swaktoh] EARLY HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIANS 205 
there who can speak the language. Some of these still remember 
that a part wont to Texas. 
Stiggins's account above given of the Koasati migration to Lou- 
isiana and Texas seems to be considerably abbreviated. There 
were probably several distinct movements, or at least the tribe 
split into several distinct bands from time to time. It is very likely 
that, as in the case of so many other tribes, the Koasati first settled 
on Red River, but that part of them soon left it. Sibley's account 
of their movements in Louisiana is more detailed than that of Stig- 
gins. He says: 
Conchattas are almost the same people as the Allibamis, hut came over only ten 
years ago; first lived on Bayau Chico, in Appelousa district, but, four years ago, 
moved to the river Sabine, settled themselves on the east hank, where they now 
live, in nearly a south direction from Natcbitoch, and distant about eighty miles. 
They call their number of men one hundred and ai^ty, but say, if they were alto- 
get her, they would amount to two hundred. Several families of them live in detached 
settlements. They are good hunters, and game is plenty about where they are. A 
few days ago, a small party of them were here, 1 consisting of fifteen persons, men, 
women, and children, who were on their return from a bear hunt up Sabine. They 
told me they had killed one hundred and eighteen; but this year an uncommon 
number of bears have come down. One man alone, on Sabine, during the Summer 
and Fall, hunting, killed four hundred deer, sold his skins at forty dollars a hundred. 
The bears, this year, are not so fat as common; they usually yield from eight to twelve 
gallons of oil, each of which never sells for less than a dollar a gallon, and the skin a 
dollar more; no great quantity of the meat is saved; what the hunters don't use 
when out, they generally give to their dogs. The Conchattas are friendly with all 
other Indians, and speak well of their neighbors the Carankouas, who, they say, live 
about eighty miles south of them, on the bay, which I believe, is the nearest point 
to the sea from Natchitoches. A few families of Chactaws have lately settled near them 
from Bayau Beauf. The Conchattas speak Creek, which is their native language, 
and Chactaw, and several of them English, and one or two of them can read it a little. 2 
They may have been on Red River previous to their settlement 
on Bayou Chicot. Schermerhorn 3 states that in 1812 the Koasati 
on the Sabine numbered 600, but most of these must have left before 
1822, because Morse in his report of that year estimates 50 Koasati 
on the Neches River in Texas and 240 on the Trinity, while 350 are 
set down as living on the Red River in Louisiana. 4 These last are 
elsewhere referred to as a band which had obtained permission 
from the Caddo to locate near them. Whether they were part of the 
original settlers from lower down the river or had moved over from 
the Sabine is not apparent. By 1850 most of these had gone to 
Texas, where Bollaert estimated that the number of their warriors 
then on the lower Trinity was 500 in two villages called Colete and 
Batista.'' All of the Koasati did not leave Louisiana at that time, 
' He is writing from the post of Xatchitoches. 
* Sibley in Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2d sess., 1085-86 (1806-7). 
Hist. Soc. foils., 2d scr., n, p. 26, 18H. 
4 Morse, Rept. to Sec. of War, p. .i7:i. 
'Bollaert, in Jour. Ethn. Soo. London, n, p. 282. 
