Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

the beach in Malhado, likely Galveston. Only four
of them still lived after a few years in the Texas
wildness, and one of them, Álvar Núñez Cabeza
de Vaca, eventually reconnected with Spaniards
and told them stories of golden cities—unseen by
Cabeza De Vaca but discussed among the various
tribes with whom he had passed nearly seven
years as captive and guest. Cabeza De Vaca’s
stories launched entratas, such as the one led by
Francisco de Coronado in 1540, still seeking gold
but finding instead land ready for grazing. In the
absence of immediate available wealth, and in the
absence of interest in the area by other Europeans,
Spaniards were content to leave Texas alone, as
long as that wildness insulated them from
English—and especially French—activity
elsewhere on the continent.
Then, Frenchmen began arriving on the upper
Gulf Coast in the 1680s. LaSalle brought the first
of them in 1682 to an area east of the Sabine and
the Neches rivers, near the Mississippi River,
which they named the Colbert; and then, in 1685,
westward, above Matagorda Bay. The French
presence, mostly represented by men who traded
manufactured goods for fur harvested by Indians,
plus a few bonafide settlers, renewed Spain’s
interest in Texas. They established religious
missions and military presidios as signposts to
France that Spain owned Texas. The missions
struggled for a century, baptized a few Indians,
and burned out the zeal of missionaries and
presidio soldiers alike. Almost unnoticed,
individual settlers such as Antonio Gil Y’Barbo
established farms and ranches, usually not far
from the missions, and gradually reestablished
European economic and cultural ways as adjusted
by the new environment. Most of this activity
occurred north and west of the lower Neches
country. This area was destined to become, early
in the twentieth century, the focus of the nation
because of oil, an organic source of stored energy
and migrated in sands that collected in pools
beneath the surface.
ANGLOS
ARRIVE
The earliest Anglo-Americans reached eastern
Texas late in the eighteenth century after Spain and
England had divided French territory in North
America at the Mississippi River. Some did so
spectacularly, such as filibusters Philip Nolan, who
came in the 1790s ostensibly rounding up
mustangs for sale in Louisiana, but up to no good,
thought Spanish officials, already wary of “Yankee”
plots to take Texas from them; or August Magee
and his partner Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara, who
wanted to establish an independent empire in
1812 at the expense of Spain; or James Long, with
the same motive, in 1819. Nolan, Magee, and
Long paid the price of failure with their lives.
These spectacular adventures made headlines
in eastern American newspapers, but the
filibusters who most loosened Spain’s grip on
Texas came individually and unheralded to
❖
A rendering of an Attacapa village
from a mural at the Museum of the
Gulf Coast.
PAINTING BY TRAVIS KEESE. COURTESY OF
THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST, PORT
ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Chapter I ✦ 7