Texas Instrument Semiconductor

From its earliest days of colonization, Texas sparked the imagination and ambition of some of North America's greatest leaders. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was one such man. His interest in Texas coincided with the strategic goal of Sam Houston, the president of the young Texas Republic, to create a buffer zone between the areas of Anglo settlement and Mexico. History has until now hidden how close the ambitions of these two men came to carving out a Mormon Kingdom of God in Texas. In 1844 Smith and his followers were received with political jealousy, religious suspicions, and distaste by their neighbors in Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith looked outside the United States for both refuge and empire. Times were difficult for Sam Houston, as well, as he faced the wrath of Comanches on the Western frontier and Santa Anna on the southern border. He was looking for assistance from England, France, or perhaps even the Mormons. Smith appointed an ambassador to the Texas Republic, and secret negotiations began in earnest. According to Mormon records, Houston agreed to sell Smith a disputed strip of land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Before the Mormon leader could take further action, he was murdered by a mob in Illinois. In the leadership succession crisis that ensued, the negotiations were abandoned. Yet the secret negotiations cannot be seen as a total failure. Houston remained a friend to the Mormons throughout his political career and was later instrumental in ending the Utah War of 1857-58. In addition, a group of Mormon settlers emigrated to the Texas Republic on the eve of statehood and became an important part of the Texascultural mosaic.

When the early Spanish and Mexican colonists came to settle Texas, they brought with them a rich culture which enabled them to settle and build a civilization in a wild land. The broad intracultural diversity of these settlers from different parts of Mexico and Spain are nowhere more evident in Texas than in the material culture--folk art, folk craft, architecture--which is part of our Spanish-Mexican legacy in Texas. Hecho en Tejas, the first book-length publication to focus on Texas-Mexican material culture, shows the richness of Tejano folk arts and crafts traditions through essays on Hispanic folk art in San Antonio in the home and yard, and on the street; through quilting traditions; through the vaqueros' traditions of weaving horsehair ropes and plaiting rawhide for quirts and bridles, and making of saddles; making of paper flowers as coronas para los muertos--primarily for decorating graves; making of ceramic figures for religious and secular use; the making of stringed instruments; the making of pinatas; religious folk art and yard art, grutas, roadside crosses, as well as religious matachines dance traditions; jacales as a form of folk house, and the built-environment of a Texas-Mexican ranch. A bibliography of Texas Mexican Material Culture is included.