THE ALABAMA INDIANS OF TEXAS
Near the Big Thicket in Polk County, Texas, lives a small rem-
nant of the Alibimu and Koasati Indians―commonly known as the
Alabamas and Coshattis. The two tribes are related, being of
Muskhogean stock, and both were members of the Upper Creek
Confederacy.
1 The Alabamas appear in history for the first time
upon the coming of De Soto. Biedma, one of the chroniclers of
the unfortunate expedition of the Spanish explorer, tells us that
after leaving Mavila or Maubila, they marched to the northwest
until they reached the province of the Alibamo,
2 which was probably
somewhere within the limits of the present state of Mississippi.
3
The Gentleman of Elvas states that the governor in April, 1541,
lodged at a small village called Alimamu, where they searched for
corn.
4 Ranjel calls this village Limamu.
5 Here the Alabamas
had built a stockade manned by three hundred warriors to resist
the advance of the Spaniards, but after a sharp engagement, De
Soto carried the fort, though with considerable loss. Garcilaso, in
his version of the story, calls this fort Fort Alibamo.
6 The chron-
iclers also state that De Soto and his men came to an island village
Coste (also Costehe and Acoste), which was, perhaps, an upper
village of the Coshattis on the Tennessee River.
7
After the passing of De Soto, these Indians are again lost to
view until the appearance of the French in the Gulf region. The
Alabamas and Coshattis, having moved eastward during the interval
of a century and more, were then living near the junction of the
Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, the two main tributaries of the Ala-
bama. Here, together with the neighboring Indians, Creeks, Choc-
taws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Mobilians, and others, the Alabamas
were trading with the Spanish at Pensacola, and across the Alle-
ghenies with the English of Carolina, exchanging their peltries for
lemburg cloth and blankets of white wool.
8 Iberville, governor of
Louisiana, quick to see the value of this Indian trade in holding
the province for France, in 1702, established Fort Louis, the first
site of the present city of Mobile, where, with its easy water com-
munication inland by way of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers,
could be debouched a vast Indian trade, once the friendship of the
Indians was gained. French presents and French promises had
their effect, and soon Mobilians, Choctaws, and many other tribes
were the friends and allies of the French. Not so the Alabamas.
In 1702, in 1704, and in 1708, they were at war with the French.
9
In the last year the whole Creek Confederacy was aroused, probably
by the English, for the War of the Spanish Succession was then in
progress, and Creeks, Cherokees, Catawbas, and Alabamas descended
the river against the French at Mobile. But for some unknown
reason the contemplated attack was not made, and the Indians,
after burning the huts of the Mobilians above Fort Louis, put
back to their homeland.
10
The English were victors in the War of the Spanish Succession,
nevertheless their influence among the Southern Indians steadily
declined after its close, a situation due no doubt to the disastrous
Yamassee and Tuscarora wars, which do not concern us here.
In 1714, the chief of the Alabamas and other chiefs of the tribes
near Carolina went to Mobile and proposed that the French erect
a fort among them. The opportunity was not to be lost. The
site chosen was a strategic one on a bold bluff of the Coosa, a mile
from the Alabama village, and the Alabamas aided in its building.
Fort Toulouse it was called in honor of the Count of Toulouse, then
director of the colonies; but the usual name by which it was known
was "Aux
Alibamons."
11 Adair refers to it as the "dangerous
Alabahma French garrison."
12 Here Jesuit missionaries minis-
tered to the spiritual needs of the Indians, and traders received
peltries and other products of the Indian hunting grounds far and
near and floated them down the river to the sea at Mobile. Fort
Toulouse was the farthest inland of the French forts in the South-
ern province and retained its importance throughout the French
regime. It stood as a signpost to the English, protecting French
territory and French trade.
13
The long struggle between England and France for supremacy in
America came to an end in 1763, and the country of the Alabamas
passed to the conquerors. There was then a westward movement
of many tribes, for the savages, warned by the French, held fast
the idea that the English sought not only to secure their lands but
to exterminate the race.
14 Some of the Alabamas remained in
their homeland; others, how many it is impossible to state, migrated
westward. Bossu tells us that they left their former haunts, burned
their huts and the fort which they had helped to build, cut down
the fruit trees in their villages, and drifted down the river in their
canoes to join the French at Mobile. Here their chief, Tamath-
le-Mingo, who had been "decorated as a great chief with a medal
bestowed by the King," sickened and died with these words on his
lips, "I have lived like a man, I am going to die like one." He
was buried with military honors by his friends, the French.
15 The
Alabamas moved westward across the Mississippi, but they left their
name on the region and on the stream upon whose banks they had
lived so long.
A party of Alabamas consisting of forty men with their families
made their first new home, according to their own tradition, on
Bayou Bœuf, from which they later moved to a village in the
Opelousas district.
16 A small village called Alabama was estab-
lished two miles above Manchac on the Mississippi, and another at
El Rapide on Red river, sixteen miles above Bayou Rapide. Those
who had settled here later went higher up the stream where they
raised a good crop of corn and hunted buffalo with the Caddoes.
The greater number of the Alabamas went farther westward and
settled a village on the Sabine.
17 This village and the village in
the Opelousas district became the chief settlements of the tribe.
In 1777, William Bartram, the traveller, put in to shore at Ala-
bama, the village above Manchac, and describes it as "delightfully
situated on several swelling green hills, gradually ascending from
the verge of the river."
18 The Indians cultivated corn, raised hogs,
horses, and cattle, and the men acted as boatmen.
19 They made
reed baskets and earthenware, and the women and children gathered
cotton. They were considered harmless and quiet people.
20
About 1790, a large number of Coshattis followed the Alabamas
westward.
21 Their village in the homeland had been about three
miles below the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, near where
the modern town of Coosada now stands.
22 That they do not figure
largely in the chronicles of the period of French rule may be ex-
plained by the fact that the French applied the name Alibamons
to many tribes living near Fort Toulouse.
23 In 1799, three hundred
men of the Coshattis were settled on Bayou Chicot in the Opelousas
district. But they became concentrated in two villages, one on Red
river in the land of the Caddoes,
24 another on the east bank of the
Sabine, eighty miles south of Natchitoches. There were said to be
six hundred in this latter village.
25
Hardly had the Alabamas and Coshattis become settled in their
new homes before Louisiana was purchased by the United States.
Realizing the value of an Indian trade ministering to a population
of from thirty to forty thousand natives, controlled hitherto by
Spain, the Americans endeavored to preserve friendly relations
with the Indians. William Claiborne, governor, and Dr. John
Sibley, Indian agent for Orleans Territory, handled the Indians
with tact and kept the peace.
26 Natchitoches, founded a century
earlier by the dashing chevalier St. Denis, became the chief Indian
post, and here Alabamas and Coshattis traded their bear oil and
deerskins for provisions and blankets. It was a region of almost
virgin hunting, and all went well with them for a time. One man
alone on the Sabine killed four hundred deer and sold them at forty
dollars a hundred. A small party of Coshattis, including only
fifteen persons, men, women, and children, killed one hundred and
eighteen bears on the upper Sabine. A bear usually yielded eight
or twelve gallons of oil, and the skins sold for a dollar each.
27
But troubles soon came. Four Alabama warriors who were
charged with the murder of a citizen of Opelousas were sentenced
to death.
28 This outrage was the first offence of the little tribe,
and their conduct was exemplary. They promptly delivered up the
murderers to the territorial authorities, the father of one of the
guilty being among the most active in bringing them to justice. A
Choctaw had recently been killed by a white man who had not
been apprehended, and the neighboring Indians were greatly agi-
tated over the Alabama affair. This inclined Claiborne to clem-
ency. The exercise of mercy, he thought (and the better class of
the people was with him) would not only prevent an Indian upris-
ing and the shedding of innocent blood, but would also be an
evidence of the disposition of the United States to be just and
merciful toward the Indians. He pardoned two of the unfortunate
Alabamas; the remaining two were hanged on August 13, 1808.
29
Disaffection had broken out among the Coshattis. Tom, brother
of Red Shoes, one of the chiefs of the tribe, was killed at the salt
works near Natchitoches by a white man, all efforts for whose
arrest had failed.
30 Sibley's presents of provisions seemed to
appease the relations of Tom, but in a few days the two chiefs, Pia
Mingo and Red Shoes, with thirty-three men from the Sabine
village, appeared at Natchitoches and demanded satisfaction, Red
Shoes saying that he could not think of losing his brother for
nothing. Sibley, although upset at the demonstration, felt obliged
to respond, and presented Red Shoes with a hat and half-regimental
blue coat, faced with red, which he had had made of some moth-
eaten cloth. A new element was introduced into the situation when
a young Coshatti, who had been at Natchitoches with Red Shoes,
killed a white man, confessed the deed, and admitted that he had
wanted to commit the murder at Natchitoches, but the chiefs had
restrained him.
31 There were rumors afloat that some of the neigh-
boring tribes were gathering at the lower Coshatti village for the
war dance,
32 and Pia Mingo had gone to the upper village, ostensibly
to persuade them to come and live on the Sabine. Sibley, however,
believed that he was sent by Cordero, the Spanish governor at San
Antonio, as part of a plan to stir up the Indians west of the
Mississippi against the Americans. These tribes were to be moved
across the Red and the Sabine where they would make a formidable
barrier to the invasion of Texas.
33
Immediately after the murder, the Coshattis in the lower village
began cutting their corn preparatory to abandoning their homes
and moving into the dominions of Spain.
34 They crossed the
Sabine in 1807 and settled on the Trinity about three leagues
below the village of Salcedo.
35 On Sibley's urgent request that they
come to Natchitoches for a friendly visit, they sent him the follow-
ing message:
That they were fully sensible of Our goodness towards them, and
were greatly distressed at what had happened and they would never
let go our hands or throw away Our talks; but they had been sent
for by Governor Cordero of St Antonio, & had promised to go &
See him, they did not know for what; but that they would Come to
Natchitoches as soon as they returned from St Antonio and do
their endeavour to have every thing Settled; but they Could not
then think of giving up the Young Man who had Committed the
Murder the fact they did not pretend to deny . . 36
A few years after their immigration to Texas, a party of Coshattis
under their chief Rollins, a half-breed, joined the Magee-Gutierrez
expedition. They were in Kemper's army against the Royalists at
San Antonio and fought bravely in the battle of Salado and again
at the Medina.
37
The Alabamas in the village near the Sabine also moved across
the river―the exact date is not known--and established themselves
on the Neches three leagues above the junction of that stream with
the Angelina. Their number was about six hundred.
38 Here they
came to be known as friendly and peaceful Indians, and Austin
thought their assistance and that of the Coshattis would be useful
in protecting the frontier.
39 Eastern Texas offered an inviting
field to the Indians in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Revolutionary, filibustering, and piratical operations after 1810
had practically depopulated the country so far as the white man
was concerned, and Shawnees, Biloxies, Cherokees, Creeks, Dela-
wares, and other tribes crossed the Sabine and the Red to find new
homes. Of these the Cherokees, the most civilized of the tribes,
became the dominant Indians of East Texas.
We get a definite picture of the Alabamas and Coshattis, their
mode of living, and something of their manners and customs from
a census of the Texas Indians taken in April, 1831, by J. Francisco
Madero, commissioner of the state of Coahuila and Texas.
40 The
Coshattis, numbering four hundred and twenty-six, lived in two
villages on the east bank of the Trinity, not far apart, and about
forty miles from the mouth. In the lower village consisting of
thirty or forty detached houses, there were fifty-six families, fifty-
seven single men, and sixty-four single women. In the upper
village there were twenty-five houses of wood, the rest were of
inferior material, and here lived sixty-four families, thirty-one
single men and forty single women. The number in each family
is not given. Long King was the principal chief of the tribe, and
there were two sub-chiefs, Nekima and Keleite. The Alabamas
were situated on the west bank of the Neches in three small villages,
the principal one being what was known as the old Peach-tree-
village. They had sixty-nine well-constructed houses in their
villages, according to the census record, and they numbered in all
one hundred and three families, one hundred single men and sixty-
four single women, children not counted. Their chiefs were
Tallustah (Valiant) and Oppaya. Both tribes had a goodly num-
ber of beeves and horses, and plenty of hogs. They planted corn,
beans, sweet potatoes, and peas, and raised enough for themselves
as well as a surplus to sell and to use for the entertainment of
strangers. In the hunting season the Indians left their villages
and with their women and children, their blankets, cooking utensils,
and tents, they went deep into the woods to enjoy the pleasures of
the chase. There they procured the beef, bear-meat, and venison
on which they lived during the winter months.
41 The dressed
skins and bear oil they now sold at Nacogdoches.
There was a large house in each village devoted to their religious
cult. Here the Indians assembled each year to sanctify the mul-
berries and other ripening fruits and grains and present them as
a thank-offering to their gods, which they said was according to
their ancient custom.
42 The celebration and rejoicing lasted sev-
eral days, after which time they ate of the fruits they had presented.
Failure to abstain from the fruits until after the offering was
punished by a fine of one deerskin or more according to the offence.
This ceremony of sanctifying the first fruits was called the busk,
from poskita
or boskita,
meaning a fast. The principal busk of the
Texas Alabamas seems to have been their green corn dance usually
held in June.
43 Both tribes used fire-water, but the Coshattis were
more inclined to drink to excess than the Alabamas.
44
Before many years elapsed, the Americans were settling rapidly
in Eastern Texas. The immigrant tribes, with the whites pressing
closer about them, sought to secure from the Mexican government
titles to the lands they occupied between the Sabine and the Trin-
ity. These lands had already been conveyed to others,
45 but the
government was willing to grant to the Indians vacant lands along
the frontier, where they could form a cordon of defense against
the barbarous tribes of the West.
46 The Indians would not consent
to remove to the frontier, and Mexican control of Texas passed
with the immigrant tribes having no legal claim to the soil.
When the Texas Revolution began in 1835, the provisional gov-
ernment recognized the importance of keeping the Indians of the
East quiet, lest they join forces with the Mexicans. To that end, a
ranger force was created to protect the frontier and keep the Indians
in check, and a commission, consisting of Sam Houston, John
Forbes, and John Cameron, was appointed, authorized to guarantee
to the Cherokees and their associate bands such rights or claims as
they may have obtained from the Mexican government. Neither
Alabamas nor Coshattis took any part in the war. The Alabamas
have a tradition that Houston, when on his way to Washington-on-
the-Brazos, visited their chief in the old Peach-tree-village, in-
formed him of the approaching struggle, and advised that the tribe
remain neutral, for defeat would mean their ruin. Just before
the battle of San Jacinto, as army and people were fleeing east-
ward, the Alabamas left for Louisiana.
47 The Coshattis have a
similar tradition, but they remained in their villages on the Trin-
ity.
48 They slaughtered their cattle to feed the starving women
and children, and after the battle, it is said that Colita, their chief,
carried the news of the victory to the border of Louisiana and
brought the Texans back home.
49 The Alabamas returned after
the war was over and located at what was called the Fenced-in-
village. According to Morfit's report to Jackson in 1836 on con-
ditions in Texas, there were some twelve thousand aborigines in the
new nation at the close of the Revolution. Of these there were
about three hundred and fifty Coshattis with some eighty warriors
living on the Trinity; and of the Alabamas, sixty warriors and two
hundred and fifty others, all living on the Neches.
50
Notwithstanding Houston's conciliatory Indian policy, the East
Texas Indians were restless and discontented during the early years
of the Republic, and there were constant alarms and depredations
along the frontier. People returning after the "runaway scrape"
and new settlers in search of lands often encroached upon the
Indian territory. The treaty made with the Cherokees and their
associate bands in 1836 failed of ratification, which added to the
general unrest. Many of the Indians were incited by secret agents
to join the Mexicans and involve Texas in a general Indian war.
The crisis was reached in what is known as Cordova's rebellion,
which was crushed with the defeat of the Indians and Mexicans
at the battle of Kickapoo Village, October 16, 1838; and in the
Cherokee war which resulted from Lamar's policy of removing
the immigrant tribes who had no claim to the soil. The Ala-
bamas and Coshattis were among the associate bands of the Chero-
kees, but they lived quietly in their villages while this turmoil was
raging without, although some of the Coshattis were in the battle
of Kickapoo Village.
51 With the Alabamas at this time were a
few Biloxies and Muscogies (Creeks), who had been in Texas only
two or three years.
52
Lamar, whose Indian policy was not conciliatory, was opposed
to removing the Alabamas and Coshattis. In his message of
November 12, 1839, he states:
To the Coshattis and Alabamas, who seem to have some equitable
claims upon the country for the protection of their property and
persons, the hand of friendship has been extended, with a promise
that they shall not be interrupted in the peaceful enjoyment of
their possessions, so long as they continue the same amicable rela-
tions towards the Govt. which they have hitherto preserved.
53
The Alabamas and Coshattis, however, made no pretensions to the
soil except the right of occupancy. In 1840, they addressed a
petition to congress for lands somewhere between the Neches and
the Trinity; the Alabamas desiring land around the Fenced-in-
village, and the Coshattis at some point on the Trinity, preferably
at the Baptiste village.
54
A relief act for these Indians was passed by the fourth congress,
granting them a reserve for their exclusive use and benefit; two
leagues for the Alabamas, including the Fenced-in-village, and two
leagues for the Coshattis, taking in the Baptiste and Keleite
villages. The government was at all times to have exclusive juris-
diction over the Indians, and an agent was to be appointed for the
two tribes. The act also carried a provision creating a reserve
thirty miles square on the frontier, to which all friendly Indians
within the Republic should be removed as soon as circumstances
would permit.
55 Thomas G. Stubblefield was appointed agent and
selected the lands intended for each tribe. Ebenezer Jewell, the
surveyor, immediately surveyed the lower league for the Coshattis,
but owing to high water and sickness, did not complete the surveys
until some time later.
56
In 1844, Joseph L. Ellis, then agent for the two tribes, found
that the lower league of the Coshattis was claimed by Hamilton
Washington, who was willing, however, that the Indians should
stay there and cultivate their fields.
57 They had made a good crop
of corn, and at Ellis's suggestion the Indian Bureau sent them
presents of hoes, axes, plows, wedges, and trace-chains; so for a time
they seemed contented.
58 The upper league of the Coshattis was
completely occupied by whites who refused to give up any part of
the land. Thus dispossessed, a party of these Indians left their
homes on the Trinity and joined their brethren on Red river.
59
There were left of the Coshattis in Texas about fifty warriors, as
many women, and some thirty-five or forty boys and girls.
Ellis visited the Alabama town and found it entirely settled by
whites, with no Indians at all there. When the surveyor appeared
to run off their land, the Alabamas, taking it for granted that it
was for the white man, without a word of explanation, picked up
and left for Opelousas. But they wanted to live in Texas, so they
returned to find their two leagues in the possession of the whites
and the graves of their fathers and children in the hands of
strangers. They had lost not only their land, about two hundred
acres of which were cleared and under cultivation, but also their
cattle and horses over an hundred head.
60 The Indians settled on
a league about thirty miles west of Town Bluff on the Neches in
Liberty county where they put in cultivation some one hundred
acres and built thirty or more cabins. But shortly after they were
forced to leave and they became homeless wanderers. The tribe at
this time is said to have consisted of one hundred and seven men
with their families and thirty-two young men.
61
The Alabamas were gentle and friendly and lived to themselves
in peace. The Coshattis were sometimes involved in troubles with
the whites, and their chiefs took part in the talks and councils of
the other tribes with the whites, and received their quota of
presents of blue flaps, sheeting, blankets, hoes, beads, and tobacco.
62
In 1839, some of the citizens of Liberty county accused the
Coshattis of horse-stealing, and five of the Baptiste Indians were
murdered.
63 Colutta, the hundred-year-old counsellor of the tribe,
alarmed for the safety of his people, sent the following "talk" to
Lamar:
Tell the Big
Captain
of your nation I am a Friend to the White
Man
and have been so always; but the Indians are mad, five of the
Cushatta's are killed, and the balance of the Baptist Indians are
now seeking safety among the Brush and trying to collect some of
their horses and cows in order to retreat to some strong Nation or
Town-- The White
Man
accuses the Indians of stealing their
Horses for an excuse to murder & Rob the Indians-- This is not
right and it will if persisted in cause a wound never to be heal'd,
I'm now over one hundred years old. I can't take my rifle and
Tomahawk and go to War, nor do I want to do so-- I am the
White mans friend, but will not accuse my nation wrongfully.
I have given the White man my Lands--
I have given them bread— and the former Big Captain told me
that the White man should be my Friends. The white man lies,
they are doing evil for good; I am for Peace and all my Indians
are for peace, and if you your Big Captain is determined to murder
us and destroy our property we will be compelled to surrender and
die like a Brave Nation should do.
Times was, when we could have driven the White man off--
but we were their Friends and did not want to hurt the White man.
I will live here till I die which cannot be long and I want to
know what is to become of my people--
64
Lamar upheld the Indians. It was wrong, he said, to punish a
whole tribe indiscriminately for the misdeeds of a few vicious
members. War upon these weak and defenseless Indians would
force them to flee for protection to the more powerful tribes on the
frontier and from peaceful friends of the Republic, they would,
for their own preservation, become the allies of the barbarous
Indians of the West.
65
Those Coshattis who had left their home on the Trinity had
taken up their abode along the northern frontier. Some lived
among the Chickasaws in the United States, a small group was
collected at Daniel Rowlett's place on Red river,
66 and some, per-
haps, went to the Coshatti village among the Caddoes, established
many years before. Marauding bands of these Coshattis, in con-
junction with the Choctaws and a few Chickasaws, descended
upon the white settlements in Fannin county, robbing and plunder-
ing wherever they went. The Texans made futile overtures to the
Coshattis to return and occupy the lands set apart for their use,
and they also requested Major A. M. M. Upshaw, the agent to the
Chickasaws, to remove the Coshattis from that nation, with equally
futile results.
67 The raids continued. Incensed at these repeated
depredations upon the frontier, Captain Joseph Sowell with a com-
pany of rangers crossed the river in the summer of 1841, stole upon
a band of Coshattis, burned their huts, killed ten or twelve Indians,
and captured the spoils they had stolen on Texas soil. A retaliatory
expedition of the Coshattis resulted in the death of Captain
Sowell.
68
After the annexation of Texas, although the United States
assumed responsibility for the Indians within the state, these bands
of Alabamas and Coshattis remained under the protection of the
state government. But the two tribes were landless and homeless
wanderers. It was at the suggestion of Sam Houston that on
October 29, 1853, the Alabama chiefs held a council with their
white neighbors and friends at the home of Samuel Rowe in Polk
county. Billy Blunt, a Muscogie, and Billy John acted as inter-
preters. The Indians recited the wrongs and losses they had sus-
tained since they had been despoiled of the land granted them by
congress in 1840. They were not willing, they said, to move to
the Indian reserve on the upper Brazos, but had set their hearts
on land on Big Sandy creek in Polk county near the Big Thicket,
an unsettled and uninhabited region on the Trinity. It was in
this territory that they had made their original settlement in the
country, and here the chiefs wanted to bring the whole tribe, and
here live and die. As a result of this council, the Indians peti-
tioned the legislature for a grant of 1280 acres, or as much more
as the state was willing to give them, in compensation for the
wrongs and losses they had suffered. If the land on Big Sandy
was already located, they prayed that the state purchase it for
them. The value of the two leagues they had lost they claimed to
be three dollars an acre, a large sum compared to the pittance now
sought. The chiefs, Antone, Cilistine, and Shemilah, put their
marks to the document, with P. W. Kittrell as witness, and forty-
two of the leading citizens of Polk county also signed the petition.
69
Vacant and unappropriated lands on Big Sandy were not obtain-
able, and in 1854, the state purchased for the Alabama Indians
1280 acres, or thereabouts, at two dollars per acre, all in Polk
county, about seventeen miles from the town of Livingston.
70 The
title is vested in the tribe, and the land is tax free and inalienable.
71
The Alabamas were settled on their reserve in 1854 and 1855,
three hundred and thirty in all. The new land was heavily tim-
bered and difficult to reduce to cultivation, but it was not long
before the Indians had made good clearings and improvements,
working it in common for the benefit of all.
72 For their homes
they built log cabins with floors and chimneys and sometimes with
a little porch.
73 They raised plenty of corn and potatoes and
planted fruit trees in their village. They had cattle and horses
and several thousand hogs to supply meat for the whole tribe, and
the Big Thicket abounded in game. During the season of cultiva-
tion, they not only worked their own crops, but also helped their
white neighbors. The Indians enjoyed the confidence of the better
class of people around them, although some of the whites tried to
drive them from their land, plundering their stock and forbidding
them to hunt for their strayed stock beyond the limits of their own
land.
74
The Alabamas were now prosperous and contented, living apart
in a world of their own. When their crops were made and gath-
ered and housed, then came their happy days. As of old, they
went back to their Indian life and enjoyment. They broke up
into hunting parties, and with their women, their children, their
horses and tents, their blankets and household utensils, they went
into the tall pine forests and deep recesses of the Big Thicket, and
there they revelled in the wild and exciting sports of the chase.
When they returned to their village, their horses were laden with
bear oil, deer meat, and deerskins, both for their own use and for
market.
The Alabamas have the usual Indian characteristics of reticence
in the presence of white people, and seeming sternness and gloom,
reckless generosity and indifference to the future, devoted attach-
ments and implacable resentments, and a distaste for confinement
and continued application. They possessed the Indian's fatalism
and seemed indifferent to death, meeting it apparently without
fear or reluctance. Yet they regarded the suicide as a coward and
denied him the rite of sepulture.
75 An anonymous writer in the
Texas
Almanac
for 1861, who lived among the Alabamas for twenty
years, spoke their language, and knew them as intimately as a
white man could know an Indian, describes them as a happy people,
kind, warm-hearted and gay, docile and confiding, happy in their
domestic relations, and with unlimited hospitality. The gravest
fault of Alabamas and Coshattis alike was a fatal passion for ardent
spirits. Nevertheless, it was rare to find habitual drunkards
among them.
The Indians were fond of festivals of all kinds, ball plays, dances,
and games. Their ball plays have been described as a combina-
tion of tennis and football.
76 They delighted in childish pleasures.
Kenney in his Indian
Tribes
of
Texas
tells us that when he was
a boy he saw a company of Coshattis at Houston in 1837;
a salute was fired from a small steamer and with each discharge
"they laughed gleefully like little children.
77 A curious custom
among the Alabamas was that at certain festivals, all the children,
both boys and girls, passed in array and received a flogging of
such severity as to draw blood, after which they were lectured by
one or more of their elders.
78 Both tribes were fond of dress and
of showy colors and ornaments, especially of silver. The Coshattis
wore flowered chintz shirts and adorned themselves with silver
pendants from their noses.
79 Olmsted met a group of Alabama
Indians at Lake Charles in 1854 "riding through town with baskets
and dressed deerskins for sale. They were decked with feathers,
and dressed more showily than the Choctaws, but in calico; and
over their heads, on horseback,--a curious progress of manners--all
carried open black cotton umb
rellas."
80
The Coshattis had not fared as well as the Alabamas. In 1855,
aided by Houston, they, too, presented a memorial to the legisla-
ture
81 and, "in consideration of their services to the country, and
their devotion to the early settlers of Texas,"
82 they were granted a
tract of six hundred forty acres.
83 The land was never located.
Chickasaw Abbey, their chief, selected a home in Polk county on
land which belonged to non-residents, and here about ten lived.
The remainder of the tribe was scattered around in Polk and
Liberty counties, disorganized, broken in spirit, and without hope.
The whole number of the tribe in Texas at that time did not
exceed eighty, including women and children.
84
Scarcely were the Alabamas settled on their land before the
question arose of removing them and the Coshattis to the Indian
reserve on the upper Brazos, a large district placed at the disposal
of the United States by the state as a home for Texas Indians.
R. S. Neighbors, Federal Indian agent, and Governor Runnels both
urged removal as best for the welfare of the Indians and for the
preservation of the race. There was an abundance of land on the
reserve, and here, they claimed, the Indians would be assured of
peace and protection.
85 As early as 1842, an effort had been made
to remove the Alabamas and Coshattis and other tribes to the
upper Brazos, or to a specified portion of the public domain on the
northwestern frontier. Such were the provisions of a bill intro-
duced in congress which failed of passage.
86 In 1858, a bill for
their removal became law, but a condition precedent was the con-
sent of the Indians to be removed.
87 It was thought that if the
Alabama and Coshatti chiefs could be induced to visit the reserve,
this could be easily obtained.
88 James Barclay was appointed agent
to negotiate such consent,
89 and five thousand dollars was appropri-
ated to pay the expenses of the removal.
The task presented serious difficulties. The two tribes felt at
home in their haunts in East Texas and had always seemed to
dread association with the Indians of the plains.
90 The Alabamas
were satisfied where they were if they were only allowed to live in
peace. Their chiefs, nevertheless, agreed to go with Barclay to see
the reserve lands.
91 The Coshattis had everything to gain by re-
moval, but the consent of their chief was not readily obtained,
because the Indians seemed to have lost all confidence in the prom-
ises of the whites.
92 In the summer of 1858, Barclay and the
Indians, together with a small party of white men, set out for the
reserve.
93 They reached the upper Brazos agency in October
94 just
after the frontier settlers had attacked the lower reserve—whither
it was intended to remove the Alabamas and Coshattis—and ex-
pelled the Indians with slaughter. "Charity and humanity," Run-
nels said, "forbid . . . carrying them where they might at any
time be indiscriminately slaughtered, for no other cause than that
the Creator
had made them Indians."
95 Suggestions were made to
remove the two tribes to the Choctaw and Chickasaw reserve, or to
the lands of their brethren across Red river, but the season was
far advanced, and, notwithstanding the Muscogies and Coshattis
both expressed a willingness to go, the matter was dropped.
96
The Alabamas continued to live on their own land, where, with
their consent, Barclay removed some of the Coshattis. The rest
lived wherever they could find vacant lands in Polk and Liberty
counties. About seventy-five Muscogies were settled close by on
the Trinity. Billy Blunt, their chief, had married an Alabama
woman, and the tribes lived amicably together.
97 But the fear of
removal continued in the minds of the Alabamas, and on December
29,
1859, the chiefs of the tribe wrote Governor Houston as follows:
The undersigned Antone head chief, and Cilistine Thompson,
and John Scott inferior chiefs wish to say to Sam Houston, that
they know him-- that he is a great and good man, a friend to the
Indians and that they love and respect him more than any other
white man living-- They are glad that he is governor, and wish
that he could always be governor.
They wish to say that they are now comfortably living on land
given them by the state. They have made plenty of corn and
potatoes and have many hogs, and cattle, and horses. The white
people do not beat, nor rob them, nor steal any thing of much
value from them. All they desire is to be allowed to live where they
now are and to cultivate their fields in peace. Many of the
Coshattis have come to live with the Alabamas on their land. There
are about five hundred Alabamas old men, women, and children
included, and two or three hundred Coshattis including all. There
ought to be some more land given for the Coshattis. They further
say that Jim Barclay has been their agent for nearly two years.
They believe he does not wish them driven off, and that he is now
a friend to them. And if they have the power to choose an agent,
they would choose him, because they fear that they might other-
wise get an agent who would consent to their removal.
98
Barclay was a Runnels' appointee, and as such not acceptable
to Houston who chose R. R. Neyland as agent for the Alabamas.
99
In his report of 1861, Neyland estimated the value of the Indians'
property, real and personal, at $30,000. They had then about four
hundred acres in a good state of cultivation, had made plenty of
corn, and had begun the cultivation of cotton. They had three
hundred head of cattle, three hundred fifty head of horses, and
about two thousand hogs. Their number was given as one hundred
thirteen males and one hundred females. Neyland considered the
Alabamas honest and industrious and thought they would do well
if undisturbed.
100
The Civil War came on, and into its maelstrom were drawn these
isolated and inoffensive Indians. They were excellent horsemen,
and it was proposed that the Alabamas, Coshattis, and Muscogies
form a company and join Colonel G. W. Carter's regiment of
Lancers, then drilling at Chappel Hill.
101 This company did not
materialize. Twenty joined Captain Bullock's company at Wood-
ville in March, 1862, and their bounties were paid them.
102 Antone,
the chief, and sixty-five others were recruited and wanted to go,
but remained behind because they thought the governor required it.
Neyland, who was on Colonel Carter's staff, had resigned to join
his regiment, and A. J. Harrison, his successor, was permitted to
organize the Indians into a company for home defense.
103 The
twenty who enlisted in Bullock's company were discharged in De-
cember, 1862.
The statute books bear evidence that amid the perplexities and
troubles of the Confederate period and the years immediately fol-
lowing, the state was not unmindful of the welfare of these Indians.
In 1861, 1863, 1864, and 1866, acts were passed fixing the salary
of the agents, defining their duties, and making appropriations for
the three tribes.
104 In 1866, the same rights were extended to the
Muscogies that the Alabamas and Coshattis possessed, and three
hundred and twenty acres of land were granted to them.
105 This
land was never located. Billy Blunt said later that if the state
would cancel the grant and furnish them a few agricultural imple-
ments instead, they would be able to make a living.
106
The transfer of the Alabamas, Coshattis, and Muscogies to the
guardianship of the United States was proposed by Governor
Throckmorton in 1866. He suggested to the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs that these Indians would be greatly benefited by a
few gifts which the state, because of its poverty, was unable to
bestow. "Thousands of dollars of money is distributed annually,"
he said, "by the government to other tribes who continually depre-
date upon our citizens and . . . something might be given to
the unfortunate ones . . . who have always been peaceable &
honest."
107 The Davis administration likewise considered the
Indians as properly the care of the Federal Government, and in
1870, they were placed under military rule.
108 A bill empowering
the Secretary of the Interior to remove the Alabamas and Coshattis
to some place among the Creeks in the Indian Territory was intro-
duced in Congress in 1873 and lost.
109
The war impoverished the Alabamas to some extent, but the
census of 1880 shows them in a prosperous state again.
110 Their
chief at this time was John Scott, who was one of those who
enlisted in Bullock's company. He served the tribe more than
forty years, dying in 1913, at the advanced age of one hundred and
seven years.
111
The chief force in the advancement and civilization of the
Indians in the last fifty years has been the work of the Presby-
terian missionaries among them. It was largely through the ef-
forts of Dr. Samuel Fisher Tenney that the interest of the church
was aroused and a mission for the Alabamas established and sup-
ported by the East Texas Presbytery.
112 The Reverend Mr.
Thomas Ward White preached the first Protestant sermon to them.
He won their friendship with a Christmas tree laden with gifts
for the whole tribe, contributed by people all over the United
States.
113 In 1881, the Reverend Mr. L. W. Currie and his wife
began their work among the Alabamas. A church with fourteen
Indian members was organized, a rough church building was
erected and a school established. The church was burned by out-
laws, which interrupted the work for some time. After Mr.
Currie's death in the missionary field in Alaska, Mrs. Currie re-
turned to the Alabama village as a missionary teacher, serving
until 1900.
114 In this year Dr. and Mrs. C. W. Chambers began
their ministry, he as pastor and she as teacher of the mission
school, which was then supported partly by the church and partly
as a public school. The Indians now have several good school
buildings, a clinic, and a large and commodious church erected on
the old dance and ball grounds of the village. The home of the
missionaries is just off the reservation. The Indians would not
permit them to build on their land, because, they said, General Sam
Houston had told them never to allow a white person to live on their
land.
115 In later years, however, after their school grew into a
four-teacher school, they have permitted the teachers to live on the
reservation, but in government-owned buildings.
as 1890, they continued to live their simple, primitive life, adher-
ing to the language and customs of their ancestors, and governed
by their own chief and surordinate chiefs. They held their dances
and ceremonials. They worshipped their own gods; Abba Mingo,
the "chief of the sky," was the god of the Alabamas ; the chief god
of the Coshattis was called Emila-hé-Mikoó, "he who never dies. "116
With greater educational facilities, the Indians have begun to dress
like white citizens, to use English names, and almost universally to
speak the English language, although in their homes they continue
to use the Alabama tongue. They have continued to cultivate their
farms. But only about thirty-five per cent of their land can be
classified as agricultural, and this has become exhausted from crude
and unscientific cultivation over a period of fifty or sixty years. 117
They have continued to work for their white neighbors on their
farms, and also in the sawmills and logging camps of the region.
But the supply of merchantable timber has been rapidly decreasing,
and this source of income is being checked; there is little or no
market for their handicrafts,--earthenware, reed baskets, and moss
saddle rugs; and the game in the Big Thicket is becoming scarcer
and scarcer; so the Indian has been facing increasing poverty and
distress with the succeeding years.
As early as 1896, Mr. J. C. Feagin and other citizens of Liv-
ingston undertook to interest congress in behalf of the Polk county
Indians.
118 The United States had been liberal with other tribes,
and it was thought something might be done for the Alabamas and
Coshattis. The solution first proposed was for the tribes to secure
allotments on the public domain under the law of 1887, or for them
to avail themselves of the privileges of the Homestead Act of 1884,
extending the benefits of the law to persons of Indian blood.
119
But the Indians were unwilling to leave their own land. In 1910,
and again in 1918, the Department of the Interior made an investi-
gation into the condition of the Alabamas and Coshattis of Texas
with the same result in each case; viz., that their greatest needs
were more land and vocational education to enable them to make a
living.
120 In 1910, the department hesitated to recommend the
purchase of land for fear it would prove an entering wedge for
similar appropriations for other tribes. However, the department
did recommend an appropriation for additional facilities in agri-
culture and other pursuits
121 Congress did nothing for these
Indians in 1910. In 1918, the Secretary of the Interior recom-
mended an appropriation of $100,000 for the purchase of land,
and an additional appropriation of $25,000 for the purchase of
livestock and agricultural equipment.
122 But congress went only
so far as to appropriate $5,000 for the education of the Alabamas
and Coshattis, this money to be used for the construction of a
school building, including equipment, upon land belonging to the
Indians. There was also an additional annual appropriation of
$2,000 to be expended for educational purposes under the direction
of the Secretary of the Interior.
123
Ten years later, in 1928, the "United States purchased 3071 acres
of land in Polk county adjoining their original reserve to be held
in trust for the Alabama Indians of Texas. The purchase price
was $29,000.
124 A state highway runs through the entire tract, and
it is crossed by three streams. About two-thirds of the land is
covered with timber, and the remaining third is available for cul-
tivation. The grantees retained perpetual royalty rights in oil,
gas, and sulphur.
125
The Indians are subject to state and county laws, but they have
never been regarded as citizens of the state, nor have they been
called upon to exercise any of the duties incident to citizenship.
By Federal statute of 1887, they became citizens of the United
States.
126 During the World War about one-half of the adult male
members of the tribes volunteered for service, but they were not
accepted because they were Indians.
127 The state has erected better
dwellings for them, has given them seed and livestock, has provided
medical attention for them, and has appointed a full-time agent to
look after their interests.
128 The Indians receive aid under the
Smith-Hughes act, and in 1927, by special act the state granted
them rural aid.
129 Under a cooperative agreement between the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the State Board of Control,
their classroom building is to be enlarged, a new shop building to
be constructed and manual training equipment purchased, and a
light, water, and sewer system to be installed.
130 The census of
1930 gives the number of Indians in Polk county as two hundred
forty-five as against two hundred forty-eight in 1920, and two
hundred two in 1910.
131 Their chief is Charlie Thompson, who is
known as Chief Sun-Kee.
132
Through all the years the Alabamas have maintained their racial
integrity, and since the days they moved westward across the
Mississippi they have been known as peaceful and friendly Indians.
During the century and more that they have lived in East Texas
but few crimes can be laid at their door. As of old, they raise
corn, peas, potatoes, peanuts, a little cotton, and they have peach
trees in their village; they also raise cattle and hogs and a few
ponies. But now an agricultural supervisor teaches them the
proper cultivation of the soil and the care of their livestock.
There is the busy hum of the schoolroom where once were the
ancient ball plays, the dances, the ceremonials. In 1911, the
Indian children were accounted the best writers and singers among
the school children of the county.
133 The boys have a champion
basket ball team. The girls of the domestic science class prepare
each day a well-balanced luncheon for all the children of the school.
A young woman of the tribe is now one of the teachers of the
Indian school. It is a far cry from Tamath-le-Mingo, "decorated
as a great chief with a medal bestowed by the King," leading his
people down the river to Mobile, to Charlie Thompson, Chief Sun-
Kee, ruling a small remnant of his tribe in the Indian village near
the Big Thicket in Polk county, Texas.
FOOTNOTES:
Mexico, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1907-10, I, 719-20.
Soto in the Conquest of Florida, New York, 1922, II, 24.
and Mississippi; from the Earliest Period, in Owen, Thomas McAdory,
Annals of Alabama, 1819-1900, Birmingham, 1900, 44-5.
Soto in the Conquest of Florida, I, 108-10.
Hernando de Soto, Gobernador y Capitan General, del Reino de la Florida.
Y de Otros Heroicos Caballeros Españoles, e Indios, Madrid, 1723, 173.
Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 73, 201-2.
Jackson, 1927, 260-3.
ville, 1911, 81-2; Rowland and Sanders, eds., Mississippi Provincial
Archives, 1729-40, I, 193; Martin, F. X., The History of Louisiana from
the Earliest Period, New Orleans, 1882, 104-18; Hamilton, Peter J.,
Colonial Mobile, Boston, 1897, 38-9, 43-4, 49-51, 59-61; Colonial Records
of North Carolina, Raleigh, 1886-90, II, 422.
eral Description of New France, translated and edited with notes by Dr.
John Gilmary Shea, New York, 1900, VI, 25, 39n.
II, 588; Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 162-4.
Johnson City, Tenn., 1930, 267.
eds., Mississippi Provincial Archives, 1729-40, II, 358.
Provincial Archives, 1729-40, I, 12.
tenant une Collection de Lettres écrites sur les lieux, par l'Auteur, á son
Ami, M. Douin, Chevalier, Capitaine dans les Troupes du Roi, cidevant
son Camarade dans le Nouveau Monde, Amsterdam, 1777, 134, 139.
of American Ethnology, Bulletin 88, 120; Report of John Sibley to General
H. Dearborn, April 5, 1805, in American State Papers, Indian Affairs,
IV, 724.
Dunbar, ed., Official Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-16, Jackson,
1917, 237-9.
East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of
the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Choctaws,
Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of those
Regions together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians, Dublin,
1793, 427.
Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-16, 237-9.
Indians North of Mexico, I, 362-3; Report of John Sibley in American
State Papers, Indian Affairs, IV, 724.
on Indian Affairs, Comprising a Narrative of a Tour Performed in the
Summer of 1820, under a Commission from the President of the United
States, for the Purpose of Ascertaining,—for the Use of the Government,
the Actual State of the Indian Tribes in our Country, New Haven, 1822,
257.
724.
John Sibley, New York, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation,
1922, 5-9.
724.
Claiborne, 1801-16, 183-4.
Sibley, August 9, 1808; Claiborne to Jefferson, October 5, 1808; in Official
Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801-16, 185-7, 237-9, 188-9, 222-4.
western Historical Quarterly, XVII, 154-69.
of the Province of Texas" in Bexar Archives, University of Texas Library.
ed., A Comprehensive History of Texas, 1685-1897; Dallas, 1898, I, 717-83;
Brown, John Henry, History of Texas from 1685 to 1892; St. Louis, I, 57.
Texas; undated manuscript in Bexar Archives, University of Texas.
30, 1826, in Barker, E. C., ed., The Austin Papers in Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for 1919; Washington, Government Print-
ing Office, 1924-8, II, 800, 1315-6.
Srio. de Relaciones Ints. y Exteriores, July 4, 1831. Fomento Archivo,
Legajo no. 4, Exp. núm. 10, Transcripts, Texas State Library.
Geographical and Descriptive in a Series of Letters; Baltimore, 1833, 97-8.
J. R. Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors, Bureau of
American Ethnology, Bulletin 73, 203.
Confederacy in Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
1924-5, 546.
the Province of Texas, translated by Hatcher, M. A., in Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, XXIII, 50.
sentatives, 70 Cong., 1 Sess., in H. R. 5479, 10.
hensive History of Texas, 1685-1897, I, 731.
6 Legislature, Adj. Sess., 331-2; also Lesesne, S. M., Tribe of Indians living
in Eastern Part of Texas in Dallas News, February 26, 1911.
Bowles, October 20, 1838, in Gulick and Elliott, eds., The Papers of
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Austin, II, 255.
Indian Papers, Texas State Library.
1839-40, Austin, I, 11-2.
Papers, Texas State Library.
Library.
Library.
Papers, Texas State Library.
19, File 1, Archives, State Department.
Library.
Council Called for the Purpose of Establishing a Nominal Line until a
Treaty Could Be Made with the Comanches, May 13, 1844, both in MS.,
Indian Papers, Texas State Library; also Rusk to Bowles, August 28,
1838, in Gulick and Elliott, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte
Lamar, II, 211.
Papers, Texas State Library.
Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, III, 16-7.
Indian Papers, Texas State Library; also Lamar to "The Citizens of
Liberty County Residing near the Cushatta Towns and Villages," July 9,
1839, in Gulick and Elliott, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte
Lamar, III, 39-40.
Account of the Early Settlements, Hardships, Massacres, Battles, and Wars,
by which Texas was Rescued from the Rule of the Savage and Consecrated
to the Empire of Civilization, San Antonio, 1884, 17-22.
MS., Indian Papers, Texas State Library.
1842; Jesse Billingsley, Jr., to Anson Jones, May 1, and June 5, 1842;
affidavit of Holland Coffee, May 6, 1842; statement of J. G. Jowett, May 7,
1842; deposition of Mark R. Roberts, May 7, 1842; Dr. Rowlett's affidavit,
May 13, 1842, Edward H. Tarrant's affidavit, May 13, 1842, all in MS.
Indian Papers, Texas State Library; also Sowell, Rangers and Pioneers of
Texas, 17-22.
19, File 1, Archives, State Department.