A New History of Old Texas Brandon Seale

The return of the horse to the North American continent and its domestication by people of the Texas plains redrew the map of Native North America and defined the spheres of influence of European colonial empires for three centuries. It led to the formation of highly decentralized, individualistic frontier societies that either successfully adopted the horse or suffered at the hands of those who had. Maybe “Don’t Mess with Texas” didn’t originate with a 1985 anti-littering campaign…maybe it was written the first time a native Texan hopped on the back of a horse. 

Cover art of "Lipan Apache" available online at Star of the Republic Museum, Portal to Texas History, University of North Texas. 
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When Don Juan de Oñate crossed the Rio Grande on May 4, 1598 at a spot which he called “El Paso del Rio del Norte”, he didn’t just bring with him the horses that would redraw the map of Native Texas. He brought with him the Spanish model of self-government centered on a locally-managed flood irrigation system that still serves today as the philosophical underpinning of the Texas "frontier regulatory model." It was the only real competitive advantage that the Spanish had over native Texas populations...but was it enough to build a permanent civil society around?

Cover photo of "San Juan Demonstration Farm" available online at https://www.nps.gov/places/mission-san-juan-farm.htm.
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When they hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936, Dallas boosters had good reason to rename their football stadium and associated bowl game based on a bad pun. The "Cotton Bowl" was a nod to the unmatched roll that "King Cotton" had played in shaping the demographics and politics of Texas, where it constituted as much as 90% of the output of the state for parts of the nineteenth century. But it’s a legacy that Texans have become increasingly uncomfortable with in recent decades, favoring the image of the cowboy and cattle drives. There is something far more romantic about a man on a horse than a man with a hoe…particularly when that man with the hoe is enslaved.

Cover art "Young Texas in Repose" available online from Yale University Library. 
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Samuel Colt certainly benefitted from the association of his revolving pistol with the state that most found widespread application for it use. And Texans, by and large, returned the love, coming to believe that "God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal."  Did the Colt Revolver blaze the trail for Anglo immigration into the Western half of the state? Or did the power imbalance it created violently accelerate a demographic inevitability?

Cover art is available in the Public Domain and online.
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From "terraqueous machines" (??) to air conditioning prototypes to "condensed milk," Gail Borden was nineteenth century Texas's most prolific inventor. And yet he may owe the inspiration for his most successful inventions to a form of Comanche "superfood," developed with a uniquely Texan appreciation of the power of energy density.

Cover art by David Moore, courtesy of IllustrationOnline.com
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Railroads made Texans wealthier than they had ever been. They brought labor-saving and efficiency improving implements like riding plows, threshers, mechanical harvesters, and soon, tractors, which collectively lifted the standard of living of most Texans far beyond anything their parents could have imagined. And Texans hated them for it! Texans very conflicted feelings toward the "Iron Horse" exposed an irreconcilable tension between their frontier regulatory model and their unshakable conviction that land was the only proper basis for wealth.

Cover art of Texas's first locomotive - the "General Sherman" - available online at Houston Metropolitan Research Center, HPL.
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