Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/210

TEXAS. who secures supplies for all the eleemosynary institutions, and the cost of maintenance has been greatly reduced since the creation of this office.

The old system of leasing convicts is being abolished, and the convict farm system has developed in its stead. The State owns two large farms for male convicts and smaller ones for female convicts and consumptive convicts. Convicts are also worked upon other than State farms according to the share rent system. Others are leased to farmers or for railroad work. From 2000 to 2500 convicts are annually employed upon share or contract farms, and about 400 upon the State farms. The State penitentiaries are located at Huntsville and Rusk. The total number of convicts October, 1900, was 4109. The penal system is ordinarily self-sustaining. The reformatory at Gatesville receives penal offenders under seventeen years of age.

. The population of militia age, in 1900, numbered 599,221; the organized militia, in 1901, 3080.

. The first Europeans to tread the soil of Texas were in all probability Cabeça de Vaca and three other survivors of the Narvaez expedition of 1528. (See .) Cabeça de Vaca's account of his wanderings through Texas stimulated Mendoza, the Viceroy of Mexico, to send a party northward under Friar Marcos de Niza to search for the mythical Cibola or Seven Cities, rumored to be golden as Mexico. It returned empty-handed, as did an expedition led by (q.v.). Several other expeditions probably penetrated Texas during the next hundred years, notably those of Espejo in 1582, Sosa in 1590, and Governor Oñate of New Mexico in 1601 and in 1611. An entrada in 1650, led by Capt. Hernán Martin and Diego del Castillo, is said to have reached the Tejas (Texas) tribe of Indians in the region of the Neches and Sabine; and one in 1684 under Padre Nicolás Lopez and Capt. Juan Domingo de Mendoza crossed the Rio Grande into the Pecos country. The first town in the State, lying 12 miles north of El Paso, was founded in 1682 and called Taleta.

The history of the State practically begins in 1685 with the landing of (q.v.), and though his attempt at colonization ended in failure, the Spaniards took fright, fearing that France might seize the land. In 1690 Alonzo de Leon and Padre Manzanet were sent to found a mission in that quarter, which was to serve the double purpose of holding the country and of converting the natives to Christianity. Mission San Francisco de los Tejas was accordingly founded among the Tejas Indians not far from the Neches River. The next year another expedition came out under Teran, but nothing resulted, and for years after Teran's entrada no further attempts were made by the Spaniards to occupy Texas. However, French activity in Louisiana roused them. In 1714 Juchereau de Saint-Denis, a bold French trader, led an expedition across the country to the Rio Grande, where he was made prisoner and sent to Mexico City. His account of Texas fired the Viceroy and Council to renew their efforts to occupy the country. In 1716 Captain Domingo Ramón was chosen to lead an expedition which founded several missions. He settled San Antonio de Bejar, which

in the course of time became the centre of the most prosperous group of missions in the Province of Texas, as it was now called, the name of the original settlement among the Tejas Indians having come to be applied to the whole region.

For a half century mission founding went on, but it became early apparent that failure was certain. Most of the establishments were abandoned, and some of them were moved about in the wilderness. The Indians themselves destroyed more than one mission. When, in 1763, France surrendered Louisiana to his Catholic Majesty, the prime reason for the occupation of Texas no longer existed, as there could be no further French aggression from Louisiana. So the missions in the region of the Neches and Sabine were abandoned, and only those about San Antonio de Bejar—Alamo, Concepción, San José, Espada—showed any signs of surviving. There came in time to be three main foci of settlements—at Nacogdoches in the east; at what is now Goliad in the south; and at San Antonio de Bejar in the southwest. The latter completely overshadowed the others in importance.

In 1799 Philip Nolan, an American, invaded the country from Louisiana with a small party for the ostensible purpose of purchasing horses. Two years later on a second expedition the Spaniards attacked the adventurers, killing some and shipping the rest off to the mines of Mexico. This, however, was the beginning of the end of the Spanish régime. After the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, the people of the United States, and especially the inhabitants of the Southwest, looked upon Texas as part of the destined dominion of the Republic and never lost an opportunity to strike at the Spanish power. Indeed, in 1806 it looked as though war must result with Spain over the possession of the region. The United States claimed westward to the Rio Grande on the strength of the French occupation; Spain as stoutly disputed the claim, and in October, 1806, armies of the two powers stood facing each other across the Sabine. However, Gen. James Wilkinson, who commanded the Americans, was glad of the opportunity given him by the retreat of the Spaniards to the west of the Sabine and by the excitement attending the rumored conspiracy of Aaron Burr to make a neutral ground treaty with the opposing commander, Herrera, which practically conceded to Spain the territory west of the Sabine.

In 1810, when the great revolution in Mexico against Spain had begun, the Southerners sympathized intensely with the natives, and before very long were lending secret aid to Mexico. A filibustering expedition into Texas was led by James Long, a Natchez merchant and ex-officer in the United States Army. At Nacogdoches Texas was declared a republic and a provisional government organized; but the Spanish forces soon broke it up. For several years the coast of Texas became a rendezvous for pirate and adventurer. Louis de Aury, Captain Perry, General Mina, and Lafitte are best known. They made Galveston Island their headquarters. From here sailed the famous Mina on his expedition against the Spaniards in Mexico; and from here Lafitte the pirate scoured the Gulf till the United States Government broke up the settlement. The first score of years of the nineteenth century