Spanish Texas, situated on the border of Spain’s vast North American empire, encompassed only a small portion of what is now the Lone Star State. The province lay above the Nueces River to the east of the Medina River headwaters and extended into Louisiana. Over time, Texas was a part of four provinces in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Colonial Mexico). The El Paso area was under the jurisdiction of New Mexico, the missions founded near La Junta de los Ríos were under Nueva Vizcaya, the coastal region from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande and thence upstream to Laredo was under Nuevo Santander after 1749, and Texas was initially under joint jurisdiction with the province of Coahuila.
Slightly more than three centuries elapsed between the time the Texas shoreline was first viewed by a Spaniard on an unknown date in 1519 and July 21, 1821, when the flag of Castile and León was lowered for the last time at San Antonio. Those 300 years saw an early era of exploration in which there was a preliminary evaluation of the land, its people, and its resources. As rumored wealthy Indian civilizations to the north of Mexico proved illusory, attention turned more to the south. Spain nevertheless determined to maintain her claim to present-day Texas, a defensive borderland with strategic significance based on geographical location. Much of what Spain did was dictated more by international considerations, particularly real or perceived threats posed by the French, than caused by the momentum of an expanding empire. In the process, Spaniards acted upon the First Peoples of Texas and were acted upon by them. While books on Texas history traditionally portrayed the Indians as “victims or villains” in these interactions, more recent scholarship argues that these dynamic, diverse First Peoples “dictated the terms of contact, diplomacy, alliance, and enmity.” Hence, they became “the dominant partner in their relations with the Spanish,” despite the superior technology and deadly pathogens that worked to the advantage of the Europeans.
