13.1 Native Peoples, European Exploration & Spanish Colonial Texas

Overview & Exam Relevance

Competency 002 (History) of the TExES Core Subjects EC-6 Social Studies subject exam (903) covers Texas, U.S., and world history, from Native American societies before European colonization to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as described in the TEKS. Because the competency is so broad, this guide divides it into five sections. Elementary educators in Texas must possess an authoritative command of historical figures, significant turning points, causes and consequences of major conflicts, economic transformations, and the enduring principles of constitutional governance.

On the TExES 391 exam, you will encounter questions addressing:

• Pre-Columbian Native American cultures in Texas and their environmental adaptations.
• The Spanish Colonial era, early explorers (Pineda, Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado), and the mission-presidio system.
• The Mexican National era, Moses and Stephen F. Austin, the Empresario system, and the Law of April 6, 1830.
• The Texas Revolution (Gonzales, Alamo, Goliad, Runaway Scrape, San Jacinto, Treaties of Velasco).
• The Republic of Texas era, comparing the contrasting administrations of Sam Houston and Mirabeau B. Lamar.
• Texas Annexation (1845), the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the Compromise of 1850.
• Texas during the Civil War, secession, key battles, Juneteenth, and the Constitution of 1876.
• The transformation of the Texas economy: cattle trails, barbed wire, windmills, and the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher.
• Foundations of United States history: 13 colonies, causes of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, westward expansion, the Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement.

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Native American Cultures of Texas

Before European arrival, hundreds of indigenous groups flourished across Texas. Historians and the TEKS classify these diverse peoples into four primary cultural and geographic regions based on physical environment and subsistence patterns:

INDIGENOUS CULTURAL REGIONS OF TEXAS
│
├── 1. GULF COAST CULTURE (Karankawa, Coahuiltecan)
│   └── Nomadic hunter-gatherers; barrier islands & coastal scrub; dugout canoes.
│
├── 2. PLAINS CULTURE (Comanche, Apache)
│   └── Nomadic equestrian hunters; Great Plains / Panhandle; buffalo economy; tepees.
│
├── 3. PUEBLOAN CULTURE (Jumano)
│   └── Sedentary agriculturalists; Trans-Pecos / Rio Grande; permanent adobe pueblos.
│
└── 4. SOUTHEASTERN CULTURE (Caddo)
    └── Sedentary farmers & mound builders; East Texas Piney Woods; dome grass lodges.

1. Gulf Coast Culture:
   • Karankawa: Inhabited the barrier islands, bays, and coastal wetlands between Galveston Bay and Corpus Christi. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers who traveled in dugout canoes (canoes hollowed from single tree trunks) between the mainland and barrier islands. They subsisted on coastal fish, shellfish, sea turtles, and coastal game using longbows. To protect against biting mosquitoes in the humid salt marshes, they rubbed their skin with a mixture of alligator grease and shark oil.
   • Coahuiltecan: Inhabited the dry, brush-covered South Texas plains. Because the arid scrublands offered sparse large game, the Coahuiltecan lived in small, nomadic foraging bands with high survival resilience. They subsisted on prickly pear cactus fruit (tunas), mesquite beans, roots, agave bulbs, lizards, snakes, and small mammals.
2. Plains Culture:
   • Comanche: Nomadic equestrian hunters who dominated the Southern Great Plains and Texas Panhandle (a vast territory known as the Comanchería). Originally migrating from the Rocky Mountains, they mastered the horse introduced by the Spanish, evolving into peerless light cavalry and supreme buffalo hunters. They lived in portable, cone-shaped bison-hide tepees and lived an entirely nomadic lifestyle trailing migratory buffalo herds. Their military prowess posed a formidable barrier to Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo settlement.
   • Apache (Lipan and Mescalero): Inhabited the Texas Hill Country and western plateau regions. Semi-nomadic hunters who combined seasonal buffalo hunting with the gathering of wild desert plants (such as agave/mescal). When the Comanche pushed southward onto the Southern Plains in the 1700s, the Apache were displaced westward and into conflict with both the Comanche and Spanish outposts.
3. Puebloan Culture:
   • Jumano: Settled in the mountainous Trans-Pecos region and along the Rio Grande near present-day Presidio. Unlike nomadic tribes, the Jumano farming communities at La Junta (where the Río Conchos meets the Rio Grande) were sedentary agriculturalists who lived in permanent villages of flat-roofed houses made of sun-dried adobe (clay and straw bricks); other Jumano bands were mobile bison hunters and traders. They practiced advanced irrigation farming, cultivating corn, beans, and squash along river floodplains. The Jumano were distinguished by distinctive horizontal striped face tattoos and acted as vital commercial middlemen, trading pottery, textiles, and crops with Plains and Mexican tribes.
4. Southeastern Culture:
   • Caddo: Inhabited the fertile, rain-rich Piney Woods of East Texas. The Caddo were the most technologically advanced and densely populated indigenous society in Texas. They were sedentary agriculturalists living in permanent, multi-family beehive-shaped grass dome lodges. They constructed monumental earthen ceremonial and burial mounds and maintained sophisticated confederacies (such as the Hasinai) governed by a spiritual leader (Xinesi) and civil chiefs (Caddi). They practiced extensive crop rotation, cultivated maize, squash, and beans, and were renowned for fine pottery. The Caddo welcomed Spanish explorers with the Hasinai greeting Táysha (meaning "friend" or "ally"), which the Spanish transliterated as Tejas, becoming the namesake of Texas.

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Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere

The 391 framework expects knowledge of societies in the Western Hemisphere before European colonization. Grade 5 TEKS ask students to compare American Indian groups of North America by region, and teachers also need background on the major civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America.

Major Civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America

American Indian Cultural Regions of North America

Teaching point: Each group's food, shelter, and clothing reflected its physical environment, which connects history to geography's human-environment interaction theme.

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Why People Explore, Settle, and Form Communities

Communities form where people can meet their needs and wants. Common reasons include:

• Water for drinking, farming, and transportation (most early Texas towns grew along rivers such as the Brazos, Colorado, and San Antonio);
• Fertile land and natural resources (timber, minerals, grazing land);
• Defense, as with presidios on the Spanish frontier;
• Trade routes and crossroads (later, railroad junctions);
• Religion, such as missions founded to spread Christianity or colonies founded for religious freedom; and
• Economic opportunity, such as land grants, jobs, and, later, oil discoveries.

Europeans explored the Americas for "God, gold, and glory": spreading Christianity, seeking wealth and trade routes, and gaining power and prestige for their nations.

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Spanish Exploration & The Colonial Mission-Presidio System

Spanish exploration of Texas was motivated by the pursuit of "Gold, God, and Glory" (Oro, Dios, y Gloria), transitioning from exploratory expeditions to permanent colonial institutions.

Spanish Explorers

• Alonso Álvarez de Pineda (1519): Commissioned by the Spanish governor of Jamaica to locate a water passage to the Orient, Pineda mapped the entire coastline of the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Cabo Rojo, Mexico. His voyage produced the first known European map of the Texas coastline, establishing Spain's primary geographical claim to the territory.
• Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1528-1536): A member of Pánfilo de Narváez's disastrous expedition to Florida, Cabeza de Vaca and a handful of survivors were shipwrecked on Galveston Island (Isla de Malhado - Isle of Misfortune). Over eight years, Cabeza de Vaca lived among the Karankawa and Coahuiltecan as an enslaved laborer, an itinerant merchant trader, and a faith healer. Accompanied by three survivors (including Estevanico, the first documented African in Texas), he traversed thousands of miles across Texas and northern Mexico to Spanish outposts in Culiacán. His published travelogue, La Relación (1542), provided Europe's first ethnological descriptions of Texas indigenous peoples and ignited rumors of the wealthy Seven Cities of Cíbola.
• Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1540-1542): Dispatched to verify the Cíbola legends, Coronado led an expedition across the American Southwest, traversing the Texas Panhandle (Llano Estacado) and Palo Duro Canyon. Finding only adobe pueblos and expansive buffalo herds instead of cities paved with gold, Coronado concluded Texas held no exploitable wealth. Spain subsequently abandoned interest in Texas for nearly 150 years.
• René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1685): French navigator who sailed to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River but overshot and landed at Matagorda Bay, Texas. La Salle founded Fort Saint Louis. Although disease, starvation, and Karankawa attacks destroyed the outpost, French presence within Spanish-claimed territory alarmed the Spanish crown, catalyzing Spain's immediate and permanent colonization of Texas through the mission-presidio system.

The Mission-Presidio System

To secure Texas against French encroachment and integrate indigenous inhabitants into the Spanish Empire, Spain deployed two interconnected institutions:

• Missions: Religious settlements founded and administered by Catholic Franciscan friars. Missions aimed to convert Native Americans to Catholicism, teach the Spanish language, and train indigenous neophytes in sedentary agriculture, animal husbandry, masonry, and European crafts.
• Presidios: Fortified military garrisons staffed by Spanish soldiers built within strategic proximity to missions. Presidios were tasked with defending missions against hostile raids (especially by Comanche and Apache warriors), guarding royal supply roads (El Camino Real), capturing runaway mission neophytes, and escorting travelers.
• Key Historic Missions:
  • Mission San Francisco de los Tejas (1690): The first Spanish mission in East Texas, founded by Father Damián Massanet near present-day Weches to counter French influence. Abandoned due to epidemics and Caddo resistance.
  • Father Francisco Hidalgo: A passionate Franciscan priest dedicated to East Texas missions. When Spanish viceroys refused funding to re-establish missions, Father Hidalgo secretly authored an audacious letter in 1711 to the French governor of Louisiana, requesting French missionaries to work among the Caddo. The prospect of French expansion panicked Spanish authorities into immediately funding new expeditions and permanently staffing East Texas missions.
  • San Antonio de Valero (1718): Founded along the San Antonio River by Father Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares, paired with Presidio San Antonio de Béxar. This settlement became a vital midpoint between East Texas missions and the Rio Grande, later celebrated historically as The Alamo.