The Coushatta People

Koasati is the only native language in Louisiana still spoken as a first language, though fewer people use it each year. The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana teaches it in immersion classes, summer camps and a preschool, and a documentation project begun in 2007 has digitized more than 16,000 pages of manuscripts. Tribal weavers work river cane and coiled longleaf pine needles, and pine-needle effigy baskets are prized by museums and collectors. In 1965 community members opened a trading post to sell baskets as the Coushatta Indians of Allen Parish, eight years before federal recognition returned in 1973.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Coushatta Powwow and Koasati Heritage Day — 1.8 mi
  The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana's annual powwow and its free Koasati Heritage Day, held at the tribe's resort in Kinder.
• Louisiana Oil and Gas Park — 21 mi
  The roadside park at Jennings where Louisiana's oil industry began in 1901, with a replica derrick, a pioneers' plaque and Gator Chateau.
• Prairie Acadian Cultural Center — 24 mi
  A National Park Service center in Eunice on the Cajun prairie, with exhibits on the Acadians who settled the prairies, a Courir de Mardi Gras display, free music and cooking demonstrations, and the shuttered Liberty Theatre nearby.
• Sam Houston Jones State Park — 30 mi
  A 1,087-acre park on the West Fork of the Calcasieu with longleaf pine, cypress-tupelo swamp, five trails, cabins and kayak rentals.

More markers nearby

• St. Paul Baptist Church — 1.9 mi
• Great Louisiana Maneuvers' Blue Army Headquarters — 2.8 mi
• Kinder, Louisiana — 2.9 mi
• Elton Bible Conference — 8.3 mi