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Columbus's explorers set foot on what they believed was the Indies. They named this land San Salvador, which means Holy Savior. He called the people that lived there the indios.
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The first document that was related to Texas was a map of the Gulf Coast. It was created in 1519 by a Spanish explorer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda. Nine years later he shipwrecked and became the first European in Texas.
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Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked on what is believed today to be Galveston Island. After trading in the region for some six years, he later explored the Texas interior on his way to Mexico.
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Hernando De Soto left Spain in search of the Seven cities of Cibola. His expidition set sail for Florida. He was not able to find Quivira.
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Fourteen years after setting out for Texas, Coronado dies. He is one of the first white men to explore Texas, and leader of one of 20 Spanish explorations of the area.
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The first Thanksgiving was held somewhere present-day El Paso by Juan de Onate, thae members of his expedition and natives of the region.
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The French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, looked for the mouth of the Mississippi River, and he lands in Texas by accident. He established a colony called Fort St. Louis. It was on Garcitas Creek which is present-day Victoria County.
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There were sixty-five total people on this expedition. Also they brought cattle, sheep goats, and horses. By the end of 1716, the Ramon expedition had established six missions from the Neches River eastward to near Natchitoches, Louisiana.
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Group of settlers led by Antonio Gil Ybarbo (sometimes spelled Ibarvo or Y'barvo) establishes a civilian community near an abandoned mission site; the new town is called Nacogdoches.
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An army including many Tejanos, Native Texans, Anglo Americans, and other volunteers, arived in Nacogdoches in 1812 and proclaimed Texas free from Spain.
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The Battle of Velasco resulted in the first casualties in Texas' relations with Mexico. After several days of fighting, the Mexicans under Domingo de Ugartechea were forced to surrender for lack of ammunition.
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First bloodshed of the Texas Revolution took place at Velasco when Texans, transporting a canon from Brazoria to Anahuac, are challenged by Mexican forces at Velasco. The Mexicans surrender on June 29.
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The Texas Declaration of Independance was modled on the U.S Delaration of Independance. Both have three main sections. The first section declares right of Revolution. The Texas Declaration of Independance begins with these words: When a goverment has ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived...
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A Mexican force 500 invaded Texas for the first time since the revolution. They briefly occupied San Antonio, but soon left and went back to the Rio Grande.
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The Texan's Snively Expedition reached the Santa Fe Trail, thinking they were going to capture Mexican wagons crossing territory that was claimed by Texas. The campaign was stoped, however, when American troops intervened.
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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed thus ending the War with Mexico in 1850. Texas gave up its land that included way more than half of what is now New Mexico, about a third of Colorado, a part of Oklahoma, and a some of Wyoming.
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In a plan to settle boundary disputes and pay her public debt, Texas relinquished about one-third of her territory in the Compromise of 1850, in exchange for $10,000,000 from the United States
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The first Lone Star State Fair in Corpus Christi symbolized a period of relative prosperity in Texas during the 1850's. Organizer Henry L. Kinney persuaded Dr. Ashbel Smith to be the fair's manager.
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Backed by the US military, a shipment of 32 camels came to the port of Indianola. The resulting Texas Camel Experiment used the animals to transport supplies over the "Great American Desert."
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Texas declared its secession from the United States in 1861 to join the Confederate States of America
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Don Gregorio de Salinas Varona leads an expedition into Texas and goes back and says that the land is unbefitting for settlement; and a year later Spain abandons Texas.
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The Battle of Palmito Ranch was fought near Brownsville after the end of the Civil War. As the word had not yet reached Texas that the war was over; General Granger traveled to Galveston to announce that slavery had been abolished
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Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle founded Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay, and thus formed the basis for France's claim to Texas. LaSalle was murdered two years later by his own men.
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The abundance of longhorn cattle in south Texas and the return of Confederate soldiers to a poor reconstruction economy marked the beginning of the era of Texas trail drives to northern markets.
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Barbara Jordan lived in Houston and became the first black woman that was elected to the Texas Senate; Charles Whitman, who killed 17 people at the University of Texas campus in Austin, shooted them from the observation deck of the main-building tower.
