Jack of Harts

The Mexican government renounced the treaties Santa Anna signed to end the Texas Revolution and promised to retake the rebellious region. But there were so many other, more important to them, regions rebelling from the central government, that the army was far too busy to make good their promise. And who in the central government truly cared about the far frontier out beyond the Rio Grande? It was a wild land of bloodthirsty Indians, restive Tejanos, and crazy Texians, none of which anybody liked. To the Spaniards who had slowly brought civilization to both sides of the Rio Grande, they had grown up in the Province of Nuevo Santander, now known as the Free and Sovereign State of Tamaulipas by the Mexican Republic. They were separated from the old Province of Tejas by a wide desert and the Nueces River, the long recognized provincial border under both the Spanish and Mexican governments. The settlements on either side of the Rio Grande had little to do other than trade with that distant province, and certainly did not consider themselves part of Texas, no matter what the Texans said.