History of Texas
The history of Texas is rich and complex, reflecting a tapestry of cultural influences and significant events. Initially inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years, the region underwent exploration and colonization by European powers, notably Spain and France. Texas is uniquely characterized by having been governed under six different flags, including those of Spain, Mexico, and the United States, which highlights its shifting sovereignty over the centuries. The state gained independence from Mexico in 1836 and was later annexed by the United States in 1845, becoming a key player in the contentious issues surrounding slavery and the Civil War.
Economically, Texas has evolved from an agrarian society, heavily reliant on cotton and enslaved labor, to a powerhouse in oil production following the discovery of extensive oil reserves in the early 20th century. This oil boom fueled significant population growth and industrial development, particularly in manufacturing and transportation. Today, Texas boasts a diverse population that reflects its multicultural heritage, with a notable Hispanic community alongside Anglo-American and other ethnic groups. The state's political landscape is marked by a blend of conservatism and populism, making it a focal point for national political attention. Overall, the history of Texas offers insights into its social, economic, and cultural evolution, making it a fascinating subject for further exploration.
History of Texas
History of Texas
Until Alaska was admitted as the forty-ninth state in 1959, Texas was the largest of the United States and still is the largest of the contiguous forty-eight states, occupying one-twelfth of the entire American land mass. With a total area of more than a quarter of a million square miles, it stretches almost 800 miles from its eastern boundary in Arkansas and Louisiana to its western extremes at Mexico and New Mexico. In the south it is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico. Its northern boundary, Oklahoma, lies 730 miles from its southern extreme.
Texas is the only state in the Union ruled under six flags: those of Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of America, and the United States. Early explorers found this vast area intimidating, but modern transportation and a wealth of natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas, helped Texas achieve the third-largest population in the United States.
Early History
The earliest settlers in Texas were Indigenous Americans who dwelt there before 12,000 Before the Common Era (BCE). By 5000 BCE, the early residents were farming and hunting with bows and arrows. In far western Texas, remnants of Pueblo dwellings similar to those found in New Mexico have been unearthed. Indigenous mounds like those found in the western parts of Illinois, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi were discovered in east Texas.
Exploration and Colonization
The earliest explorations of Texas were made by Spaniards. In 1519, Alonso de Pineda sailed along the Gulf of Mexico coastline from Florida to Mexico, establishing Spain’s claim to the land that lay along it. By 1528, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca explored the interior. In the 1840s, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto both led expeditions into Texas, but their reports made the territory sound so forbidding that explorers avoided the area for the next half-century.
It was not until 1682, after René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, declared Texas a possession of France, that the Spaniards took a renewed interest in the area. The French were driven out by Indigenous Americans, but in 1690 the Spanish renewed their claim by establishing two missions among the Indigenous Americans in east Texas. By 1716, they had established five missions in east Texas.
The Indigenous American population of the state ranged from Cherokees in the east, who had been displaced from their lands in other areas, to the Tonkawa, nomadic plains Indigenous Americans in the central part of the area, to the Coahuitecan and Karankawa nations, the most primitive of the Indigenous American dwellers, along the Gulf Coast. The Lipan Apache, the Comanche, the Kiowa, and the Kiowa Apache inhabited the west.
The US Claim to Texas
Louisiana was ceded to Spain in 1762. By 1800, Texas had established three permanent Spanish settlements, San Antonio, Goliad, and Nacogdoches. In 1800, France took the title to Louisiana, which was sold to the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The boundary between the Spanish and French claims in this area had never been established, so the United States now held a tenuous claim to Texas.
When Texas became part of the new nation of Mexico in 1821, colonization was encouraged. Moses Austin came from Missouri with three hundred families who were given land. Austin’s son Stephen brought in more settlers after his father died. Land was plentiful, and land grants were generous and easily obtained.
By 1835, about 20,000 settlers had arrived in east Texas, bringing with them more than 4,000 enslaved people to work in the cotton fields, thereby establishing Texas as a slave state. In the same year, Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna waged war against the Texans during the Texas Revolution, taking about 350 prisoners, who were summarily executed. The following year, he stormed the Alamo, taking control from the few Texans remaining inside.
As Anglo-American immigrants flooded the area, the United States sought to purchase Texas. The Mexican government, which held claims to the region, tried unsuccessfully to discourage American immigration. Tensions arose between the United States and Mexico, which objected to the presence of enslavement in Texas. In 1836, Texas declared its independence as the Republic of Texas, a status it held until it was annexed as the twenty-eighth state of the United States in 1845.
Cotton, an important crop in eastern Texas during its early settlement, made enslaved labor attractive to those who raised cotton. With enslavement as a part of Texan economy, Texas joined the Confederate States of America in 1861, sixteen years after it had gained admission to the Union.
The Early Texas Economy
Agriculture became a major element in the early economy of Texas, some 85 percent of whose land consists of farms and ranches. Cattle and poultry production are significant in the state. Citrus fruit was grown early in the southern areas along the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande River. Industry was slow to develop in the nineteenth century, largely because Texas did not have sufficient hydroelectric power to drive mechanized industry.
Texas came into its own economically after 1901 when the great Spindletop Oil Field was discovered in southeastern Texas near Beaumont. This discovery triggered a rush to explore other parts of the state for oil, and it was soon found that Texas rested on a huge subterranean sea of oil that extended beyond its land mass into the Gulf of Mexico. Natural gas was also discovered in such quantities that Texas supplied more than a third of the nation’s supply.
The oil rush brought enormous revenues into Texas and created hundreds of millionaires almost overnight. The state’s population grew from about three million in 1900 to almost four million in 1910, partly because of oil. By 1990, Texas had almost seventeen million residents, making it the third most populous state in the United States. By 1998, it was home to slightly less than twenty million.
The sale of oil and natural gas was important to the Texas economy. The discovery of these two fuels spurred the growth of manufacturing industries in the state, which now had the reasonable and ready supply of energy it had previously lacked.
The Move to Manufacturing
Contemporary Texas is one of the ten most productive manufacturing states in the Union. Oil refining and petrochemical companies are among the largest manufacturing industries in the state, most of them centered around the Houston-Beaumont-Port Arthur area in the southeastern portion. In 1961 Houston was chosen as the location of the Manned Spacecraft Center, where astronauts are trained. It is the control center for the US government’s manned space ventures. The establishment of this center brought considerable other industries into Texas that focus on manufacturing transportation equipment, including aircraft, automobile assembly plants, and mobile-home manufacturing.
Giant food processing plants grew up to process the livestock, poultry, and vegetables the state produces in abundance. Texas is also preeminent in the manufacturing of machinery, including the complex equipment used in oil exploration and drilling. A thriving mining industry exists, along with extensive textile, clothing, and timber operations.
Transportation
Because of its enormous size, Texas developed a comprehensive transportation system that, in the early days, involved boat transportation along the Gulf of Mexico and rivers, as well as rail transportation served by 14,000 miles of track. As the highway system grew to the point that it was the largest in the United States, with 65,000 miles of paved roads, Texans relied more on automobiles than on trains for transportation, so passenger service waned.
In the late twentieth century, Texas developed superior air transportation. The climate is good for flying, and the distances make it the most reasonable means of rapid transport. In 1974, the opening of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the third-largest airport in the world, established Texas as an important hub for many national and international airlines. This airport was the third-busiest by passenger volume in the world in 2023.
Texas Politics
Texas represents an interesting mix of political conservatism and populism. Texans are staunch individualists, yet the state was essentially a one-party state until the election of George W. Bush as its Republican governor in 1994. In 2000, Bush was elected President of the United States, serving two terms from 2001 to 2009.
Realizing that Texas is a politically important state, with forty electoral votes as of 2024, national politicians have flocked to it looking for support. Among these was President John F. Kennedy, who went to Texas in November 1963 to support Democrats running for public office and to help assure his own victory there when he ran for reelection in 1964. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald. He was succeeded by his vice president, Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson, who remained in office until 1969.
Modern Population
Texas has always had a mix of cultures. In the southern areas along the Rio Grande River live many people of Mexican descent, some of whose families have lived there for two hundred years. These people are technically American citizens, but their ties to Mexico remain strong. The Anglo-American population includes not only people of British extraction but also large numbers of Germans in San Antonio, New Braunfels, Seguin, and other towns in central Texas. Eastern and southern Europeans are well represented in the state’s population, as are people from the Middle Eastern countries, especially the major oil-producing ones.
In the late twentieth century, about one-third of all Texans were of Black or Hispanic lineage. By 2023, people of Hispanic or Latino descent made up 40.2 percent of the state’s population. The White population was 39.8 percent, and the Black population was 13.4 percent. Spanish is a second language throughout much of Texas and is used along with English in most of its restaurants, hotels, and stores. In 2023, the state's population stood at 30,503,301.
Bibliography
"A Guide to the United States’ History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations, by Country, since 1776: Texas." Office of the Historian, history.state.gov/countries/texas. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Calvert, Robert A., Arnoldo De Leon, and Gregg Cantrell. The History of Texas. Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.
“DFW Airport Falls to No. 3 on List of World's Busiest Airports.” FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth, 16 Apr. 2024, www.fox4news.com/news/dfw-airport-third-busiest-2023. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Laucius, Rob. "Today in Texas History: The Alamo Before the Fall." The Texan, 6 Mar. 2024, thetexan.news/texas-history/today-in-texas-history-the-alamo-before-the-fall/article‗231b1582-db0e-11ee-b0db-47807b807cbf.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
"Texas." US Census Bureau, 2023, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/TX. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Wilder, Kristie. "Texas Joins California as State with 30-Million-Plus Population." US Census Bureau, 30 Mar. 2023, www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/03/texas-population-passes-the-30-million-mark-in-2022.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.