Spanish Texas

Spanish Texas was one of the interior provinces of the Spanish colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain from 1690 until 1821.

Spain had claimed ownership of the territory, which comprised part of the present-day U.S. state of Texas, including the land north of the Medina and Nueces Rivers, but did not attempt to colonize the area until after locating evidence of the failed French colony of Fort Saint Louis in 1689. In 1690, Alonso de León escorted several Catholic missionaries to east Texas, where they established the first mission in Texas. When native tribes resisted the Spanish invasion of their homeland, the missionaries returned to Mexico, abandoning Texas for the next two decades.

The Spanish returned to southeastern Texas in 1716, establishing several missions and a presidio to maintain a buffer between Spanish territory and the French colonial Louisiana district of New France. Two years later in 1718, the first civilian settlement in Texas, San Antonio, was established as a way station between the missions and the next-nearest existing settlement. The new town quickly became a target for raids by the Lipan Apache.

The raids continued periodically for almost three decades, until in 1749 when Spanish settlers and the Lipan Apache peoples made peace. But the treaty angered the enemies of the Apache, and resulted in raids on Spanish settlements by the Comanche, Tonkawa, and Hasinai tribes. Fear of Indian attacks and the remoteness of the area from the rest of the Viceroyalty discouraged settlers from moving to Texas. It remained one of the least-populated by immigrants provinces. The threat of attacks did not decrease until 1785, when Spain and the Comanche peoples made a peace agreement. The Comanche tribe later assisted in defeating the Lipan Apache and Karankawa tribes, who had continued to cause difficulties for settlers. An increase in the number of missions in the province allowed for a peaceful Indian reductions of other tribes, and by the end of the 18th century, only a few of the nomadic hunting and gathering tribes in the area had not been converted.

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