American conquest too fast11/7/2022 ![]() ![]() ![]() Many thought that that portion of Texas had been part of the Louisiana Purchase and that the United States had "given" it away to Spain in exchange for Florida in the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty, which established the Sabine River boundary. Through the 1820s, most believed that the United States would buy eastern Texas from Mexico. Two other reasons brought Anglo-American settlers to Texas. Anglo-Texans unwilling or unable to seek a priest in Catholic communities received permission from the authorities to sign a marriage bond, a practice common in the non-Anglican foothills of Virginia and the Carolinas before 1776, promising to formalize their union when a priest arrived. This was inconvenient for those wishing to marry because there was no provision for civil ceremonies, and only priests had authority to perform nuptial rites. Religion was not a critical issue, however, because the church waited until 1831 to send a resident priest, Michael Muldoon, into the Anglo-Texan communities. Because the Catholic Church was the established religion, the oath implied that all would become Catholic, although the national and state colonization laws were silent on the matter. In Texas each head of a family, male or female, could claim a headright of 4,605 acres (one league-4,428 acres of grazing land and one labor-177 acres of irrigable farm land) at a cost about four cents an acre ($184) payable in six years, a sum later reduced by state authorities.īeginning in 1824 when the Mexican Republic adopted its constitution, each immigrant took an oath of loyalty to the new nation and professed to be a Christian. Undeveloped land in the United States land offices cost $1.25 an acre for a minimum of 80 acres ($100) payable in specie at the time of purchase. Mexico continued the Spanish colonization plan after its independence in 1821 by granting contracts to empresarios who would settle and supervise selected, qualified immigrants.Īnglo-Americans were attracted to Hispanic Texas because of inexpensive land. Spain expected the new settlers to increase economic development and help deter the aggressive and mobile Plains Indians such as the Comanches and Kiowas. The foreigners were to be Catholic, industrious, and willing to become Spanish citizens in return for generous land grants. As early as the 1790s, Spain invited Anglo-Americans to settle in Upper Louisiana (Missouri) for the same reason. Recruiting foreigners to develop the Spanish frontier was not new. The missions near the latter two, once expected to be nucleus communities, had been or were being secularized (i.e., transferred to diocesan from Franciscan administration), while those near Nacogdoches had been closed since the 1770s. There were only three settlements in the province of Texas in 1820: Nacogdoches, San Antonio de Béxar, and La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (later Goliad), small towns with outlying ranches. Its traditional policy forbade foreigners in its territory, but Spain was unable to persuade its own citizens to move to remote and sparsely populated Texas. Spain had first opened Texas to Anglo-Americans in 1820, less than one year before Mexico achieved its independence. Anglo-American colonization in Mexican Texas took place between 18. ![]()
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