Coushatta

The Coushatta (also Koasati in their own language) are a historic Muskogean-speaking Native American people living primarily in the U.S. state of Louisiana. When first encountered by Europeans, they lived in the territory of present-day Georgia and Alabama. Under pressure from Anglo-American colonial settlement, after 1763 and the French defeat in the Seven Years War, they began to move west into Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, then under Spanish rule, where they were resettled by the early nineteenth century. Some of the Coushatta and closely allied Alabama were removed west to Oklahoma in the 1830s under Indian Removal, together with other Muscogee peoples.

Today there are three federally recognized tribal governments and centers of population: the largest is the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana on 685 acres (2.77 km2) of reservation land in Allen Parish. This is just north of the town of Elton, Louisiana. The new Leatherwood Museum in Oakdale, the largest community in Allen Parish, features an exhibit on the Coushatta.

Other federally recognized Coushatta tribes are the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, with a reservation near Livingston, Texas; and the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town in Wetumka, Oklahoma.