The Coushatta originally lived along the Tennessee River in Georgia and Alabama, but after a difficult era that began with Hernando de Soto's 1540 attack on a Coushatta village, bands moved into Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana to avoid Europeans and war. Beginning in the late 1700s, a group led by Stilapihkachatta, or Red Shoes, migrated westward to Louisiana and settled near the Red River in 1797, later moving through eastern Texas and western Louisiana to avoid conflict with encroaching Americans. By 1861 at least 250 Coushatta had migrated to the Calcasieu River, and in the 1880s about 300 settled at Bayou Blue, where they preserved traditional arts and crafts and their ancestral language. Most now live in Allen Parish on land purchased in the 1880s, and the people have remained an intact and culturally unique group. Settling along fertile rivers, they grew maize, peas, beans, squash, pumpkins, melons, potatoes, and rice, while also hunting and fishing, and farming formed the cornerstone of their communities. Their towns were organized within a tribal structure led by chiefs chosen for speaking skills, with a micco selecting town and warrior chiefs, and lands divided into white towns that kept peace and provided refuge and red towns that conducted military campaigns. Although they had red and white towns, they saw themselves as peace-loving people and were regarded by Europeans and other Indian groups as peacemakers who negotiated treaties between the Choctaw and the Chickasaw and between the Choctaw and the French. Coushatta society was also organized into clans, once as many as ten and today seven animal clans: Bobcat, Deer, Panther, Beaver, Daddy Long Legs, Bear, and Turkey. In the borderlands of Spanish Louisiana and Texas, Spain encouraged Indian settlement as a buffer against American expansion, and when the boundary between the United States and Spain became disputed after the Louisiana Purchase, the Coushatta moved into the neutral strip between the Sabine and Calcasieu rivers, where they survived through traditional agriculture and hunting. Their pine needle basket weaving, made from Louisiana longleaf pine, reflects a close relationship with the environment and remains a labor-intensive traditional craft valued for use, trade, and cultural identity. The Coushatta have also worked to preserve the Koasati language through classes, a dictionary, books by tribal members, and traditional stories, including tales of Rabbit the trickster and the earth-diver story in which Sakcho the crawfish brings up mud to form the earth and Talokko Choba the eagle shapes rivers, valleys, hills, mountains, and plains. In 1973 the federal government formally re-recognized the Coushatta Tribe as a sovereign nation after illegally terminating services in 1953, and afterward the Tribe invested in enterprises to support tribal government and employment, including the Coushatta Casino Resort, which opened in 1995 and became the second largest private employer in Louisiana, along with smaller businesses and health, educational, social, and cultural programs. According to some tribal stories, the name Coushatta came from koashatt or koasati, meaning lost or away from home, a misunderstanding that arose when migrants seeking a new homeland were asked who they were.