The following paragraphs are a list of the chiefs of the Alabama villages or communities and the chiefs of the Coushatta villages. This merging of the two tribes on the same reservation provided additional evidence to support the use of the hyphenated term “Alabama-Coushatta” in subsequent references to these Indians. Since a grant of land for the Coushattas was never patented, State Agent James Barclay wrote that in 1859 the Coushattas, with the permission of the Alabamas, began moving onto the Alabama’s Polk County reservation. In 1854, the Alabamas received a grant of 1,110.7 acres of land in Polk County for a reservation. Before 1859, Alabamas and Coushattas established and occupied several prominent villages in the present counties of Polk, Tyler, and San Jacinto.
