Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana

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The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is a federally recognized Native American Tribe. The Coushatta people live primarily in Louisiana, with most living in Allen Parish, just north of the town of Elton, Louisiana, and east of Kinder, Louisiana.

Official Tribal Name: Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana

Address:  P.O. Box 818, Elton, LA  70532
Phone: (337) 584-1401
Email: Contact Form

Official Website: www.coushattatribela.org/ 

Recognition Status: Federally Recognized

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Common Name / Meaning of Common Name: Louisiana Coushatta

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Region: Southeast

State(s) Today: Louisiana

Traditional Territory:

The Coushatta people have called the piney woods of Southwest Louisiana home for more than a century After the Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto encountered a Coushatta community on a Tennessee River island in 1540, the Coushattas relocated, beginning a long series of moves aimed at avoiding European encroachment.

By the 1700s, the Coushattas had resettled near the convergence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers in Alabama and had become part of the powerful Creek Confederacy. Despite this association, the Coushatta maintained their own culture and language and, throughout the eighteenth century, tribal leaders played an increasingly important role in Creek politics.  

In 1797, the influential Coushatta chief Stilapihkachatta, or “Red Shoes,” led a group of 400 followers to Spanish Louisiana and, in the spring of 1804, another group of 450 Coushattas joined them in the territory. Over the next several decades, the Coushattas moved their villages from place to place, crossing the Red,

Sabine, and Trinity Rivers, in an effort to remain in neutral areas between French, Spanish, American, and Mexican territories. In the 1880s, a group of approximately 300 Coushattas settled at Bayou Blue north of Elton, Louisiana, where they remain today. 

Confederacy: Creek Confederacy

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Reservation: Coushatta Reservation
Land Area:  The Coushatta Tribe now owns roughly 5,000 acres of land in Allen Parish and more 1,000 acres in surrounding parishes.
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Registered Population Today: Approximately 910 members. 

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Black Creeks adopted through the Dawes Commission between 1898 and 1916

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Language Dialects: Koasati 

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Bands, Gens, and Clans

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A small number of Coushatta share a reservation near Livingston, Texas with the members of the Alabama Tribe. Collectively, they are known as the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe. 

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Art & Crafts: Known for long leaf pine needle basketry. 

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The Coushatta were traditionally agriculturalists, growing maize and other food crops, and supplementing their diet by hunting game and harvesting wild rice and crawfish. 

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Burial customs practiced by Creek Freedmen

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