Koasati and “All the Olden Talk”: Ideologies of Linguistic Conservatism and the Mediation of Linguistic Authority

All living languages change over time, and that seemingly simple linguistic fact of life complicates the role of ethnohistorical methods in contemporary linguistic research focused on language documentation and revitalization. For the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana’s Koasati Language Committee, the differences between members’ own linguistic knowledge and the language recorded by their ancestors present a series of choices when curating historical materials that include content in their indigenous Muskogean language, Koasati. When faced with distinct ways of using Koasati, each of which is “correct” in its own context, how do members of the Language Committee reconcile competing interpretations of grammatical correctness? In such circumstances, Koasati speakers and learners must prioritize various ideologies of linguistic authority—the socially sanctioned power to determine the correctness or appropriateness of language use—in order to ensure acceptance of the results of their revitalization efforts. Investigating how speakers of Koasati interact with legacy linguistic data offers one way to reflect on how speakers organize their assessment of language change and the role of ethnohistory in language documentation and revitalization efforts.¹ To that end, this article discusses the comparison of Koasati as recorded by Mary Haas in the 1930s to Koasati as used today and then explores what the process of historical linguistic comparison reveals about ideologies of linguistic conservatism, consensus, and authority at Coushatta.

The coushatta tribe of louisiana

The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is a federally recognized American Indian nation with approximately nine hundred enrolled members as of 2013. The earliest historical records of the contemporary tribe’s ancestors come from the Hernando de Soto entrada, which encountered the Coushatta tribe in 1540 at the town of Coste, on an island in the Tennessee River in the eastern part of present-day Tennessee.² Archaeologist Ned Jenkins argues that the simple chiefdom at Coste, closely associated with the Coosa paramount chiefdom in the fourteenth century, budded from the Moundville Variant in eastern Tennessee sometime between 1050 and 1100 ce.³ Evidence from historical linguistics supports this claim, including a Moundville-era association with the Alabama ancestors, a relationship maintained by contemporary Coushattas culturally and linguistically.⁴ Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Coosa waned in strength, Coushatta ancestors suffered smallpox and continuing ramifications of colonialism. By the end of the seventeenth century, Coushatta ancestors had recoalesced with Alabama ancestors on the upper Alabama River.⁵

Coushatta and Alabama responses to increasing English presence throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included generally westward migrations and political affiliations, including with the Creek Confederacy. The late eighteenth century saw Alabama and Coushatta settlement in several locations in Texas and Louisiana. The Louisiana Coushattas had settled on the Calcasieu River at the Indian Village site by 1850. In 1884 a combined group of Coushattas, Choctaws, and Muskogee Creeks moved to homestead land north of Elton, Louisiana.⁶ The Coushatta Tribe’s relationship with the federal government was formally established in 1898, with 160 tribal acres placed in trust with the federal government by community member Sissy Robinson.⁷ The Bureau of Indian Affairs nominally assumed responsibility at that time for the tribe’s education and health care but discontinued services and effectively if not legally terminated the tribe in 1953.⁸ After two decades of fighting to regain federal services, the Coushatta Nation was rerecognized in 1973. The next three decades would bring expanding land rights, a democratically elected tribal government, agricultural programs to promote economic independence, and tax-exempt status.⁹

The contemporary Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is geographically centered in Elton and Kinder, Louisiana. The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana’s reservation is located approximately four miles north of Elton and just over ten miles northeast of Kinder, Louisiana, where the Coushatta Casino Resort is located. The majority of tribal members living in Louisiana live in or near one of these two towns. Though there are Coushatta relatives and Koasati speakers living in a wide variety of places (including Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma), for the most part they maintain a close relationship with the Elton Coushatta...