The Yowani were a historical group of Choctaw people who lived in Texas.Yowani was also the name of a preremoval Choctaw village. When this area became part of the United States under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, many of the resident Indian tribes wanted to emigrate to less hostile environs. Spain agreed to allow the Yowani and the Alabama-Coushatta to move to Spanish Texas. In 1824, after Mexico gained independence, a second group of Yowani received permission to establish villages in Texas. The Yowani gradually abandoned their original Mississippi homelands. By 1850 most Yowani had moved west and lived within the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory near present-day Ardmore and Marlow, Oklahoma, and in Rusk and Smith counties in east Texas, as a part of the Mount Tabor Indian Communit