Coosha

About this property

Coosha, also commonly known as Coosha Town, is a former settlement of the Choctaw Nation in Lauderdale County, Mississippi. It was a member of the larger community known commonly as the "Coosha towns," which made up part of the Eastern division of the Choctaw Nation in pre-colonial America. The village, which has been abandoned since the mid-nineteenth century, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1978. The name "Coosha" is derived from the Choctaw "Kushak" or "Kusha", meaning "reed" or sometimes "reed-brake" because most of the area around the headwaters of the Chickasawhay River was covered in reed-brake before European settlers arrived. The reeds were so tall that the native Choctaw were able to and often would hide horses stolen from plantations by white thieves, prompting a creek nearby Coosha to be named "Issuba in Kannia bok" (English: "Lost Horse Creek"). The most common English transliteration of the name is probably "Koonsha", but the town's name is sometimes also spelled "Coucha", "Kunshak", "Coonsha", "Conshaques", or "Concha". The National Register Information System, a database of listings on the National Register of Historic Places, uses the spelling "Coosha." Coosha is listed as "Concha" on Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's map of 1732 and Baron de Crenay's map of 1733 and as "Coosha" on Bernard Romans's map of 1775. On the 1820 map "Louisiana and Mississippi" by Henry Schenck Tanner, it is shown as "Koomsha Town." On John R. Swanton's 1931 map included in his book Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians, the town's name is spelled "Kunshak." Though Coosha appears on many early maps, the precise location of the settlement is not well documented. Richelle Putnam states in Lauderdale County, Mississippi: A Brief History (2011) that the site is located near present-day Naval Air Station Meridian, close to Daleville, Mississippi. The Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society in 1902 locates the settlement four miles southeast of "Old Daleville," now known as Lizelia, Mississippi. Both sources claim the settlement was located near Lost Horse Creek, a tributary of Ponta Creek. The settlement extended along a bluff for approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) to 2.5 miles (4.0 km) along Lost Horse Creek. Two prongs of the creek–one from the west and one from the south–join "in the northeast corner of section 30, township 8, range 16, east"; Coosha was located on the north side of the west prong. When the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, it was listed with a restricted address to prevent looters from robbing the site of its archaeological artifacts.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Lauderdale County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Lauderdale County.

More historic places in Mississippi

Browse all historic places in Mississippi.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Mississippi history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.