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THE MEXICAN WAR

Like the American Revolutionary War, it is hard to know exactly when and why the
Mexican War was fought. History books have some dates to define the war but people
seemed to have been fighting for one reason or another in Texas ever since there has
been a written history and there is no reason to doubt fighting was going on in Texas
even before that.

EARLY LIFE IN TEXAS

Archaeological evidence exists which indicates man has inhabited portions of the area
now called Texas beyond the dating range of carbon14 which is 37,000 years.

Magnificent animals such as the Columbian elephant, the mammoth, the mastodon, the
ground sloth, and the ancient bison which was twice the size of modern buffalos once
roamed the high plateaus of Texas.

No one knows how long the people that are now called Indians lived in the Texas area
but there are records dating back to the early 1500s penned by the Spaniards describing
these Indian’s war like characteristics. The French also wrote about the Texas Indians
in the late 1600s. Almost every group who ventured into Texas from the South had to
fight someone in order to survive.

During the 1700s the “Anglo-American” (the white man) began venturing into Texas
{and, you understand, the region was not known as Texas then} from the settled states
of the New World. Following the Revolutionary War this migration increased as people
began to look for new and different territories. Most continued on to what we now call
California but some stopped in Texas.

Whoever tried to settle in Texas met resistance from one group of people or another,
be it Indians or whatever group of people occupied what is now known as Mexico.
There was constant trouble between the French, the Spaniards, the Mexicans, the
Indians, the Anglo-Americans; every group fighting for possession of some part of
Texas.

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