Coushatta Trace: A Song History
"Coushatta Trace" is one of sixteen original duets for mountain dulcimer and Native American flute in DulciFlute, a book by John and Karen Keane published by Fingers Of Steel, which gives the flute part in notation and the dulcimer part as chords and includes the authors' recording of every tune.[1] The listing does not say which of the two composed this one.[1] The Keanes, from Shreveport, Louisiana, both hold degrees in music education and have published a number of books and recordings of their own tunes for those two instruments.[2][3]
Willem Pietersz Buytewech, The Road at the Edge of the Forest, from Verscheyden Landtschapjes (Various Little Landscapes), Plate 4, etching, ca. 1616–17. A Dutch road rather than a Texas trail, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.
The Handbook of Texas describes a historic Coushatta Trace: after a first group of Coushatta moved to Louisiana around 1766 and later founded a village on the Sabine River, they opened a trail running southwest across Texas, little more than a horseback path, which served their hunting and trading.[4] Settlers bound for Stephen F. Austin's colony, pack-mule trains hauling merchandise from Louisiana to Mexico, and Sam Houston, who took its Brazos crossing on his 1836 retreat, all traveled it, and in the 1990s a few sections were still in use, among them a paved ten-mile stretch of Farm Road 350 west of Moscow in Polk County, Texas.[4]
The Coushatta, called Koasati in their own language, also have a present-day home in Louisiana: the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, at Bayou Blue near Elton, regained federal recognition in 1973 and is the only tribe in the state that has kept its native language as a first language in its community, though the encyclopedia notes that use of Koasati is declining despite revitalization work.[5] The sources consulted here do not say whether the tune refers to the historic trace, to the Coushatta people, or to anything else.[1][2][3]
Sources
- Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane And Karen Keane, DulciFlute".
- DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
- DulcimerDownloads: "Karen Keane".
- Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: "Coushatta Trace".
- 64 Parishes: "Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana".
- Image: Willem Pietersz Buytewech, The Road at the Edge of the Forest, from Verscheyden Landtschapjes (Various Little Landscapes), Plate 4, etching, ca. 1616–17. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.