"El Norte."

During the months immediately following Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, the nation's new rulers pondered ways to develop its sparsely populated northern states. A treaty signed by both Spain and the United States in February 1819 had drawn the American boundary so as to exclude the state of Texas, which was situated just west of the American tide of settlement. Nevertheless, within months of the treaty's ratification Americans began to settle in the eastern region of the Spanish (soon to be Mexican) state of Cuahuila- Texas. The new Mexican government quickly seized upon the idea of using American immigrants to develop their underpopulated Northern provinces.

Austin.

Entrepreneurs and speculators such as Stephen F. Austin encouraged land-hungry farmers and planters to settle in easternmost Texas, far from the Mexican tejano settlements to the south and west. In order to gain...