Confederate Service of Alabama and Coushatta Indians
Livingston, Polk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Alabama and Coushatta Indians of Polk County were trained as cavalrymen in 1861 by Indian Agent Robert R. Neyland as the war between the states advanced. In April 1862, nineteen Alabama and Coushatta, including Chief John Scott, enlisted in the Confederate Army as members of Company G, 24th Texas Cavalry. They trained in Hempstead, Texas, and in Arkansas, where their commander, General Thomas C. Hindman, converted them to infantrymen. After voicing displeasure with the change from cavalry to infantry duties, they were permitted to return to their Polk County homes to await further orders. Following brief service in the Confederate Navy under Galveston Bay Commander W. W. Hunter, they were reorganized as a cavalry company in the 6th Brigade, 2nd Texas Infantry Division. In 1864 the company roster listed 132 men. Their primary job was to build and operate flat-bottomed boats (scows) to transport farm produce and other supplies needed by the confederacy down the Trinity River to the port at Liberty, Texas. Official correspondence of wartime Texas Governors Francis R. Lubbock and Pendleton Murrah refer to the Alabama and Coushatta Indians' loyalty in their role as Confederate infantry, cavalry, and navy servicemen.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As the Civil War opened in 1861, an Indian agent trained Alabama and Coushatta men of Polk County as cavalry, and in 1862 nineteen of them, including Chief John Scott, enlisted in the 24th Texas Cavalry. Reassigned as infantry and then briefly to naval duty, the company eventually numbered well over a hundred and spent much of the war building and running flat-bottomed scows to move Confederate supplies down the Trinity River. Wartime governors' correspondence recorded their service.
Why it matters
Their story complicates the Civil War narrative, showing Native Texans navigating loyalty, coercion, and survival within the Confederacy's ranks.
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Related people
- · Robert R. Neyland
- · John Scott
- · Thomas C. Hindman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Chief John Scott
Livingston, TX
Reputed to have lived from 1805 to 1913, John Scott came to Texas in the 1830s and served most of his long life as a chief of the Alabama Indians in Polk County. He also served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. His story bridges the tribe's presence in Texas from the era of early Anglo settlement into the twentieth century.
Polk County, C. S. A.
Livingston, TX
During the Civil War, Polk County was a stretch of piney woods, farms, and thickets that included an Alabama-Coushatta reservation. Though it counted only 600 voters in 1860, it sent some 900 soldiers into the Confederate Army, furnishing four companies to Hood's famed Texas Brigade and organizing several other infantry units; twenty-one Alabama-Coushattas enlisted in an Indian cavalry company. On the home front, old men, women, children, and enslaved people raised food and cotton, while the county's ferries and river landings moved troops and supplies until Livingston became headquarters for the federal Army of Occupation in 1867-68.
Village of the Alabama and Coushatti Indians
Livingston, TX
This marker commemorates the village of the Alabama and Coushatta peoples, related tribes who migrated into East Texas early in the nineteenth century. Displaced from their southeastern homelands, they settled in the pineywoods around present-day Polk County and maintained peaceful relations with the newcomers around them. Their descendants remain on a reservation in this area today, one of the oldest in Texas.
Captain Isaac Newton Moreland Turner, C. S. A.
Livingston, TX
Born in Georgia in 1839 and raised on a family with Texas plantation holdings, Isaac Newton "Ike" Turner mustered eighty Polk County volunteers at the Livingston courthouse in September 1861 and was elected their captain. He led them east as Company K of the 5th Texas Infantry in Hood's famed Texas Brigade, fighting through some sixteen battles—the youngest company commander in the brigade—before a mortal wound near Suffolk, Virginia, ended his life at twenty-four. First buried in Georgia, his remains were brought home to Texas in 1994 to rest among his family.