Texas

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Texas

Texas, northeasternmost of the provinces of New Spain, and later of the Republic of Mexico. The name derives from the Spanish term for some of the Caddoan peoples of east Texas. Permanently occupied in 1716, following French incursions in the area, the province remained sparsely settled until after Mexican independence, when an effort was made to attract Anglo-American and European immigrants. In 1845, after having been a separate republic since 1836, Texas annexed itself to the United States.

The Texas coast was first explored by Alonso Álvarez De Pineda in 1519. Parts of the interior were later traversed by Alvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca and three other survivors of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition (1528–1536), by the Francisco Vázquez de Coronado expedition (1540–1544), and by Luis Moscoso de Alvarado, successor to Hernando de Soto, and his men (1542). Following these unsuccessful expeditions, the region was ignored until the late seventeenth century.

The establishment of a colony on the Texas coast in 1685 by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, brought a brief Spanish occupation of east Texas (1690–1693). Domingo Ramón led a colonizing expedition northward in 1716, following the arrival of a French trader at a Río Grande outpost, and established missions and a presidio near present-day Robeline, Louisiana. Governor Martín de Alarcón led a reinforcing expedition in 1718 and founded the presidio-mission complex that became San Antonio. With the founding of another presidio-mission complex on Matagorda Bay four years later, the three centers of Euro-American settlement in colonial Texas had been established.

Throughout the colonial period, Texas remained an essentially military province. Along with a base from which to guard against the French (and later the Anglo-Americans) in Louisiana, Texas also provided a buffer against Indian penetration of interior New Spain. Aside from military service, the principal economic activities in the province consisted of maize farming and cattle driving. Smuggling seems also to have been important, particularly in east Texas. The province's population on the eve of the Mexican War of Independence totaled approximately 4,500, not including un-Hispanicized Amerindians.

With the adoption of the Mexican constitution of 1824, Texas was united with the neighboring province of Coahuila to form a single state. Anglo-American settlement, which had begun in 1821 under the auspices of Moses Austin, brought thousands of colonists from the United States but only a few from Mexico. Consequently, according to the conservative estimates of Juan N. Almonte, a Mexican government agent, the Texas population stood at 21,000 in 1834, including 15,000 Anglo-Americans, 2,000 slaves, and 4,000 Mexican Texans. Disputes over land distribution, import tariffs, tax exemptions, and future immigration from the United States combined with political upheavals in Mexico to produce an insurrection and a declaration of independence on 2 March 1836.

Soon after its separation from Mexico, Texas laid claim to all land north of the Río Grande from its source to its mouth, territory that had previously been part of the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua, and New Mexico Territory. Mexican refusal to acknowledge Texas's annexation to the United States and its territorial claims resulted in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eugene C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin, Founder of Texas, 1793–1836 (repr. 1969); Carlos E. Castañeda, Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519–1936, 7 vols. (repr. 1976).

Vito Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas desde la consumación de la Independencia hasta el Tratado de Paz de Guadalupe Hidalgo, 2 vols., 2d ed. (1979).

Gerald E. Poyo and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds., Tejano Origins in Eighteenth-Century San Antonio (1991).

Andreas V. Reichstein, Rise of the Lone Star: The Making of Texas (1989).

Donald Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519–1821 (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Cantrell, Gregg, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner. Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007.

Crouch, Barry A. The Dance of Freedom: Texas African Americans during Reconstruction. Edited by Larry Madaras. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Fradin, Dennis Brindell. Texas. Chicago: Childrens Press, 1992.

Frieventh, Benjamín. "Cómo llegamos: Participación hispana en la historia de Houston, Tejas." Semana 6, no. 322 (April 1999): 13.

Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West: A New Interpretive History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

Marquart, James W.; Sheldon Ekland-Olson; and Jonathan R. Sorensen. The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923–1990. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.

JesÚs F. de la Teja

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