Toltecs, and those closest to the Mayas suggest that the external contacts that stimulated their fluorescence came from different regions. Perhaps alternatively, the stimuli came from varying combinations of several regions.

http://www.examiner.com/x-40598-Architecture--Design-Examiner~y2010m4d22-The-Mesoamerican-connection-the-Toltecs-artisans-scholars-priests-and-fearsome-warriors