The Spanish began widespread exploring and colonizing areas of North America in the sixteenth century (Cabeza de Vaca 55-108). The area known today as Texas eventually became a part of New Spain. Eventually, the intermingling of the Spanish and the Native Peoples of what is today Mexico and Texas produced the ethnic people known today as Mexicans (or in Texas as Mexican Americans most often). In the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, however, those people of this ethnicity were known most generally as Teja±os (Tijerina 10-13).
Spain eventually ceded a part of the territory of New Spain to France, and shortly after that transaction, France sold its claim in the center of North America to the United States. That transaction, the Louisiana Purchase, created a great deal of confusion among Americans, many of who assumed that Texas was a part of the deal. Beginning soon after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Anglo-Americans began moving into the Texas territory of New Spain [an area of east and south Texas stretching westward as far as San Antonio and as far south as the Rio Grande River, as well as Mexico] as a part of the so-called "Filibuster" movement, contending that the Louisiana Purchase gave Americans the right to take Texas as their own. While the governors of New Spain prevented these Anglo-Americans from settling in Texas, they also faced internal opposition from the Teja±os already settled in the area. The Teja±os formed the First Republic of Texas, which lasted about five months in 1813 (Tijerina 96).
Anglo-Americans, however, continued in their efforts to claim Texas. Some of these additional efforts involved attempts to create an area in Texas that was politically independent of either Spain (New Spain ceased to be in 1821) or Mexico. A Republic of Texas with some degree of longevity was established in 1836, and that country remained independent for 10 years before it was annexed to the United States...