the music. In a ranching culture, favorite amusements included horseracing and the carrera del gallo, a contest that took several forms; in one, mounted vaqueros raced at full gallop to be the first to reach down and pull off the head of a rooster buried up to its neck in the ground.
Though sparse, intellectual life existed on the frontier. A few books made their way there, though only the well‐to‐do could afford them. Writing was the domain of the literate, which certainly included government officials and the clergy, but most communities comprised a few settlers and soldiers with the necessary skills. Indeed, much of the earliest knowledge of the Texas landscape and its original inhabitants comes from the diaries and chronicles of the conquistadores. Missionaries also told their accounts of working with the neophytes and left to posterity careful records of early Native American civilizations. Historians have used these writings to enhance their knowledge of the colonial era. Especially valuable for this is Father Juan Agustín Morfi’s History of Texas, 1673–1779, written by the clergyman after an official visit to Texas.
Some of the province’s leaders sought out, albeit with mixed success, good teachers within the community to instruct the young. Factors such as poverty, the uncertainty of frontier life, a belief in the general “uselessness” of an education in the hinterlands, and the dearth of books partly account for the absence of an educational system. But by the early nineteenth century, all the urban settlements had established some type of rudimentary educational facility.
Communications, however crude, connected Texas with Mexico over the Camino Real (the King’s Highway, also called the San Antonio Road). This artery traversed the province from San Juan Bautista, on the Rio Grande, to Béxar, and up to the East Texas settlements. A second route extended from Laredo to La Bahía, then connected to the Camino Real at the Trinity River. Mounted couriers regularly carried mail from throughout New Spain to Texas towns.
Frontier Society
Mestizaje
The nonindigenous population of Texas stood at about 500 persons in 1731. It grew to about 3000 during the 1770s and 1780s, and then leaped to about 4000 in 1800. Despite high birth rates, many factors kept this population from growing rapidly. The adversities of frontier life included a high infant‐mortality rate (Figure 2.3), continual warfare with the Indians, farming methods that yielded only a paucity of agricultural foodstuffs, traditional (and by modern standards improper) notions of diet and hygiene, a lack of doctors and hospitals, and periodic waves of virulent diseases. Epidemics such as cholera, which swept through San Antonio in 1780 and took the lives of three people daily, also kept the population’s growth in check.
Other forces, nonetheless, do account for demographic growth. Immigration from the interior of New Spain, much of it sporadic, played a part, as resolute settlers struck out for the Far North. In addition, convicts were occasionally dispatched to the region to help build presidios; in time, the former inmates intermixed with the indigenous population. Still, natural propagation accounted for most of the Tejano population growth.
Figure 2.3 The funeral of an “angel” or baptized infant. Infant mortality rates were high on the frontera.
Source: Theodore Gentilz, Entierro de un Angel, Yanaguana Society Collection, Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library.
Those who peopled Texas in the eighteenth century had a range of ethnic makeups, and they lived with a degree of sexual imbalance, with men outnumbering women. This led presidial soldiers and mestizos (mixed‐bloods who descended from European‐Indian parents) to mix with assimilated Indians, especially those around San Antonio. The process of mestizaje (racial and cultural union involving Europeans, Indians, and some Africans), which dated back to the earliest years of Spain’s contact with the New World civilizations, continued in Texas unabated.
Although the censuses of the 1780s show that españoles (Spaniards) made up about one‐half of the population of the province, those figures are misleading, for the term did not designate undiluted Spanishness. Rather, it served as an all‐embracing label that described relative wealth, social and occupational standing, degree of cultural assimilation, and even the attitudes of the census takers. In reality, few European Spaniards lived in Texas, and those classified as such really belonged in the mestizo category. Even the Canary Islanders had mixed with the rest of the Tejano population within two generations of the founding of San Fernando de Béxar, so that none of them could truly speak of their own racial purity.
Classification regarding “Spanishness” derived from the accepted feeling on the frontier that people of darker skin hues and of mixed blood could “pass” as Spaniards, especially when they had achieved some sort of social standing as ranchers, government officials, or military personnel. Thus, on the frontier, economic success tended to override racial makeup in one’s classification. Lower‐class mestizos and other people of color such as mulattoes and slaves, however, almost always encountered difficulties in achieving the more prestigious status of “Spanish.” However, it was possible for Hispanicized Indians, people of African descent who had attained their freedom, and mulattoes to break through the mestizo stratum.
Social differences
The social structure of Texas, therefore, did not mirror the stratified order of New Spain’s interior, which placed the peninsulares (European‐born Spaniards who dominated the higher political offices) at the top, ranked the criollos (American‐born Spaniards who ordinarily inherited their European‐born parents’ possessions) next, and relegated the mestizos, Indians, and Africans to the bottom. In Texas, as in other frontier regions, the routine mixing of races mitigated ethnic divisions.
Degrees of wealth nonetheless separated some Tejanos from the majority. Government officials and military commandants enjoyed more secure incomes, although they hardly earned enough to claim prosperity. Entrepreneurs in towns and rancheros and farmers working peons or slaves constituted part of the emerging capitalist sector in colonial society. This group owned the nicer homes, and they had the capacity to derive a better standard of living from their tracts of land. But this upper stratum represented no corporate interest or any attempt to perpetuate and protect specific privileges of a social order. Moreover, their distinction from other Tejanos remained tenuous. In education, racial makeup, cultural heritage, speech, and dress, the “upper class” largely resembled the rest of society. Their status hinged mainly on their material holdings and not on deference owed them because of their skin color, place of birth, or noble family background. These qualifications applied equally to the Canary Islanders, who eventually became part of the overall Texas population, although some of them did manage to remain at the top of the social hierarchy.
Beneath the small upper crust representing the well‐to‐do in Tejano society lay the remainder of the Tejano population, comprising common laborers, semiskilled workers, and Hispanicized Indians. Once again, their social categorization had less to do with their ethnic makeup than their lack of material assets.
Slavery
The nature of slavery in colonial Texas has yet to be studied adequately. According to the censuses conducted in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the number of black persons in the province (excluding the offspring of black and mestizo/indigenous people unions) barely exceeded fifty, the majority of which resided in East Texas, the region closest to Louisiana, from which some had run away. Most blacks were not slaves;
