COUSHATTA

The Coushatta occupied ancestral territory in what is now the state of Alabama, especially where the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers merge to form the Alabama

River. A Muskogean-speaking people, they were closely related to the CREEK and the ALABAMA in language, culture, and history. All three tribes were part

Coushatta alligator basket

Of the Creek Confederacy. The Coushatta, village farmers, are classified, along with these other tribes as SOUTHEAST INDIANS. Coushatta, pronounced coo-SHAH-tuh, possibly means “white cane” in Musko-gean. Alternate spellings are Koasati and Quassarte.

It is thought that the Coushatta had contact with the Spanish expedition of 1539—43 led by Hernando de Soto, and, following de Soto’s death, Luis de Moscoso Alvarado. Other Spanish explorers passed through their territory in the 1500s and 1600s.

After Rene-Robert Cavelier de La Salle’s 1682 voyage of exploration along the lower Mississippi River, the French became established in the region. They founded the settlement of Mobile on the Gulf of Mexico in 1710 and became allies and trading partners with many of the Muskogean tribes of the area. Meanwhile, the English were pushing inland from the Atlantic Coast and developing relations with the Creek living to the east.

When the French were forced to give up their holdings in the Southeast in 1763, having lost the French and Indian War against the British, most of the Coushatta dispersed. Some moved to Louisiana. Others joined the SEMINOLE in Florida. Still others went to Texas.

Those who stayed in Alabama threw their lot in with the Creek and were relocated west of the Mississippi to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) at the time of the Trail of Tears in the 1830s; their descendants still live there today as part of the Alabama-Quassarte Tribe. Descendants of those Coushatta who moved to Louisiana presently have a nonreservation community near the town of Kinder, as well as a 15-acre reservation on lands they purchased near Elton. They are known as the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana. In 1995, they opened the Grand Casino Coushatta. Those in Texas were granted reservation lands in Polk County along with the Alabama—the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe.