Coushatta heritage reaches deep into the past Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana Submitted by Kathy LaCombe-Tell Source; Jim Bradshaw; Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, Submitted June 2004 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************The Native Americans who live in the vicinity of Elton, at the northern edge of Jefferson Davis Parish are today known as Coushatta. They are technically known as Koasati and are a branch of the Muskhogean family. Their known history goes back to 1540, when Hernando DeSoto found a confederacy of Indian tribes known as the Upper Creeks living near the headwaters of the Tombigbee, Alabama, and Chattahoochee rivers. The Koasati were first discovered near the Coosa River in Alabama. The name Coushatta signifies "white-reed brake," and was originally applied to the people living in a settlement near a growth of the swamp cane. The French may have made contact with the Coushatta during the explorations by Marquette and Joliet in 1673 and during LaSalle's trip down the Mississippi River in 1682. Spanish explorers found two Coushatta villages on the upper reaches of the Alabama River in 1686. This was about the time that the Coushatta began migrating to the south, to settle at the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers that meet to form the Alabama. By the beginning of the 18th century, the French and the British were each wooing the Coushatta and other tribes in Alabama in an attempt to establish trade ties and to expand their influence from colonies on the Gulf Coast (for the French) and Atlantic coast (for the British). In 1712, Governor Bienville of the Louisiana territory (which was then still based in Mobile) confirmed a peace treaty with the Coushatta. This treaty was still being observed in 1763, when France ceded her North American possessions to Spain and Great Britain under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, that ended the French and Indian War. Under the terms of this treaty, the French turned over Mobile and Fort Toulouse in Alabama to the British and this presented a large problem for the Coushatta. As Fred Kniffen explains in his study of the historic Indian tribes of Louisiana, "At the end of the French and Indian War, the Indian tribes of what was to become the southeastern United States found themselves at odds with one another. Some large tribes, such as the Choctaw, had parted over whether to support England or France. Earlier in the eighteenth century, many smaller tribes had moved to the vicinity of French settlements near Mobile and New Orleans under the pressure of slave raids carried out by the Chickasaw, Talapoosa, and other more powerful groups. Slaves taken from them were sold to English colonists in the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia, so these small tribes, already alienated, fought fiercely for France and their own survival. With the end of the war, they began seeking lands to the west.... The old alignments with the French no longer seemed secure. A number of minor tribes loyal to their French Catholic neighbors had been driven into a cul-de-sac at Mobile." They and other tribes, like many Europeans who did not want to live under British rule, began to look for new homes to the west. In 1790, at the invitation of President George Washington, three Coushatta leaders were among a score of Creek chiefs who went to New York to sign a treaty with the U.S. government. At the time, the Coushatta were apparently regarded as an important tribe. Caleb Swan, an agent for the United States, writing in 1791, named "old Red-Shoe, king of the Alabamas and Coosades," (sic) one of the five "most influential chiefs of the country either in peace or in war." The Spanish government also gave the Coushatta diplomatic recognition, naming Red Shoes among the Creek tribal chiefs to be invited to a general conference in Pensacola in 1793. The Treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795 fixed the southern boundary of the United States along the 31st parallel of north latitude. This boundary, known as the Ellicott Dunbar line, made all of Alabama except for the Mobile area a part of the United States. It also introduced the Coushatta and other southern tribes to harsh, new political realities. For the first time, they faced an onslaught of English-speaking settlers without a powerful European ally. In response, the Coushatta began migrating across the Mississippi River to place themselves under the protection of Spain. About 1795, Red Shoes himself left Alabama for Louisiana, bringing with him about 100 of his followers. It appears that Red Shoes first moved from the lower Red River southwest to Bayou Chicot in the Opelousas district and, a short time later, located about 80 miles farther west on the east bank of the Sabine River--the Louisiana-Texas border--near the present-day town of Merryville. A decade after Red Shoes' flight from Alabama, Coushatta numbers in Louisiana had more than tripled. But there was more trouble to come. The Coushatta had just established themselves on the Sabine River when they were caught in a struggle between the United States and Spain over who owned the land in western Louisiana. When the United States bought the middle of America in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, it was unclear just where the western boundaries were. Both Spain and the United States claimed much of what is now western Louisiana, and nearly went to war to settle the dispute. Finally, agreeing to diplomacy, the countries declared the disputed area a neutral area--a no-man's land--until a final settlement. Kniffen tells us: "(With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803), the Americans quickly began the work of enumerating and describing tribes, establishing John Sibley of Massachusetts, a close friend of President Jefferson, as the first Indian agent at Natchitoches. It was hoped that these men would evaluate conditions, recommend policy and help control Indian behavior on the frontier. A new policy toward the tribes was in the making. "The French and Spanish had licensed private traders to deal with the Indians. They had punished gaboteurs, or illicit traders, especially those dealing with guns and tafia (an alcoholic drink made from sugar cane). In spite of well-intentioned measures, numbers of these people ... remained in the Indian communities. "To combat the unlawful practices and to consolidate their control of the tribes," Kniffen continues, "the Americans soon put into operation a factory system based on trading posts administered by the government. This venture soon miscarried, and the Americans, like their predecessors, brogan issuing licenses to individuals. These private traders extended credit to Indians and began acquiring tracts of land in settlement of Indian debt. Losing hundreds of acres to the traders, the tribes often sought space in less settled and marginal areas, such as the Big Thicket of present-day east Texas. "The Koasati, with a few Pascagoula and some of three Yowani Choctaw, moved north from villages near Colfax and modern Boyce, and settled in the Caddo country, north of Natchitoches, near the present Arkansas boundary." About this time, the brother of Red Shoes was murdered by a white man, who escaped arrest. Immediately after the murder, part of the tribe cut its corn, abandoned its homes, and crossed the Sabine to settle on the Trinity River in Spanish territory. By the opening of the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, the combined population of the Coushatta on the Sabine, Red, and Trinity rivers totaled about 800. The Sabine River settlement remained the principal center of the tribe. The United States drew the Coushatta into the 1812 war. Spain was allied with Great Britain and could threaten the United States by coming through Mexico. In response, the American government encouraged the faltering Mexican independence movement that had begun in 1810. As a means of protecting its southwestern flank, the United States encouraged the Indians in Texas to fight alongside the Mexicans. Early in 1813, a force of 300 Coushatta and Alabama Indians fought at the battle of Salado and took part in the capture of San Antonio by the Mexican revolutionaries on April 1. But when the Mexican independence movement faltered in August of that year, the Coushatta fled back into the neutral ground in Louisiana. In 1820, however, a liberal revolt swept through Spain, with one of the results being that Mexico was finally granted its independence. This early period of Mexican Independence, 1821-1835, was the heyday of the Coushatta in east Texas. They grew corn, beans, sweet potatoes, and peas for their own use and as cash crops, and they raised beef, horses and hogs. They also continued to hunt bear and deer for food and sold dressed skins and bear oil at Nacogdoches. But soon the Coushatta, Alabama, and other tribes living between the Sabine and the Trinity Rivers became alarmed at the influx of Americans seeking, once again, to push them off their lands. The Indians appealed to the Mexican government for title to their lands, only to learn the lands had been conveyed to non-Indians. The outbreak of the Texas Revolution in 1835 marks the beginning of the long decline in Coushatta fortunes on the Trinity. Fearing that the tribes in east Texas would join with the Mexicans (because they had fought with them before), the Texas revolutionaries sent a three- man committee to talk to the Indians. The committee guaranteed that the Coushatta and other Indians would keep whatever rights the Mexican government had given them, if they stayed out of the war. Sam Houston, who would become the first governor of the Texas Republic, was one of the committee members and persuaded the Coushatta to remain neutral. Partly as a consequence of that neutrality agreement, Houston and Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, second president of the Texas Republic, helped to defeat legislation introduced in the Texas Congress in 1842 to remove the Coushatta from their lands. But the handwriting was on the wall. The annexation of Texas on December 29, 1845, by the United States placed the Trinity River Coushatta under American jurisdiction and they, and other Indian tribes, were recognized as wards of the government. In 1855, the Coushatta in Texas, with Sam Houston's help, tried once again to secure the land promised them years before. Legislation passed to give them 640 acres, "in consideration of their service to their country and their devotion to the early settlers of Texas." But the 640 acres were paper acres only. The land was never located on a map or actually allocated to them. By 1855, only 80 Coushatta remained in east Texas, scattered in Polk and Liberty counties. The modern history of the Coushatta tribe begins about 1850 with the establishment of Indian Village on the Calcasieu River near Kinder. By the beginning of the Civil War, some 250 Coushatta had settled there, coming from east Texas, the Red River, and other points in western Louisiana. Here the tribe continued its ancient traditions and seemed to enjoy amicable relations with its neighbors. Finally, settlers forced them to move again, this time for the last time. In the early 1850s, homesteaders began taking up Coushatta lands at Indian Village. A local non-lndian, James Coles, helped them locate vacant land 15 miles east of Bayou Blue, which they purchased. In 1854, most of the tribe moved to this site a few miles from Elton. The annual Bayou Indian Festival in Elton has showcased Coushatta traditions since 1992.