THE LURE OF
TEXAS
(Hardcover - 1 Mar 2011)
Robert D. Morritt
Availability
“The Lure of Texas” Provides the
reader with an in-depth history of Texas.
Commencing at the Paleographical era, and describes the occupation of
Texas by Spain, France and Mexico together with accounts of battles and incursions
leading up to the Battle of the Alamo and to the establishment of Statehood.
The book commences with descriptions of archaic
hunters and food gatherers.also of
early mound-builder influence .Flint quarries discovered in the
Panhandle to as far away as West Texas.
Paleo-Indian era evident from a Clovis campsite discovered in Denton
County circa 8000 BCE.
The arrival of Spanish and of
Cabeza de
Vaca a member of a Spanish
expedition who became shipwrecked on
the Texas coast around 1528 and swam
to shore and lived as a slave of an Indian group, who later escaped into the
interior and became both a trader and a medicine man. Of Francisco Vazquez
de Coronado in his search for the mythical "Seven Cities of Gold"
and De Niza who set out on his famous
expedition in 1539, giving the earliest descriptions of people in the
Southwest.
The Spanish Mission c.1655 built near Corpus
Christi de la Isleta and of Father
Massanet who founded San Francisco de los Tejas, in the year 1690 the first Mission in East Texas, of the French who built a Fort at Biloxi
Bay in 1690. Also described are the the
Comanche raids on Missions in 1758. and of French territory west of the Mississippi River ceded by France
to Spain after the French-Indian Wars (1754-1763).
The Anglo-American settlers in the 1820’s
and Moses and Stephen Austin, their colonization attempts espcially with many
people from the new Louisiana Territory.
The book iincludes little known facts of thel first attempt to
establish a Texan Republic, which predates the Battle of the Alamo. and
views the efforts of Lt.Fannin and
his troops and includes contempoary
accounts of The Goliad massacre (at the Presido La Bahia) as witnessed by the few that escaped.
Also included is an overview of a
sinister Mexican ‘lottery’ held
at Saltino where the life or death of captured American troops depended solely on which color bean was picked
from a bowl. provided by their
captors. Also of Stephen Austin, Jim
Bowie, The Battle of the Alamo and recent discovery
of contemporary combatant’s diary giving
an accurate description of the death of Crockett at the Alamo.
The book concludes during the pre-Statehood period an affords the reader an
opportunity to travel back in time to eyewitness the birth of
modern Texas, won out of adversity
and includes accounts of those
who risked their lives to create it.
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