Notes
NOTES I N T R O D U C T I O N 1. Israel Cavazos Garza, Breve historia de Nuevo Leon, (Mexico City, 1994), 98—99, 101. I am using Lower Valley and south Texas interchangeably to mean the lands from the Rio Grande to the Nueces River, but it should be understood that up to 1848 the Lower Valley included the original towns on the south side of the Rio Grande. Chronologically, the first settlers were the Spanish, who after 1821 renamed themselves Mexican. These Mexican or mejicano settlers, in turn, became Tejano following the annexation of the Lower Valley after 1848.1 employ the term Hispanicto refer to the general character of all of these settlers.Anglo refers to the citizens of the United States who began arriving in the region in small numbers in the 18205. SeeAppendix i for a fuller definition of these terms. 2. These statements constitute responses to questions made by the royal inspector Don Jose Tienda de Cuervo to the town founders and local missionaries. Secretaria de relaciones exteriores, Estado generalde lasfundaciones hechas por d. Jose de Escandon en la Colonia del Nuevo Santander costa del Seno Mexicano, 2 vols. (Mexico City, 1929), 1:383, 394—95. There are very few early monographs on Nuevo Santander. Among the best recent syntheses of the colony are Juan Fidel Zorrilla, El poder colonial en Nuevo Santander (Mexico City, 1976); Zorrilla, Estudio de la legislacion en Tamaulipas, 2d ed. (C. Victoria, Tamaulipas, 1980). Zorrilla, "Nuevo Santander and the Integration of the Mexican Northeast," trans. Gregory Knapp (paper presented at the Cultural Adaptation at the Edge of the Spanish Empire Symposium, University of Texas, Austin, May 1990; copy in my possession); Oakah L. Jones, Jr., Los Paisanos: Spanish Settlers on the Northern Frontier of New Spain (Norman, Okla., 1979), chap. 3, 65—78. Also, see Jesus Franco Carrasco, El Nuevo Santander y su arquitectura 2 vols. (Mexico City, 1991), esp.vol.i, pt. i, 16—180. 3. Will and Testament of Juan N. Cavazos, File no. 5, County Clerk, Cameron County, Brownsville, Tex. Cavazos wrote his will at Rancho del Tanque de Carricitos on Aug. 4,1876. 4. My long-view approach to the history of the Lower Valley resembles that of Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769—1936 (Berkeley, 1995). On the boundaries of Nuevo Santander, see Peter Gerhard, The Northern Frontier of New Spain (Princeton, 1982), 358.Shortly after Mexico's independence, Mexican federalistshad sought to link Tamaulipas with severalother political units, including Texas, to form one large state 301 3O2, Notes to pages 3-6 in northeast Mexico. This idea was turned down, resulting in the creation of individual states. David J. Weber, TheMexican Frontier, 1821-1846(Albuquerque, 1983), 22, 24. On the issue of defining the West and its history, seeClyde A. Milner II, Anne M. Butler, and David Rich Lewis, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American West, 2d ed. (Boston, 1997), chap, i, 1—41. 5. On town settlements in the borderlands, seeJones, LosPaisanos; Gilberto M. Hinojosa, Borderlands Town in Transition: Laredo, 1755—1870 (College Station, Tex., 1983); and Gilberto R. Cruz, Let There Be Towns: Spanish Municipal Origins in the American Southwest, 1610— 1810 (College Station, Tex., 1988). Two new studies for the colonial period have appeared recently: Jesus F. de la Teja, San Antonio de Bexar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Albuquerque, 1995); and Cheryl English Martin, Governance and Society in Colonial Mexico: Chihuahua in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, 1996). 6. Upriver from Laredo, on the south side of the Rio Grande, there was an important presidio and mission complex called Rio Grande. It dated to 1701, but was in the jurisdiction of Coahuila. 7. Political rivalry between a Lower Valley family, the Gutierrez de Lara family of Revilla, and the Fernandez family ofAguayo at the beginning of the state government resulted in the consolidation of power in the Fernandez family. Their hometown was renamed Ciudad Victoria and made state capital in 1826. Juan Fidel Zorrilla, Origen del gobierno federal en Tamaulipas (C. Victoria, 1978), 18, 22-23, 2 58 . The first to address the resiliency of mejicanos in nineteenth-century Texaswas Arnoldo de Leon, in The Tejano Community, 1836—1900 (Albuquerque, 1982). On the origin of the word Tejano, seeAdan Benavides, The New Handbook of Texas, 6vols. (Austin, 1996), 6:237. 9. Frank C. Pierce, A Brief History of the Lower Rio Grande Valley (Menasha, Wise., 1917); Walter Prescott...
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