Peoples and Cultures of Early Texas
Indigenous groups
The broad label "indigenous groups" or "Native Americans" applies to literally hundreds of diverse groupings of people in the Texas territory. Not all of them could be described precisely as tribes, either, as many of these groups were large clusters of families, clans or other associated groups with distinct customs, organization and behavior. According to the Handbook of Texas Online:
"These were occasionally quite large. At the opposite extreme, some were merely small family groups whose names or ethnic designations were taken for "tribal" names by the Spanish and French and in subsequent secondary literature." [1]
In short, the indigenous peoples of Texas comprised a large, diverse and evolving set of groups, as many of these groups migrated or were forced out of the territory by new groups, or were absorbed or recombined with groups of similar cultures, or extinguished as identifiable groups through conquest.
The great number of indigenous groups resulted in a great variety of social organization, values, and practices - a great variety in political culture, if you will. Some groups, most famously the Apaches and Comanches, who came to the territory after the Spanish arrived to be nearer to supplies of horses, were very aggressive and warlike, living on the spoils of raids and conquest. Other groups like the Caddos were primarily engaged in agriculture, while still others like the Wichita engaged in a mix of hunting, trade, and some warfare.
The expansion of Anglo American settlements in the eastern part of the continent, led to new waves of Native Americans, notably the Alabama, Coushatta, and Cherokee tribes, among others. Some of these tribes naturally migrated to Texas in search of fresh hunting grounds as their traditional hunting grounds in the east were depleted by Anglo settlement. Others were more forcibly pushed out of their native lands by the Anglo settlers or the U.S. government for various economic or overtly political reasons. Some groups from the Delaware Indians fled their lands in the east, for example, after siding with the British in the War of 1812.
The diversity of experiences and cultures of Native Americans in Texas suggests caution in making generalizations about their contribution to the overall political culture of Texas. Still, it is reasonably safe to say that like Spanish and Anglo American settlers, the Native Americans found life "on the frontier" to be harsh, intensely competitive, sometimes violent, and often solitary, with uneven and constantly shifting public authorities (whether indigenous or European) for governing daily life. One cultural trait broadly shared by the Native Americans was their rejection of town life - observed by the resistance of the relatively peaceful natives in East Texas to settlement in the Spanish missions - in favor of an independent lifestyle in the open countryside.
The culture of the indigenous groups has been largely extinguished or marginalized in contemporary Texas, with three reservations representing the only organized settlements of Native Americans in the state, according to the Handbook of Texas. Nevertheless, the 2000 census reported that over 118,000 people in Texas (or 0.6 percent of the population) identified themselves as American Indian. Beyond the numbers of Native Americans in the state, the cultural traits that were shared by many of the indigenous groups - competition, individualism (especially notable in groups like the Comanches) - persist today.
Spanish and Mexican Americans
The Spanish influence at all levels of contemporary Texas is considerable, perhaps out of proportion to the numbers of Spaniards (those who came directly from Spain) who ever set foot in the territory we now call Texas. [2] Hundreds of place names for cities, counties, parks, islands, rivers, and geological formations carry Spanish names. Less visible, but perhaps more important, Spanish law governing things like family relations and the disposition of land and water infuses current Texas law.
Culturally, the original Spanish influence was more limited. It is crucial that we distinguish between the original Spanish influences and the influences of the rapidly growing Mexican and Mexican American populations in the state. Here we focus exclusively on the influence of the original Spanish explorers, soldiers and settlers, whose presence was much more limited, tentative and sporadic.
Although the Spanish began exploring Texas in the early 1500s, they were able to exercise continuous occupation of the territory for barely more than a century between 1716 and 1821. [3] Their political, social and economic projects in the territory were fairly limited, focusing mainly on establishing isolated missions aimed mostly at converting the Native Americans to Christianity and to a more settled, town-based form of social organization. The missions were also intended as means of halting French encroachment from the Louisiana territory by establishing Spanish control over remote areas.
Spanish activity in the area was motivated by two powerful forces deeply rooted in Spain's history and social structure: spreading Christianity and acquiring wealth. Unfortunately, Texas offered precious little opportunity for either activity - at least compared to other areas of the New World with large and powerful indigenous civilizations, like central Mexico and the Andean highlands. As a result the Spanish colonial presence in the territory was relatively sparse. By 1821, the year of Mexican independence from Spain, very few Spaniards or descendents of Spaniards (estimated at about 5,000 people) lived in the territory of Texas. Spanish culture in what became the state of Texas would be based primarily on - and filtered through - Mexican culture, a very distinct and dynamic cultural tradition that derived only partly from Spanish culture.
Many of those descended from Spaniards were mestizo or mixed blood. Because relatively few Spanish women came to the Americas, Spanish males commonly mixed with indigenous females. The process of mestization was such a prominent component of Spanish-descent population growth that by 1821, the pivotal year in which Mexico won its independence from Spain, the mestizo population in Mexico had become almost as large as both the indigenous and Iberian-born populations combined. Today the vast majority of Mexicans are mestizo.
Despite the few Mexican Americans in Texas in the early 1800s, their number grew steadily over the rest of the century. The U.S census in 1850 counted more than 14,000 people of Mexican origin in Texas. Wars, civil unrest and the search for economic opportunity pushed increasing numbers of Mexicans into Texas in succeeding decades. By 1930 the Mexican-origin population totaled several hundred thousand. Historical events like World War II and economic factors caused the continued migration of Mexicans to Texas and beyond. Additionally, the fertility rates of Mexican Americans have remained high to the present day, further contributing to the rapid growth of this population. See Section 5 of this chapter for more detailed discussion of the contemporary Mexican American population.
Anglo Americans
Anglo-Americans, primarily from the steadily advancing frontier of the United States, made a major impact on the political and cultural development of Texas. Though Anglos and Anglo Americans had explored parts of the territory during Spanish colonial times (before 1821), they only began arriving and staying in much larger numbers, after the Spanish were thrown out and the territory came under the rule of an independent Mexico (1821-1836). The primary attraction for the Anglo Americans was the Mexican government's empresario policy which awarded land grants to settlers. It is uncertain how many Anglo Americans lived in the major settlements by the time Texas won its independence, but estimates in 1836 put the number at about 30,000, plus some 3,500 Tejanos, 14,200 Native Americans, and 5,000 slaves and a few free blacks. [4]
In less than a decade after Mexico's independence from Spain, the Anglo American presence had come to dominate the political and cultural development of the territory. An independence movement led primarily by Anglo Americans and subsequent ascension to U.S. statehood solidified the Anglo American traditions as the foundation for Texas political and cultural development. This meant that Texas culture would comprise a unique mix of liberal and conservative orientations. On the one hand, the republican and democratic principles upon which the United States government was founded were adopted almost reflexively. (Of course, these principles were a requirement for statehood; see the Texas Politics feature "How the U.S. Constitution Imposes Requirements on the States" ).
And, of course, the frontier attitude toward minimum government and freedom to pursue the accumulation of wealth and property infused this culture (as it seems to have in other cultures like those of the Spanish, French, and the indigenous groups that called Texas home). But, the unique form of Anglo American culture that took root in Texas also had a considerable conservative streak that emphasized social-class stability and order (this was a prominent characteristic of Spanish culture as well). After all, many of the settlers came to the state with slaves, and they preserved the institution of slavery right up until the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War. For decades after the war, the law and Anglo American social norms still sought to maintain a rigid race-based class system that effectively disenfranchised African Americans, Mexican Americans, and other non-European groups.
African Americans
African-Americans represented a significant portion of early settlers in the region. Of the 1800 people in the Austin colony in 1826, 443 (approximately twenty-five percent) were slaves, presumably of African descent. As Anglo Americans and other European ethnicities continued to pour into the territory, the percentage of the population made up of African Americans dropped, but remained substantial in overall numbers. The 1836 population estimates reported above indicate that the 5,000 slaves in the territory at the time made up roughly one-tenth of the population.
It is difficult to shape the dominant culture from the position of enslavement (or from the social underclass to which many African Americans in the state and the country belonged well past the turn of the 20th century) regardless of numbers. Nevertheless, African Americans were able to participate in some key events in the political development of Texas during the 1800s. They fought bravely in segregated regiments in the Union army during the Civil War, and they served honorably in the famous "buffalo soldier" regiments in the decades after the Civil War. From 1866 to the early 1890s two of those regiments were stationed at a variety of posts in Texas and the southwest, and distinguished themselves in the major campaigns against the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Sioux, and Arapaho Indians. [5]
On the civilian side, a number of African Americans held public office in Texas during the Reconstruction period and after. The Constitutional Convention of 1868-1869 included ten African Americans. The product of the conventioneers labors was a constitution that protected civil rights, established the state's first public education system, and extended the voting franchise to all. And six African Americans (all Republicans) participated in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875, which produced the current Texas Constitution. Between 1868 and 1900, forty-three African Americans served in the state legislature. [6]
For African Americans during much of Texas history, democratic institutions and social justice were more than simply abstract ideals. They were fundamental to any chance for economic and social advancement, and indeed even for physical survival.
Germans and Czechs
Two national groups that were particularly prominent in the early settlement of Texas were the Germans and the Czechs, with the former comprising a very large part of the population since Texas gained its independence from Mexico. Both the arrival and growth of both cultures in Texas were influenced by key strong personalities, the German Johann Friedrich Ernst, who won a 4,000 acre land grant in the Austin colony in 1831 and the Czechs Josef Arnošt Bergmann (a protestant minister who arrived with his wife and six children in 1850) and Josef Šilar (who led a immigrant party to Texas in 1851). Subsequent letters to family and friends back home (referred to as "America letters" by sociologists) led to "chain migration" of additional immigrant parties.
From 1850 through the rest of the century, Germans comprised more than five percent of the Texas population, or about 150,000 of the three million people living in Texas by 1900. The United States census in 1990 identified 1,175,888 Texans who claimed pure German ancestry and another 1,775,838 claiming partial German ancestry, totaling almost three million people or over 17 percent of the total population at the time. [7] The number of foreign-born Czechs in Texas by 1900 was about 9,200, and reached a peak of about 15,000 a decade later, but these figures do not count children of Czech descent born in the state. By 1940, the number of Czech "foreign white stock" (defined by the United States Bureau of the Census as those who spoke Czech at home during childhood) had reached 62,680. [8]
Both ethnic communities tended to settle in ethnically homogenous enclaves, primarily in central Texas, stretching primarily from Lavaca and Fayette Counties (especially for the Czechs) westward and northward. The so-called "German Belt" stretches further in both easterly and westerly directions, from Houston westward into the Texas Hill Country, but smaller German islands of settlement were scattered even more widely across the height and breadth of the state. Most Germans came to Texas in search of economic opportunity, and were on the whole industrious, with a broad range of artisan skills and professions. Nevertheless they were a diverse lot in most other social and cultural orientations. The Handbook of Texas Online notes that the diversity of German cultures in the state was striking:
"Even in the confined area of the Hill Country, each valley offered a different kind of German. The Llano valley had stern, teetotaling German Methodists, who renounced dancing and fraternal organizations; the Pedernales valley had fun-loving, hardworking Lutherans and Catholics who enjoyed drinking and dancing; and the Guadalupe valley had atheist Germans descended from intellectual political refugees. The scattered German ethnic islands were also diverse." [9]
The Czechs were a much more homogeneous group. Most immigrants had been small landowners who saw little new economic opportunity back home. Their attitude toward the land and their family structure were distinctive. Farming was considered a way of life, not just a way to accumulate wealth, and Czech farm families functioned as self-contained economic and social units. This culture extended to the general organization of Czech communities which had egalitarian social structures and which often formed cooperative institutions for sharing their agricultural products. [10] Such cooperative institutions and egalitarian attitudes, and the general Czech embrace of democratic ideals, may have contributed to the rise of the populist movement in Texas in the last decades of the nineteenth century.