![]() 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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