Sponsored by Texas Senator Robert Nichols, Senate Resolution 139 recognizes February 7, 2023, as Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas Day, in part, formally acknowledging the tribe’s role in the Texas Revolution:
“WHEREAS… the tribes fought on the side of the revolutionaries… members of the tribes served as guides for the Texan army and helped to feed refugees who had fled from Santa Anna’s troops…”
Prior to the Texas Revolution, the Alabama-Coushatta had a long presence in the southeastern United States. According to Journey to the West (2008), the Alabamas likely emerged from the Moundville chiefdom while the Coushattas were part of the more distant Coste chiefdom, both of whose origins can be traced to the Shiloh chiefdom of the western Tennessee Valley.
In the mid-16th century, encounters with European colonizers proved devastating. Spanish conquistadors demanded guides and slaves, threatening to burn any who laid their hands upon a Christian, according to The De Soto Chronicles (1993). Because of this, the chiefdoms of the Alabama and Coushatta dispersed and reorganized on safer grounds. Sometime in the 17th century, the predecessors of the Alabama and Coushatta coalesced near present-day Montgomery, Alabama.
Deteriorating relations with European powers and warring Indigenous tribes led to a second migration of the Alabama-Coushatta from 1764 onward, settling in Spanish Louisiana. Shortly thereafter, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, most of the Alabama-Coushatta moved further west to East Texas in the wake of American expansion.
Mexico immediately recognized the strength of the Alabama-Coushatta and their allies, collectively referred to as the Western Cherokee Union, or simply, the Union. For example, on April 9, 1835, the military commander at Anahuac, Antonio Tenorio, wrote to Martín Perfecto de Cos, military commander of Coahuila y Tejas, stating that maintaining peace with local Indigenous tribes was paramount to the defense of the province, which he felt Mexico was “in imminent danger of losing.”
As a result, Mexican military commanders waived Indigenous land title fees, exempted them from duties, and sent troops to expel Americans from their lands. The Texian rebels, afraid of a potential Mexican-Indigenous alliance, suspended all land grants and surveys in or near Union members’ territory and sent a delegation under General Sam Houston to negotiate a treaty with Union members.
Despite these preventative measures, both sides still courted Indigenous tribes. Mexican officer José Enrique de la Peña recalled a Coushatta warrior guiding their contingent across the Texan frontier in his personal narrative With Santa Anna in Texas (1997). On the Texian side, popular lore in Folktales of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians (1946), tells how people of Chief Colita’s village helped fleeing Texian refugees cross the Trinity River and provided them with food.
After submitting the treaty Houston and John Forbes had drawn up with the Union in February 1836, the Senate declined its ratification. Houston responded bitterly:
They believed in our pledges. They have kept their faith, and now because we have a beating from war, and derive confidence from the imbecility of our enemy, are we to turn round and tell them, we only intended to deceive you by our promises, we are able now to do you injustice, and it is the only reward we have to bestow for your friendship and confidence?
Secretly spurred on by the Mexican government, the betrayal led many tribes of the Union to fight against the Republic of Texas in what became known as the Córdova Rebellion (1838). As in the past, however, the Alabama-Coushatta remained neutral. The insurrection prompted President Mirabeau B. Lamar to label all Indigenous groups traitors and, in his mind, justified a policy of expulsion from Texas. In mid-1839, Chief Colita reflected on the events and promises of previous years:
I have given the White man my Lands—
I have given them bread—and the former Big Captain [Houston] told me that the White man should be my Friends…. if your Big Captain [Lamar] 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—"
The Alabama-Coushatta story reflects a long tradition of strategic diplomacy, befriending colonial and national powers when necessary but retaining a commitment to their sovereignty, identity, and peace even amid repeated betrayals.
