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by: Gene Koprowski.
Tribal council chairman Carlos Bullock is working with the Tigua tribe of El Paso to get an Indian casino bill passed when lawmakers convene a few weeks from now.

Alabama-Coushatta Indian Tribe elders want the Texas Legislature to help them relaunch a shuttered casino.

Casinos operated by both tribes were closed in 2002 by court orders sought by then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn.

Bullock believes that in the end the casinos will be successful, and he says it will be "easy."
Both tribes have hired prominent Austin lobbyists and consultants.

Baptist and social conservative activists are concerned about the new casino.

The Kickapoo tribe in Eagle Pass is the only one of the three Texas tribes operating a limited casino. It is governed by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act - not the more restrictive Restoration Act that applies to the Alabama-Coushatta and Tiguas.

A tourist train once lured visitors and their dollars to the Alabama-Coushatta reservation in Texas -- but today sits idle in its tunnel. A once-grand outdoor amphitheater is falling asunder. All that will change if the government legalizes the opening of the new casino.

These two tribes that combined to live together, the Alabama tribe and the Coushatta tribe, are not originally from Texas. Both are from the Southeast -- Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. The Alabama are one tribe from Alabama and the Coushatta are another. Both were forced to move to Texas. The Alabama are a subtribe of the Creek Indian tribe, so anything you can find on the Creeks will be useful to you. The Creeks were, and still are, a large and important tribe. The Creek tribe was formed from the survivors of the many mound building tribes who lived in the Southeast U.S. The Creek Indians are one of the five "civilized tribes" from the Southeast who now live in Oklahoma.

The record of the first contact with the Alabama comes from the De Soto expedition in 1641.


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