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Juneteenth

On June 19 ("Juneteenth"), 1865, Union general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order Number 3, which read, "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere." The tidings of freedom reached the approximately 250,000 slaves in Texas gradually as individual plantation owners informed their slaves over the months following the end of the war. The news elicited an array of personal celebrations, some of which have been described in The Slave Narratives of Texas (1974). The first broader celebrations of Juneteenth were used as political rallies and to teach freed African Americans about their voting rights. Within a short time, however, Juneteenth was marked by festivities throughout the state, some of which were organized by official Juneteenth committees.

Comanche Indians

The Comanches, exceptional horsemen who dominated the Southern Plains, played a prominent role in Texas frontier history throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anthropological evidence indicates that they were originally a mountain tribe, a branch of the Northern Shoshones, who roamed the Great Basin region of the western United States as crudely equipped hunters and gatherers. Both cultural and linguistic similarities confirm the Comanches' Shoshone origins. The Comanche language is derived from the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family and is virtually identical to the language of the Northern Shoshones. Sometime during the late seventeenth century, the Comanches acquired horses, and that acquisition drastically altered their culture. The life of the pedestrian tribe was revolutionized as they rapidly evolved into a mounted, well-equipped, and powerful people. Their new mobility allowed them to leave their mountain home and their Shoshone neighbors and move onto the plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas, where game was plentiful.

Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, an early explorer and first historian of Texas, was born in Jerez de la Frontera, an Andalusian province in the south of Spain near Cádiz. The precise year of Cabeza de Vaca’s birth cannot be determined, but it was within the “birth window” of 1487–92. The origin of his surname (“Cow’s Head” in Spanish) is not known, but it assuredly did not come from an alleged ancestor named Martín de Alhaja and his heroics at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in central Spain in 1212. That story, repeated by the author of this entry in The New Handbook of Texas (1996) and many others, is unquestionably apocryphal.

Republic of Texas

This entry is currently being revised and the new version will be available soon!

Karankawa Indians

The Karankawa Indians are an American Indian cultural group whose traditional homelands are located along Texas’s Gulf Coast from Galveston Bay southwestwardly to Corpus Christi Bay. The name Karankawa became the accepted designation for several groups of coastal people who shared a common language and culture. Those groups, identified in early historic times, included the Carancahuas, Coapites, Cocos, Cujanes, and Copanes. All of these Indians spoke a language called Karankawan, of which around 500 words are preserved. The significance of the name Karankawa has not been definitely established, although it is generally believed to mean "dog-lovers" or "dog-raisers." That translation seems plausible, since the Karankawas reportedly kept dogs that were described as a fox-like or coyote-like breed. The Karankawas were a nomadic people who migrated seasonally between the barrier islands and the mainland. Their movements were dictated primarily by the availability of food. They obtained this food by a combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Bison, deer, and fish, were staples of the Karankawa diet, but a wide variety of animals and plants contributed to their sustenance.

Flags of Texas

The strong Texas interest in flags is shown in public and private displays of the "Six Flags Over Texas," i.e., the flags of the six countries that have ruled over Texas: the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Spain, the Mexican Federal Republic, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of America, and the United States of America. Spain has had four significant flags during its occupation of the New World. The royal banner of Castile and León, bearing two lions and two castles, was used as a state flag and ensign from around 1230 to around 1516. From 1516 to May 28, 1785, Spain used a state flag and ensign consisting of a modified red saltire on white to signify the house of Burgundy. A variant of the state flag and ensign 1580 to 1640 depicted the complete Spanish coat of arms on a white field. King Charles III established the familiar Spanish flag, with horizontal stripes of red-gold-red and the simple arms of Castile and León as the Spanish ensign, effective on May 28, 1785, and as the Spanish state flag on land, effective March 8, 1793. These flags were used until April 27, 1931.

Apache Indians

The Apache Indians belong to the southern branch of the Athabascan group, whose languages constitute a large family, with speakers in Alaska, western Canada, and the American Southwest. The several branches of Apache tribes occupied an area extending from the Arkansas River to Northern Mexico and from Central Texas to Central Arizona. Generally, the Apaches are divided into Eastern and Western, with the Rio Grande serving as the dividing line. Two groups, the Lipans and the Mescaleros, lived partially or entirely within the confines of Texas. The Apaches went by numerous names. Because of their nomadic nature, it seems probable that several names were used to identify the same band or tribe. Some names of Apache bands in Texas were Limita, Conejero, and Trementina (perhaps the same as Limita). But only the names Lipan and Mescalero survived into the nineteenth century. The name Apache most probably came from the Zuñi word apachu, meaning "enemy," or possibly Awa'tehe, the Ute name for Apaches. The Apaches referred to themselves as Inde or Diné, meaning "the people." The Apaches arrived in the Southwest between A.D. 1000 and 1400. After somehow being separated from their northern kinsmen, they carved out a home in the Southwest-apparently migrating south along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, then spreading westward into New Mexico and Arizona. In time, pressure from the Comanches and other tribes pushed the Apaches farther south and west.

Wright, Sylvester Marilyn

Rev. Dr. S. M. (Sylvester Marilyn) Wright, African-American Baptist pastor, political strategist, and Dallas religious leader, son of Rev. Calvin and Mary (Mikle) Wright, was born in Burleson County, Texas, on February 7, 1927. Wright spent his childhood in one of Dallas’s poorest neighborhoods, the Bon Ton community, and attended Lincoln High School. After graduation, Wright enrolled at Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, where he completed two years of study before leaving in 1946 for a one-year enlistment in the United States Army. He returned to Bishop College to complete his bachelor’s degree in 1949 and later received master’s and doctoral degrees in education from the institution as well.

Parker, Bonnie

Bonnie Parker, outlaw partner of Clyde Barrow, was born at Rowena, Texas, on October 1, 1910, to Henry and Emma Parker. She had an older brother, Hubert (Buster), and a younger sister, Billie. Her father, a bricklayer, died in 1914, and Emma Parker moved the family to "Cement City" in West Dallas to live closer to relatives. In the public schools Bonnie was an honor student. She enjoyed writing poetry and reading romance novels. At four-feet-ten and eighty-five pounds, she hardly looked like a future legendary criminal. In 1926 she married her longtime sweetheart, Roy Thornton. For the next several years, they suffered a tumultuous marriage; however, she refused to divorce him. Bonnie worked at Marco's Cafe in Dallas until the cafe closed in November 1929. About this time Thornton was sent to prison for a five-year sentence. Bonnie had "Roy and Bonnie" tattooed above her right knee to commemorate her marriage to Thornton.

Texas Revolution

The Texas Revolution began in October 1835 with the battle of Gonzales and ended on April 21, 1836, with the battle of San Jacinto, but earlier clashes between government forces and frontier colonists make it impossible to set dogmatic limits in terms of military battles, cultural misunderstandings, and political differences that were a part of the revolution. The seeds of the conflict were planted during the last years of Spanish rule (1815–21) when Anglo Americans drifted across the Neutral Ground and the eastern bank of the Red River into Spanish territory, squatted on the land, and populated Spanish Texas. More alarming than these illegal residents, who only wanted to "settle and stay," were filibusters such as Philip Nolan, who commandeered portions of Spanish lands for personal gain and political capital. During the fading years of New Spain, its ruling council, the Cortes, worried about securing their far northern frontier and began to encourage foreign immigration to Texas, including Anglo American colonization. One who was eager to take advantage of a change in Spanish policy was Moses Austin, who received a commission from the Spanish governor of Texas to bring 300 families and establish a colony, thereby rebuilding some of his lost fortune associated with the Panic of 1819. Upon his death in 1821, his son and heir Stephen Fuller Austin fulfilled his father's vision and became the first empresario of Texas.

Chisholm Trail

The Chisholm Trail was the major route out of Texas for livestock. Although it was used only from 1867 to 1884, the longhorn cattle driven north along it provided a steady source of income that helped the impoverished state recover from the Civil War. Youthful trail hands on mustangs gave a Texas flavor to the entire range cattle industry of the Great Plains and made the cowboy an enduring folk hero.

State Motto

The word Friendship was adopted as the Texas state motto by the Forty-first Texas Legislature in February 1930. The word was probably chosen because the name Texas or Tejas was the Spanish pronunciation of a Caddo Indian word sometimes translated to mean "friends" or "allies." See also TEXAS, ORIGIN OF NAME.