In the past three decades, scholars in Native American studies have
labored to recover the histories of tribes and to include them in the larger
portrait of American history. Despite this development, few have recognized
the Alabamas and Coushattas, two small but significant southeastern tribes.
The paper for this panel will explore the cultural, social, political,
and economic facets of the Alabama and Coushatta experience from 1820 to
1839.
The Alabamas and Coushattas, once members of the Creek Confederacy in the eighteenth century, migrated west to the Louisiana-Texas frontier to avoid American encroachment in 1812. By the early 1820s, the Alabamas and Coushattas joined an anti-Comanche union with the western Cherokees, Shawnees, Delawares, and Kickapoos. This union established a successful inter-tribal confederacy -- one that ultimately enhanced the tribes' political influence when later dealing with the Mexican and the Texas-American governments. These tribes witnessed the dramatic increase of American immigrants to east Texas after Mexico gained its long-awaited independence from Spain. The Alabamas' and Coushattas' increased reliance on the land motivated them to take an aggressive stance against the Americans. Mexico and Texas had experienced an unprecedented level of political upheaval between 1834-35, and therefore the Mexican government acceded to the tribes' demands.
When the Texas Revolution erupted in 1835, both Texas-American and Mexican agents vied for the various tribes' allegiance. In contrast to the once prevalent stereotypes that portrayed Native Americans as being merely reactive to such overtures, the Alabamas and Coushattas played the American and Mexican agents against each other by brokering their relationship with the larger tribes in the anti-Comanche union, chiefly the Cherokees. In the process, the Alabamas and Coushattas received gifts, favorable trade, and protection from emissaries. Only after Texas agents offered the Indian confederacy a land grant in east Texas did the tribes sign a peace treaty.
The Alabamas and Coushattas were left in a precarious position by the end of 1839. The United States' desire to incorporate Texas into the Union encouraged American surveyors and settlers to encroach on the east Texas tribes' designated land. Despite past successes of averting American settlement by their migration further west or by their roles as power brokers during conflict between nations, they could no longer escape white impingement. The Alabamas and Coushattas had to fight for their own survival in the contest of cultures while struggling to keep their tribal heritage intact.
Comparable to most tribes on the "middle ground," the Alabamas and Coushattas
utilized their influence to play foreign powers against one another, fought
American claims to their ancestral tribal lands, and adapted to a frontier
exchange economy. Their persistent roles as power brokers set the Alabamas
and Coushattas apart from most southeastern tribes. Although other Native
American tribes assumed similar roles during the American struggle for
hegemony on the southern frontier, the Alabamas and Coushattas maintained
their tribal identities, regardless of their small numbers, and avoided
total absorption into a larger, more powerful tribe. Yet, despite their
repeated success as power brokers, the two tribes faced uncertainty and
extreme hardship before obtaining their most valued possession -- a permanent
claim to land in east Texas.