Selling a Stereotype: The Alabama-Coushatta Tourist Business from the 1960’s to the 1980’s
Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission
During the cultural and social shifts and/or revolutions of the mid to late 1960’s in the United States many Native American tribes used a heightened interest in Native culture to their advantage through the implementation of tourism. The Alabama-Coushatta were one such Native peoples that used tourism as a means of income and therefore as a way to create self-sustainability for their reservation.[1] The Alabama-Coushatta were a people in search of a self-sustainable form of income in the state of Texas which has long held an interesting and at times shaky relationship with the non-native Texan tribes.
A document regarding the history and the then present day life of the Alabama-Coushatta, written in the early 1960’s, ends by saying that “the objective of the State is no longer to merely alleviate suffering and deprivation… but to encourage the Indians to become educated, self sufficient, and financially secure within their own right.” It is the self sufficiency and financial security brought up by this document that Alabama-Coushatta sought to address in establishing a tourist business based around a stereotypical Native culture. With Indian culture set up in the spotlight, the Alabama-Coushatta attempted to use the heightened intrigue into Native life around the nation to create self-sustainability.
This effort to create self sustainability through tourism would eventually create a certain misrepresentation of tribal culture and misconception among White Texans of Alabama-Coushatta culture. However in other examples the Alabama-Coushatta fought to keep their actual cultural identity strong as is exemplified in their efforts against public schools regarding their male children’s hair length.[2] The former examples speak to how the Alabama-Coushatta’s culture or perhaps more accurately a generalized Indian culture was used as a means to create income for the Alabama-Coushatta and as a means to create self-sufficiency for the combined tribes.
This use of culture as a commodity may have led to a furthering of misconceptions of Native culture in an attempt to create income off of the cultural assumptions of Whites towards Natives. What can be seen in viewing the Alabama-Coushatta’s approach to tourism seems to be one more concerned with creating self-sufficiency and separation from governmental aid, rather than any effort to keep their culture alive and in tact by creating awareness. One journalist writing for the Texas Monthly describes the reservation’s efforts in a presented cynical tone and even discusses the commercialization of the Alabama-Coushatta heritage, but in most cases the presented heritage in their tourism was not even their own.[3]
The original efforts to begin their tourist business began in 1965 and as aspirations for the business grew plans for expansion of tourism occurred around the early 1970’s.[4] These aspirations for their tourism project were quite ambitious as laid out in the Alabama-Coushatta’s “Texas Indians Detailed Plans for Final Phase of Tourist Development.”
Their plans included the appropriation of $2.4 million for the final phase of their tourism expansion. Expansion included plans for the building of a “1,600 seat outdoor amphitheater” as well as “an Indian Arts and Crafts Factory,”[5] among several other projects. The hopes for the tourism of the Alabama-Coushatta was high and in one letter the tribe claims that their invigorated tourist “developments will make the Indian Village an economically independent community in 1978.”[6]
These lofty goals may speak to what may have already been a somewhat successful and speak to how successful the Alabama-Coushatta felt their reservation and cultural tourism could be in the state of Texas. However the plans for the cultural tourism of the tribes would prove to be much more difficult than anyone would initially have thought.
The problem or problems facing the Alabama-Coushatta’s goal for successful tourism was that the tribes no longer culturally fit under the traditionally perceived notion of Native Americans as the tomahawk-toting Redman. The Alabama-Coushatta's traditions did not present a stereotypically Indian enough or exotic enough culture that could excite or attract tourists. Two newspaper articles from the Houston Post focusing on the Alabama-Coushatta tourist efforts highlight this issue.[7]
The paper depicts the move to return to their Native culture through tourism as one that is financially beneficial, indicating the success of the two tribes’ business. The article also makes mention of how the Alabama-Coushatta went to outside sources in order to help them appear Native enough, for example the article mentions that the billboard attracting tourists to the reservation depicts the a man in a headdress that is actually an “Apache chief’s headdress.”[8]
This sort of buying in to a stereotype for the sake of tourism is also exemplified in the picture displayed at the top of the web page.[9] The photo shows White tourists in the background staring intently at a dancing Alabama-Coushatta. The picture itself, which was used to promote tourism after attendance had gone down perhaps due to cultural shifts in Native American thought, shows how the Alabama-Coushatta borrowed on a cultural stereotype to create self-sufficiency.
Another article from a Houston paper explores further this Native culture being taught to the Alabama-Coushatta, and the fact that some White people were teaching the Alabama-Coushatta how to partake in Indian culture. This article came out in 1965, so it must not have been a huge secret that the Alabama-Coushatta were going to outside even White sources to learn “traditional” Native ways, this makes one wonder if tourists simply ignored this fact in order to just enjoy Native people acting like the exotic Indians they expected.
The Alabama-Coushatta looked to these outside sources for just about every aspect of their tourist business. Alabama-Coushatta members on the reservations were enrolled in a school, where they could learn how to basket weave using their natural surroundings in the Big Thicket, they were also taught how to make arrow heads and perhaps most intriguing how to dress like Indians.[10] For this last task of Indian training the tribes brought in a graduate student from a New York fashion school to help them recreate Native attire and tribal costumes.[11] These examples of having to be taught how to be Native may speak to the thirst of tourists to see a certain brand of Indian rather than the way of life on poverty stricken Native reservations. Also it shows that even though the Alabama and Coushatta were selling an exotic cultural experience to the tourists they were not truly selling out their culture or their lives to the non-Native tourists.
A string of advertisements were put out for the Alabama-Coushatta’s tourist business which sought to sell the reservation as a mix between a campground and a mystical Indian adventure land. The advertisements were created as a selling point for the reservation’s tourist efforts and must have been speaking to the culture in the United States surrounding popular beliefs about Native American culture. The opening lines of the ads tell people to “be an explorer”[12] of the Big Thicket.
There are also advertisements with the same theme, depicting what seems to be a warrior Native. The advertisements as well as other pictures may either be romanticizing the culture to the level of exotic savage for the tourists’ sake. The advertisements are also shown for the play which the Alabama-Coushatta put on at their amphitheater.
The play is titled “Beyond the Sundown.”[13] Although, the advertisements of the play are along the same tone in depiction of the event, they do speak to an actual event and important aspect of the Alabama-Coushatta history in Texas. However at the end of the advertisement one can still see the call for visitors to become true tourists by purchasing goods from the souvenir shop. Once again it seems the need for financial good and self-sufficiency forced the Alabama-Coushatta to use heritage as a commodity, but the heritage shown was not their own.
They seem to be offering the potential tourist or customer a chance to live a life in the traditional life of the Alabama-Coushatta, but instead they truly offered an adventure that was part actual Alabama-Coushatta and another part the experience tourists want to have when visiting the exotic culture of the Indians. This may make one wonder, were the Alabama-Coushatta “commercializing their heritage,”[14] or were they commercializing a popularly misconceived and accepted belief of the culture of Indians or perhaps more accurately the Redman.
Although the interest in Native American’s and their heritage may be seen as progress, were people simply not willing to see the truth of what had really happened to Native cultures? Certainly going to see what is depicted as a poverty stricken reservation (hence the need for tourism for income) would not attract many people, however did this mean that the Alabama-Coushatta had to necessarily portray the typical Indian to be successful? With their approach it seems so. The Alabama-Coushatta used the predisposed assumption of how a traditional Native should be, as well as the cultures of certain popularly known Native groups in order to help them escape poverty.
Endnotes
[1]To clarify, although the Alabama and the Coushatta are separate tribes, in the case of the Alabama-Coushatta located on a reservation in East Texas the two tribes live and cohabitate as one entity.
[2] Suzanne Gamboa, "Native Americans' Suit Part of Growing Trend," Austin American-Statesman (Austin, TX), January 2, 1994, News, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/.
[3] Stephen Harrigan, "Bury My Heart at the Souvenir Shop: Diplomats to a Fault, the Alabama-Coushatta Indians Have Made Their Peace with the White Man's Culture," Texas Monthly, October 1975, 99.
[4] “Texas Indians Detailed Plans for Final Phase of Tourist Development," news release, July 16, 1973, 1. Texas State Archives. Texas Historical Commission, Marketing Communications Division, Austin, TX.
[5] "Texas Indians Detailed Plans," news release, 2.
[6] Fulton Battise to Truett Latimer, July 9, 1973, Alabama-Coushatta Indians 1990/020-1, Texas State Archives, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, TX.
[7] "Indians Return to Life of Indians; Show Gains," The Houston Post (Houston, TX), November 7, 1973, 5. Texas State Archives, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, TX.
[8] "Indians Return to Life," 5.
[9] Texas Tourist Development Agency 1991 077-4 110 02, photograph, 1991, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[10] Cleveland Grammer, "Palefaces Teaching Indians to Make Baskets: Tribes Taught Old Ways to Wage War on Poverty," The Houston Post (Houston, TX), January 10, 1965, sec. 2, 12. Texas State Archives, Sylestine Papers, Austin, TX.
[11] Grammer, "Palefaces Teaching Indians to Make," sec. 2, 12.
[12] Big Thicket Indian Camping Adventure, illustration, Texas Indian Commission, Texas State Archive, Texas State Library Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[13] Beyond the Sun, illustration, Texas Indian Commission, Texas State Archive, Texas State Library Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[14] Harrigan, "Bury My Heart at the Souvenir," 99.
[2] Suzanne Gamboa, "Native Americans' Suit Part of Growing Trend," Austin American-Statesman (Austin, TX), January 2, 1994, News, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/.
[3] Stephen Harrigan, "Bury My Heart at the Souvenir Shop: Diplomats to a Fault, the Alabama-Coushatta Indians Have Made Their Peace with the White Man's Culture," Texas Monthly, October 1975, 99.
[4] “Texas Indians Detailed Plans for Final Phase of Tourist Development," news release, July 16, 1973, 1. Texas State Archives. Texas Historical Commission, Marketing Communications Division, Austin, TX.
[5] "Texas Indians Detailed Plans," news release, 2.
[6] Fulton Battise to Truett Latimer, July 9, 1973, Alabama-Coushatta Indians 1990/020-1, Texas State Archives, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, TX.
[7] "Indians Return to Life of Indians; Show Gains," The Houston Post (Houston, TX), November 7, 1973, 5. Texas State Archives, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, TX.
[8] "Indians Return to Life," 5.
[9] Texas Tourist Development Agency 1991 077-4 110 02, photograph, 1991, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[10] Cleveland Grammer, "Palefaces Teaching Indians to Make Baskets: Tribes Taught Old Ways to Wage War on Poverty," The Houston Post (Houston, TX), January 10, 1965, sec. 2, 12. Texas State Archives, Sylestine Papers, Austin, TX.
[11] Grammer, "Palefaces Teaching Indians to Make," sec. 2, 12.
[12] Big Thicket Indian Camping Adventure, illustration, Texas Indian Commission, Texas State Archive, Texas State Library Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[13] Beyond the Sun, illustration, Texas Indian Commission, Texas State Archive, Texas State Library Archives Commission, Austin, TX.
[14] Harrigan, "Bury My Heart at the Souvenir," 99.