Jack of Harts

Texas became a bone of contention between America and Mexico after the creation of the First Mexican Empire. Local born Tejanos and American Texians lived, worked, and fought together to build a prosperous borderland between the two nations powerful enough to drive off Indian raids. America had accepted it as a Spanish colony, but Mexico claimed it. And the Mexican authorities did not trust the local independence movements that still raged. They finally banned further immigration from America, took away the tax breaks from Texian colonists, and confiscated weapons that the locals were using to protect themselves from Indian raids. The Tejanos and Texians were extremely unhappy with their remote rulers in Mexico when General Santa Anna led a revolt to overthrow the Mexican regime in 1832. Texas followed his example, expelled the Mexican authorities, and demanded redress and concessions from the government. The Mexican government agreed to their demands and the citizens of Texas went back to their lives.

New Spain played host to many revolutionary movements over the centuries of Spanish rule, some of Indian focus and some by Spaniards who simply wanted more freedom from the crown. The 1800s proved the bloodiest time for New Spain though. Napoleonic France conquered Spain, leaving the rest of the Spanish Empire in turmoil. Would they be loyal to the new French-installed ruler, their deposed king, or themselves? Brushfire rebellions burned in Texas, Mexico, and other colonies, and were put down by the local Spanish authorities with extreme brutality in an effort to teach the locals a lesson. Father Hidalgo led a peasant rebellion in 1810 that sparked a decade-long revolution that would inevitably lead to the creation of the First Mexican Empire in 1821. The Spanish Empire of course did not accept this and attempted to retake Mexico several times in the years that followed. It was a complicated time for the Spanish Empire, the New World, and everybody it touched.

Spain claimed and colonized New Mexico in the 1500s, though that far region was hard to control and defend against the Indian tribes further to the north. It actually seemed as if Spain might abandon the region in the 1600s, which encouraged the Franciscan priests to make the region more Spanish by force. They evicted the locals from the best farming lands, banned the practice of local religions, seized and burned religious artifacts, and arrested local religious leaders. By the late 1600s, they officially arrested nearly fifty medicine men for practicing sorcery, and sentenced four of them to death. That sparked what historians call the Pueblo Revolt and evicted Spain from the region. Spain’s initial reaction to the revolt was muted, though they returned in force a decade later upon hearing rumors that France was trying to take over the area. The insurrection would continue on and off until the end of the century, though Spain eventually prevailed and many Pueblo moved further north and west to evade their control. But this was not the end of independence movements in the New World.