Texas or Tejas2 is one of the fifty states that, together with Washington D.C., form the United States of America. Its capital is Austin and its most populated city, Houston. It is located in the southern region of the country, in the Central-Southwest division. It is bordered to the north by Oklahoma —the eastern half of this border is formed by the Red River—; to the northeast by Arkansas —again, part of this border is formed by the Red River—; to the east by the Sabina River —which separates it from Louisiana—; to the southeast by the Gulf of Mexico (Atlantic Ocean); to the southwest by the Rio Grande, which separates it through a long border (about 1,800 km) from Mexico (specifically, from the States of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas); and to the west by New Mexico. With 25,145,561 inhabitants in 2010, it is the second most populous state in the country —behind California—, and with 695,621 km², the second largest, behind Alaska. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state.3
The term “six flags of Texas” comes from the flags that have flown over the territory throughout history. Spain was the first European country that, within the scope of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, possessed the Texan territory. A fraction of the northern territory of Texas was part of Louisiana, a French colonial territory, which was purchased by the United States in 1803. After the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, Texas became Mexican territory. In 1836, the Texan territory became independent from Mexico as a result of a revolution started by American immigrants, unilaterally proclaiming the Republic of Texas. Later in 1845, Texas was annexed by the United States as the “28th State.” During the American Civil War in 1861, Texas was one of the member states of the Confederate States of America. With the end of the Civil War in 1865, Texas became part of the United States again.
In the early 1900s, the discovery of oil wells started an economic boom in the state. Texas has diversified economically. It has a growing base in high technology, biomedical research, and higher education. Its state GDP is the second highest in the United States.
The capital of Texas is Austin, although the most populous city is Houston. The state flower is the Texas lupine; the state bird is the mockingbird, the mascot is the armadillo, and the typical food is chili con carne.
Toponymy
The origin of the word Texas is the Spanish language,4 5 although it may be the product of two alternative explanations:
According to Texan and Anglo-Saxon historiography, it may come from the Caddo táysha’ /’tajʃaʔ/ which translates as «friend» or «ally». The first Spaniards who explored these lands called the Hasinai thus: the Texas, where the x, in this case, was pronounced as «j» and there are numerous documents from the time in which both spellings, texas and tejas, were used, which rules out the «sh» option in the pronunciation of this name.6 The first reference to Tejas or Texas is found in a document about the Oñate expedition of 1606 in which they were going to search for «the great kingdom of the Tejas». Later the territory was known as «The province of the Tejas», and finally it was simply called Texas or Tejas. Although a recent study casts doubt on this version of the origin due to the many doubts, misinterpretations and contradictions it presents, since it is defended by English speakers trying to interpret Spanish documents from the 16th century and later.
Another possible origin of the word comes from the name of a tree, the yew, texo or texa (Taxus baccata), a plant that exists in Europe but not in America, the Spanish called the bald cypress of the swamps with this name -Taxodium distichum, in Latin «the one that looks like the yew»-, very common in the humid East of Texas, where the Caddo native group lived, which the Spanish initially baptized as «Texas Indians». The sabino, Montezuma cypress, or ahuehuete -Taxodium mucronatum- is more common in Mexico and the dry south of Texas, almost a thousand kilometers away (Rio Grande), although in Spanish the names sabino, sabina, tejo and teja (texo and texa until 1817) are synonyms for the same tree. Both trees, the European Taxus and the American Taxodium have a great physical and biological resemblance, both secrete a toxin from their leaves, which are very similar. On the other hand, the Texan rivers named by Spaniards have religious or descriptive names, usually of trees: the Nueces, Sabine, Palmas, Flores rivers are an example.
The confusion about how to pronounce the «x» in Texas in Spanish has a complex origin, since the sound and the letter took separate paths. In 16th-century Spanish, the letter «x» was used to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative sound /ʃ/ that today is usually written «sh», as in the English shame and ash.[citation needed] Thus, the words that in the 16th century were written Texas, México and xabón, were pronounced *Teshas, *Méshico and *shabón[citation needed]. Later, and with remarkable speed, the voiceless postalveolar fricative sound /ʃ/ (today written «sh») evolved, in all cases, into the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (today written «j»). That is, all words that were written with «x» came to be written with «j» with their current sound in Spanish (xabón⇒jabón)[citation needed]. On the other hand, the letter «x» came to represent the sound /ks/. The spelling norm changed a little more slowly. Exceptionally, there are some words that underwent the phonetic transition from [sh] to [j][citation needed], but their spelling did not change from «x» to «j», but continued to be written with «x». Hence the current pronunciation of place names such as Texas and Mexico, as well as first names and surnames with archaic spelling such as Praxedis and Ximénez. In fact, even today the Texan towns of Béxar and Mexía are pronounced in English with an [h] to emulate what would be a Hispanic one today.
The Royal Spanish Academy, through its Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts, recommends the spelling Texas; the same is valid for the demonym, Texan. The correct pronunciation (in Spanish) is [téjas], in the RAE notation, or /ˈtexas/, in the IPA notation (see “x”), and not *[téksas], which is a widespread error in the media today. The same happens with the word Mexico, pronounced [méjiko], according to the RAE notation,211 and /’mexiko/, according to the IPA notation.
GEOGRAPHY
Due to its great extension, the State of Texas has diverse geographic zones; on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, a subtropical tree vegetation predominates, as well as in the Apalachicola basin going towards the borders of Louisiana where important swampy areas appear. The north is a sector of the Great Plains prairies, in the north center there is or was a forested area called Travesía de los Leños (in English «Cross Timbers»). To the west of the Travesía de los Leños, in a large part of the Texas panhandle, the extensive Llano Estacado tableland with a semiarid climate extends, to the south rises the Edwards plateau or Edwards Plateau. The south-central part of the state is a fairly fertile, flat area that has been used for growing cotton, crops and raising large herds of cattle.
HISTORY
The Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was the first European to set foot on Texan territory, on November 6, 1528.
Texas has seen six flags fly over its land: the Fleur-de-lis of France, and the national flags of Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America. However, the French presence in Texas was almost irrelevant, even less than the exploratory one of the Spaniard Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The true and first European power to settle in Texas was Spain, with more than 150 years of Texan history behind it.
Spanish exploration and conquest
Two years after the passage of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, another Spanish expedition arrived in Texas, that of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who in 1540 traveled through the north of the territory looking for the seven cities of Cibola. The expedition of Hernando de Soto, continued by Luis de Moscoso after the death of the former on the banks of the Mississippi River, was contemporary with that of Coronado. It does not seem that De Soto reached Texas, but Moscoso did in 1542, when he tried to reach New Spain by crossing the Texan territory. Not knowing the true dimension and distance, he ended up turning back towards the Mississippi River after several months. There was no shortage of small expeditions after those first attempts, all from New Spain, which had the purpose of getting to know the territory and its inhabitants. In 1606, Juan de Oñate would set foot on Texan territory again in a great expedition that headed east to try to find the Great Quivira and the Kingdom of Texas that was located to the east of it. 12
Spain did not have the human resources necessary to begin the conquest and settlement of the territory north of the Rio Grande, so the Spanish activity during the 17th century was only to maintain contact with friendly indigenous nations and control enemy ones, mainly the Apaches. In 1685 the French explorer René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, on an expedition that ended in disaster when he could not find the mouth of the Mississippi River that he intended to go up, ended up running his ships aground in Matagorda Bay, being forced to build a weak settlement with what he could save from the shipwreck of his ship La Belle. The «fort» consisted of a few houses with thatched roofs and a precarious palisade that kept them safe from the Karankawa Indians, the same ones with whom Cabeza de Vaca had dealt much earlier. The Frenchman then began several land excursions in order to find the Mississippi River, the initial objective of his trip, where he intended to found a settlement, and on one of these excursions he was killed by his own men. The Viceroy of New Spain, alerted by the testimony of several Tejas Indians that the French had settled in what was then called the Bay of the Holy Spirit, sent several expeditions by land and sea with the aim of driving the French out of what had been considered Spanish territory for more than 100 years. The first expeditions were unsuccessful in their search, until the one in 1689 led by Alonso de León the Younger, found the remains of the French fort. The French who had remained in the fort had died of smallpox as indicated in the journal of that expedition and only a few survivors were scattered living with different tribes, being rescued at that time by the Spanish soldiers who would later take them to Mexico City.
After this, the expedition headed east where they founded several missions and a garrison, in what is today the border between the states of Texas and Louisiana, where the Caddo Indians lived, known by the Spanish as the Tejas Indians. The stay did not last long, in 1693 the missions had to be abandoned due to the animosity generated among the Indians by a smallpox epidemic, probably from the same outbreak that wiped out the French, which ravaged those lands and the Indians, who saw the obsession of the Franciscan friars to baptize all the dying as the origin of the deaths, associating baptism as the cause of the subsequent death of the native. Fray Damián de Massanet was one of the first to recognize that what is today the city of San Antonio was a good place to found a city, something that was supported by both Fray Francisco Espinosa and Fray Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares in later expeditions to the territory. It was precisely the latter who pressured the authorities, both viceregal and peninsular, of the convenience of founding a settlement and several missions in the place. Finally, in 1716, the long-awaited return of Spain to Texas took place, an expedition reached the Adaes in Louisiana and the missions abandoned in 1693 were refounded. That same year, the founding of a town and the establishment of a mission and presidio in what is now San Antonio was authorized, an event that materialized in 1718. On April 25, the expedition commanded by Governor Martín de Alarcón arrived, who on May 1 handed over the Mission of San Antonio de Valero to Friar Olivares, most likely a small house or hut, built with adobe bricks. On May 5, 1718, the foundation of the town of Béjar took place, named in honor of the Duke of Béjar, father of the viceroy Marquis of Valero, where some soldiers were left with their families for its defense, facts that are perfectly recorded in the expedition diary written by Friar Francisco Celiz. Some time later and after the fulfillment of the missions entrusted to the Adaes and the recognition of the Bay of the Holy Spirit, the governor and the bulk of the soldiers returned to San Antonio where the Presidio of San Antonio de Béjar was formed, which, it is worth remembering, is not a fort but the group of soldiers who «preside» over the territory. A fort was never built in San Antonio.
French exploration
There is no French exploration of Texas or it is minimal. A navigation error caused the ship of the La Salle expedition to run aground and sink in the Bay of Matagorda. With what they were able to salvage from the shipwreck and the planks of the ship, they built a precarious fort a few kilometers inland from the coast, just four wooden houses with leather roofs. La Salle and a few men began the journey by land in search of the Mississippi River where, a few years earlier, he had founded a fort and where he intended to go in search of help. On the way he was killed by his own mutinous men who continued on to the river, from there they went up to the French possessions in the north and finally reached France, as Henri Joutel relates. Meanwhile, the settlers who had remained in Texas died mostly due to smallpox. Later, the Karankawas Indians, dominant in the area, looted the belongings of the French. The few survivors were welcomed by the Indians of the area until the arrival of the Spanish who rescued them. The loss of this expedition meant that for centuries French maps of Texas had the legend «Karankawa Indians, Cannibals», in the belief that this had been the end of the colonists. Nothing supports the cannibal theory, neither the journals of the expedition of Alonso de León the Younger, nor the account of Cabeza de Vaca who spent a long time living among them, nor the fact that there were survivors living among the Indians and they had not been cannibalized. The French settlement lasted very little time and had no impact on the territory or its inhabitants, it was merely anecdotal. The commercial activity that they carried out during the 18th century with the Texan Indians had a greater impact, mainly due to the problems that they caused in the Spanish government of the province of Texas. Arrival of Anglo-Saxon settlers
Criminals of American origin, mostly, were exiled to the Texas region to proclaim the territory as independent, after which the native Texans originally from Mexico began to defend and claim their territory, for this the help of Santa Ana was requested to send troops and weapons to the north of the national territory due to an invasion of the Americans, but thanks to the internal political conflicts that Mexico was going through, several rivals of Santa Ana prevented the advance of the troops
THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
After its independence, Texas intends to join the United States, but President Andrew Jackson denies the annexation because Texas is a slave-holding state, so they form a republic. Its first president is Samuel Houston, who establishes the capital in Austin. In addition to achieving recognition from France and the United Kingdom, Houston orders an invasion of the territory of New Mexico (then Mexican) but they are defeated in Santa Fe. He also creates a navy that is sent to support the rebels of Yucatan who also seek independence from Mexico. But they also fail.
The Union with the United States and the War of 1847
In 1845, President James K. Polk finally declared the annexation of Texas to the United States, but Mexico did not recognize this and claimed Texas as its own territory. In addition, Texas claimed that the border was at the Rio Grande, but Mexico only recognized a border at the Nueces River. This led to a war in which Mexico lost half of its territory against the United States in 1847.
Civil War
Texas joined the Confederate States of America in 1861 against the will of Governor Samuel Houston, because it was a slave state and therefore was one of the eleven rebel states that declared themselves independent of the Union. During the Civil War, Texan regiments unsuccessfully attacked the territory of New Mexico and were later defeated by a federal invasion from Colorado.
Postwar and Reconstruction
After the war, Texas was placed under federal martial law to enforce reconstruction. However, all federal efforts to secure legal rights for formerly enslaved blacks failed, and Anglo-Saxon Texans murdered many of the native Mexican and African-descended Texans who attempted to organize politically. Like other southern states in the U.S., Texas became a state completely dominated by the Democratic Party.
Languages
Texas has no official language, although the most widely spoken language is English, used by 66.24% of the population. Spanish is in second place, because Texas was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain for much of its history, and of Mexico for a few decades after its independence. The Spanish language is on the rise due to significant immigration of Mexicans and Hispanics from other countries. Spanish is currently spoken by 29.40% of the population.15 The government, through section 2054.116 of the Government Code, mandates that state agencies provide information on their web pages in Spanish. On the other hand, the rest of the languages registered by the inhabitants of the state, a total of 143, are spoken by less than 1% of the population.
El Paso (Texas) is the only city in Texas where 66.5% of the population speaks Spanish.