TEXAS, REPUBLIC OF. The first European settlement made in Texas was by La Salle, in 1685, by accident. In 1689 Captain De Leon, a Spanish officer, was sent to drive out the French. He found them scattered, and the next year he returned with 110 men and some friars, and on the site of a fort built by La Salle, on Matagorda Bay, established a Spanish mission. A Spanish governor, with troops, was sent their in 1691, but Indian hostilities and menaces of famine caused the settlement to be abandoned in 1693. In 1714 the French again attempted to plant settlements in Texas, under the direction of Crozat, of Louisiana. Soon afterwards (1715) Spanish missions were planted at various points in the present domain of Texas; the name of " New Philippines " was given to the country, and a governor-general was appointed. The Indians slaughtered the people at some of the missions, and in 1765 there were not more than 750 white inhabitants in Texas.
Texas was a part of the Spanish province of Mexico which had declared itself independent of Spain. In 1824, when a considerable number of colonists from the United States were there, the Mexican government united Coahuila, previously a separate state, with Texas, and placed a Mexican as governor over the united states. He treated the Americans there with great injustice, and some of them, engaged in a revolution (SEE THE FREDONIAN REVOLUTION), were Texas Mapcompelled to retreat into the United States in 1827. In 1830 Bustamente, who had made himself dictator of Mexico, issued a decree forbidding the people of the United States to enter Texas as colonists. The American settlers in Texas then numbered about 20,000, and in 1833 they held a convention, determined to separate Texas from Coahuila, prepared a State constitution, and requested Santa Anna, then at the head of the government of Mexico, to admit them as a separate State of the republic.
