204 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
Sibley would place this event about 1795, ' and this agrees well witli 
Hawkins's statement that they had left shortly before his time. 
Stiggins is still more specific. He says: 
About the year seventeen hundred and ninety-three there was an old Cowassada 
chieftain that was called Red Shoes, who was violently opposed to their makeing war 
on the Chickasaws, and as it was determined on contrary to his will he resolved to quit 
the nation, so he and a mulatto man who resided with the Alabamas named Billy 
Ashe headed a party of about twenty families, part Cowasadas and the rest Alabamas, 
and removed to the Red River and tried a settlement about sixty miles up from its 
mouth, but on trial they were so annoyed and infested by a small red ant that were so 
very numerous in that country, that they found it hardly possible to put any thing 
beyond their reach or destruction, so after living there a few years they removed 
finally from thence to the province of Texas, on the river Trinity, a few miles from 
the mouth of said river, where they now live. 2 
Hawkins thus describes the town occupied by those of the tribe 
who remained in their old territory as it existed in 1799: 
Coo-sau-dee is a compact little town situated three miles below the confluence of 
Coosau and Tallapoosa, on the right bank of Alabama; they have fields on both sides 
of the river; but their chief dependence is a high, rich island, at the mouth of Coosau. 
They have some fences, good against cattle only, and some families have small patches 
fenced, near the town, for potatoes. 
These Indians are not Creeks, although they conform to their ceremonies; the men 
work with the women and make great plenty of corn; all labor is done by the joint 
labor of all, called public work, except gathering in the crop. During the season 
for labor, none are exempted from their share of it, or suffered to go out hunting. 
There is a rich flat of land nearly five miles in width, opposite the town, on the 
left side of the river, on which are numbers of conic mounds of earth. Back of the 
town it is pine barren, and continues so westward for sixty to one hundred miles. 
The Coo-sau-dee generally go to market :i by water, and some of them are good oars- 
men. A part of this town moved lately beyond the Mississippi, and have settled 
there. The description sent back by them that the country is rich and healthy, and 
abounds in game, is likely to draw others after them. But as they have all tasted 
the sweets of civil life, in having a convenient market for their products, it is likely 
they will soon return to their old settlements, which are in a very desirable country 
well suited to the raising of cattle, hogs and horses; they have a few hogs, and seventy 
or eighty cattle, and some horses. It is not more than three years since they had not 
a hog among them. Robert Walton, 4 who was then the trader of the town, gave the 
women some pigs, and this is the origin of their stock. 5 
In 1832 eighty-two Koasati were enumerated in the old nation. 6 
After their emigration west of the Mississippi they formed two 
towns— Koasati No. 1 and Koasati No. 2. But few now remain 
i See p. 205. 
» Stiggins, MS. 
3 The Lib. of Cong. MS. has " to Mobile " inserted here. 
* He was trader there in 1797 when Hawkins describes him as "an active man, more attentive to his 
character now than heretofore." (Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., ix, p. 169.) He also gives the names of two other 
traders, " Francis Tuzant, an idle Frenchman in debt to Mr. Panton and to the factory," and " John McLeod 
of bad character." (Ibid.) 
<> Oa. Hist. Soc. Colls., in, pp. 35-36. 
Senate Doc. 512, 23d Cong., 1st sess., iv, p. 267. 
