Texas History/ Foundation, Skills, Research, and Instructions

The Spanish occupation of Texas lasted how long

105 years

Texas's Declaration of Independence happen in

1836 from Mexico forming the Republic of Texas

Texas County government

254 counties, by far the most counties of any state. Each county is run by a commissioners court consisting of four elected commissioners (one from each of four precincts drawn based on population) and a county judge elected from all the voters of the county

Numeric information

often most helpfully presented in tables or graphs

Geography of Texas

Occupying about 7% of the total water and land area of the U.S., it is the second largest state after Alaska, and is the southernmost part of the Great Plains. Texas is in the south-central part of the United States of America, and is considered to form part of both the U.S. South and Southwest. The Rio Grande, Red and Sabine Rivers all provide natural state lines where Texas borders Oklahoma on the north, Louisiana and Arkansas on the east, New Mexico on the west and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south.

Republic of Texas

The Texas Declaration of Independence was enacted at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, effectively creating the Republic of Texas

Texas has four major physical regions

the Gulf Coastal Plains, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, and Basin and Range Province.

Judicial Branch two courts of last resort

the Texas Supreme Court, which hears civil cases, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

The Republic of Texas received diplomatic recognition from

the United States, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Yucatán.

San Antonio history

the first formal municipality in Texas,

Timelines

used to show the relationships between people, places, and events. They are ordered chronologically, and usually are shown left-to-right or top-to-bottom

Idea maps

using arrows and bubbles can also be developed to show these differences.

opinions

vary about matters of taste, such as preferences in food or music, that rely on people's interpretation of facts. Often include words that indicate possibility rather than certainty, such as would, should or believe. First-person verbs also indicate opinions, showing that one person is talking about his experience.

Texas music

vibrant live music scene in Austin boasting more music venues per capita than any other U.S. city, befitting the city's official slogan as The Live Music Capital of the World

Sam Houston

was President of the Republic of Texas for two separate terms, 1836-1838 and 1841-1844. He also was Governor of the state of Texas from 1859 to 1861.

Texas from 1821-1835

was apart of mexico of the State of Coahuila y Tejas

Texas statehood primary motivations for annexation

was that the Texas government had incurred huge debts which the United States agreed to assume upon annexation. In the Compromise of 1850, in return for this assumption of $10 million of debt, a large portion of Texas-claimed territory, now parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Wyoming, was ceded to the Federal government.

Polar maps

A circle onto which the land around the poles has been projected. Provides much less distortion of Antarctica and the land around the North Pole than other map types

Conic maps

A family of maps drawn by projecting the globe's features onto a cone set onto the globe. Some distortion affects most points.

The first flag of the republic of TEXAS 1836 to 1839 was

"Burnet Flag" (a gold star on an azure field), followed shortly thereafter by official adoption of the Lone Star Flag.

Anson Jones

(1798-1858), last President of the Republic of Texas, called the "Architect of Annexation"

"Oil Boom" permanently transformed the economy of Texas, and led to the first significant economic expansion after the Civil War

Anthony F. Lucas, an experienced mining engineer, drilled the first major oil well at Spindletop on the morning of January 10, 1901 on the little hill south of Beaumont, Texas. The East Texas Oil Field, discovered on October 5, 1930 is located in east central part of the state, and is the largest and most prolific oil reservoir in the contiguous United States. Other oil fields were later discovered in West Texas and under the Gulf of Mexico.

The longest-running concert music program on American television

Austin City Limits, is videotaped on The University of Texas at Austin campus. Austin City Limits and Waterloo Records run the Austin City Limits Music Festival, an annual music and art festival held at Zilker Park in Austin

Texas climate

Continental, Mountain, and Modified Marine are the three major climatic types of Texas

Orthographic

Earth's features are shown on a circle, which is tangent to the globe at any point chosen by the mapmaker. Generates a circular, 3D-appearing map similar to how Earth is seen from space.

Globe

Earth's features are shown on a sphere. No distortion of distances, directions, or areas occurs

Encyclopedias Foundations, Skills, Research, and Instruction

Encyclopedias are ideal for getting background information on a topic. They provide an overview of the topic, and link it to other concepts that can provide additional keywords, information, or subjects. They can help students narrow their topic by showing the sub-topics within the overall topic, and by relating it to other topics. Encyclopedias are often more useful than the Internet because they provide a clearly organized, concise overview of material.

Stephen F. Austin (1793-1836)

Farther of Texas

Texas joined the United States and received statehood

February 28, 1845, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that would authorize the United States to annex the Republic of Texas and on March 1 U.S. President John Tyler signed the bill. The legislation set the date for annexation for December 29, 1845. (On October 13, 1845 Texas Republic majority of voters approved a proposed constitution that specifically endorsed slavery and the slave trade. This constitution was later accepted by the U.S. Congress, making Texas a U.S. state on the same day annexation took effect)

Legacies of Spanish Texas

Forty-two of the 254 counties in Texas bear either Hispanic names, or an Anglicized derivation such as Galveston or a misspelling such as Uvalde.

The Alamo Texas Revolution a declaration of independence

General Santa Anna's entire force of 1,600 men was killed or captured by Texas General Sam Houston's army of 800 Texans; only nine Texans died. This decisive battle resulted in Texas's independence from Mexico.

Capital of Texas in Austin

Is topped by a statue of the "Goddess of Liberty" holding aloft a five-point Texas star. The capitol is also notable for facing south toward Mexico City and for purposefully being built seven feet taller than the U.S. national capitol

gnomonic projections

Maps that preserve the shortest routes

Mercator

Projects Earth's features onto a cylinder wrapped around a globe. Generates a rectangular map that is not distorted at the equator but is greatly distorted near the poles. Lines of latitude and longitude form a square grid.

Robinson

Projects Earth's features onto an oval-looking map. Areas near the poles are truer to size than in the Mercator. Some distortion affects every point

Hispanic population in the United States is concentrated where?

Texas has the second-largest Hispanic population in the United States, behind California in first.

Texas secession from the United States

Texas seceded from the United States on February 1, 1861, and joined the Confederate States of America on March 2, 1861. Texas was mainly a "supply state" for the Confederate forces until mid 1863, when the Union capture of the Mississippi River made large movements of men, horses or cattle impossible. Texas regiments fought in every major battle throughout the war. The last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, was fought in Texas on May 12, 1865.

The Legislature of Texas

The House of Representatives has 150 members, while the Senate has 31. The speaker of the house leads the House, and the lieutenant governor leads the state Senate. The Legislature meets in regular session only once every two years. The Legislature cannot call itself into special session; only the governor may call a special session, and may call as many sessions as often as desired.

Texas Governor Power

The governor commands the state militia and can veto bills passed by the Legislature and call special sessions of the Legislature (this power is exclusive to the governor and can be exercised as often as desired). The governor also appoints members of various executive boards and fills judicial vacancies between elections.

Race and ethnic origins in Texas

The largest reported ancestry groups in Texas include: Mexican (25.3%), German (10.9%), African American (10.5%), English (7.2%), and Scots-Irish (7.2%).

Mexico war of independence in 1821

The period begins with Mexico's victory over Spain

Physical geography of Texas

With 10 climatic regions, 14 soil regions, and 11 distinct ecological regions, classifying regions becomes problematic with differences in soils, topography, geology, rainfall, and plant and animal communities. Texas has five state forests and 120 state parks for a total of over 605,000 acres. There are 3,700 named streams and 15 major river systems flowing through 191,000 miles of Texas. Eventually emptying into seven major estuaries, these rivers support over 212 reservoirs.

In 1835, Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna

abolished the Mexican Constitution of 1824 and sought to centralize national power in Mexico City. This caused much political unrest throughout Mexico, an example of which was the rebellion and resulting massacre in Zacatecas. As a result, the new government's efforts to tighten political and economic control over the territory of Texas would only rouse emotions in the Texian settlers and local Tejanos, leading to the Texas Revolution.

map legend

an area that provides interpretation information such as the key, the scale, and how to interpret the map. It will provide information about the types of natural, political, or cultural features on a map.

Tables

are a type of chart that divides textual information into rows and columns. Each row and column represents a characteristic of the information.

Generalizations

are blanket statements that apply to a wide number of examples. May be flagged by words such as all, most, none, many, several, sometimes, often, never, overall, or in general.

Interior Lowlands of Texas

are bounded by the Caprock Escarpment to the west, the Edwards Plateau to the south, and the Eastern Cross Timbers to the east. This area includes the North Central Plains around the cities of Abilene and Wichita Falls, the Western Cross Timbers to the west of Fort Worth, the Grand Prairie, and the Eastern Cross Timbers to the east of Dallas.

Venn diagrams

are commonly used to organize information, showing non-overlapping clouds filled with information about the different characteristics of A and B, and the overlapping area shows ways in which A and B are the same.

Political cartoons

are drawings that memorably convey an opinion. It has captions that help describe the action or put it in context. It employ caricature to call attention to a situation or a person. When interpreting students should examine what issue is being discussed, what elements the artist chose to support his or her point, and what the message is

Texas Executive Branch

are officials that are elected which consists of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller of Public Accounts, Land Commissioner, Attorney General, Agriculture Commissioner, the three-member Texas Railroad Commission, the State Board of Education. Exception the secretary of state— is appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Cause-and-effect relationships

are simply linkages between an event that happened because of some other event. There are always chronologically ordered after causes. These can be helpful for showing the order of events in time or the relationships between similar events. They help make the passage of time a concrete concept, and show that large periods pass between some events, and other events cluster very closely.

facts

are true statements that everyone agrees on, such as an object's name or a statement about a historical event. Are related to words like is, did, or saw.

Almanacs Foundations, Skills, Research, and Instruction

are volumes of facts published annually. They provide numerical information on just about every topic, and are organized by subject or geographic region. They are often helpful for supporting arguments made using other resources, and do not provide any interpretation of their own.

Texas Arts and Theatre

arts, the Houston Theater District—a 17-block area in the heart of Downtown Houston—is ranked second in the country (behind New York City) in the number of theater seats in a concentrated downtown area with 12,948 seats for live performances and 1,480 movie seats.

Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition 19th century Texas

attempted to separate Texas from the Spanish Empire. In response the Spanish government in Mexico ordered a virtual genocide of the entire Tejano-American population and any of their collaborators amongst the Tejano-Spanish population. The result was the utter devastation of Texas which left it with a population size it had at the beginning of the 18th century. Spanish Texas was a failing colonial policy.

Bibliographies

bound collections of references to periodicals and books, organized by topic. provides a branching network of information a student can follow. When in textbooks or other journal articles, the references in them are chosen to support the author's point of view, and so may be limited in scope.

Ideas or opinions

can be effectively conveyed in political cartoons

Effects

can be found by asking why something happened, or looking for information following words like so, consequently, since, because, therefore, this led to, as a result, and thus. Can be found by asking what happened.

Datasets and texts

can provide more specific information about events that can be hypothesized from maps. This specific information may provide dates of significant events

electronic resources

can provide primary-source multimedia video, audio, or other visual information on a topic that would not be accessible in print.

Texas county judge

does not have the authority to veto a decision of the commissioners court; the judge votes along with the commissioners. In smaller counties, the county judge actually does perform judicial duties, but in larger counties the judge's role is limited to serving on the commissioners court. Certain officials, such as the sheriff and tax collector, are elected separately by the voters, but the commissioners court determines their office budgets and sets overall county policy. All county elections are partisan.

Diagrams

drawings that show the progression of events. They have arrows connecting the events or boxes shown. The drawings can be fairly schematic, as in a flow chart, or they can be quite detailed, as in a depiction of scenes from a battle.

chronologically

each piece of information must be associated with a time or a date. Events are ordered according to the time or date at which they happened. This can put the event in question into perspective, showing how a certain thing might have happened based on preceding history

Artifacts

everyday objects used by previous cultures, are useful for understanding life in those cultures. Students should first discover, or be provided with, a description of the item. For example, analysis of coins from an early American archaeological site might show that settlers brought coins with them, or that some classes of residents were wealthy, or that trade occurred with many different nations.

Lorenzo de Zavala (1788-1836

first vice-president of the Republic of Texas and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence

The Modern museum

founded in 1892, is the oldest art museum in Texas.

The name Texas derives

from táysha, a word in the Caddoan language of the Hasinai, which means "friends" or "allies".

map key

he area that defines symbols, abbreviations, and color schemes used on the map. Any feature identified on the map should be defined in the key

Internal politics of the Texas Republic

he nationalist faction, led by Mirabeau B. Lamar advocated the continued independence of Texas, the expulsion of the Native Americans, and the expansion of Texas to the Pacific Ocean. VS opponents, led by Sam Houston, advocated the annexation of Texas to the United States and peaceful coexistence with Native Americans

Identifying main ideas

in a paragraph are often found in the topic sentence, which is usually the first or second sentence in the paragraph. Every following sentence in the paragraph should relate to that initial information. This common theme is the main idea of the paragraph

Native American tribes that lived inside the boundaries of present-day Texas

include the Alabama, Apache, Atakapan, Bidai, Caddo, Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Cherokee, Choctaw, Coushatta, Hasinai, Jumano, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Tonkawa, and Wichita. KARANKAWA INDIANS. The Karankawas' entrance into the historical record in 1528 represents the first recorded contact between Europeans and Texas Indians.The Karankawas, who had managed to survive 300 years of European contact, ultimately fell victim to rapid American colonization and direct exterminatory warfare. The now-extinct Karankawa Indians played an important role in the early history of Texas. They obtained food by a combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Fish, shellfish, and turtles were staples of the Karankawa diet, but a wide variety of animals and plants contributed to their sustenance.Karankawas reportedly kept dogs that were described as a fox-like or coyote-like breed.Their principal means of transportation was the dugout canoe, a crude watercraft made by hollowing out the trunk of a large tree. Those primitive dugouts, unsuited for deep, open water, were used primarily in the relatively shallow waters between the islands and the mainland. Each canoe was spacious enough to carry an entire family along with their household goods. The Karankawas traveled overland by foot, and were often described as powerful runners, as well as expert swimmers.

Great Plains of Texas

include the Llano Estacado, the Panhandle, Edwards Plateau, Toyah Basin, and the Llano Uplift. It is bordered on the east by the Caprock Escarpment in the panhandle and by the Balcones Fault to the southeast. Cities in this region include Austin, San Angelo, Midland and Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo.

Comparing similarities and differences

involves mentally setting two concepts next to each other and then listing the ways they are the same and the ways they are different. This can be done by listing written descriptions in a point-by-point approach, or they can be done in several graphic ways

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

is America's largest rodeo.

map scale

is a feature of the map legend that tells how distance on the map relates to distance on the ground. It can either be presented mathematically in a ratio or visually with a line segment.

disadvantage of chronological organization

is that it may not highlight important events clearly relative to less important events.

Cartographic distortion

is the distortion caused by projecting a three-dimensional structure, in this case the surface of the earth, onto the two-dimensional surface of a map

Guadalupe Peak, at 8,749 feet above sea level

is the highest point in Texas.

Texas Constitution, adopted in 1876,

is the second oldest state constitution still in effect. As with many state constitutions, it explicitly provides for the separation of powers and incorporates its bill of rights directly into the text of the constitution (as Article I). The bill of rights is considerably lengthier and more detailed than the federal Bill of Rights, and includes some provisions unique to Texas

Research questions or hypotheses

may address such an unknown aspect, or they may focus on drawing parallels between similar, well-researched topics that have not been connected before. It tend to be more specific than research questions.

text includes numeric information

may be converted into a chart that shows the size of groups, connects ideas in a table or graphic, or shows information in a hybridized format.

Text-only information

may be most easily summarized in a diagram or a timeline

Cultural features

may include roads and railroads, but might also include historic areas, museums, archaeological digs, early settlements and even campgrounds.

Periodicals

provide current information on social science events, but they too must be screened for bias they have tighter editorial standards than electronic resources. they can also provide primary-source information with interviews and photographs.

Electronic encyclopedias

provide excellent overview information, but publicly edited resources like Wikipedia are open to error, rapid change, incompleteness, or bias.

Primary resources Foundations, Skills, Research, and Instruction

provide information about an event from the perspective of people who were present at the event. They might be letters, autobiographies, interviews, speeches, artworks, or anything created by people with first-hand experience. Primary resources are valuable because they provide not only facts about the event, but also information about the surrounding circumstances.

Secondary resourcesFoundations, Skills, Research, and Instruction

provide information about an event, but were not written at the time the event occurred. They draw information from primary sources. Because secondary sources were written later, they have the added advantage of historical perspective, multiple points of view, or resultant outcomes. News-magazines that write about an event even a week after it occurred count as secondary sources. Secondary sources tend to analyze events more effectively or thoroughly than primary sources.

Gulf Coastal Plains of Texas

range from the Gulf of Mexico inland to the Balcones Fault and the Eastern Cross Timbers. This large area stretches from the cities of Paris to San Antonio to Del Rio but shows a large variety in vegetation

Mirabeau B. Lamar (1798-1859),

second President of Republic of Texas

Graphs

show numeric information on both axes. Advantage is that population during the time in between censuses can be estimated by locating that point on the graph

longitude

shows how far a location is east or west from the earth's prime meridian. It runs 180 E (international date line) - 0 (prime meridian) - 180 W (international date line)

Latitude

shows how far a location is north or south from the earth's equator. It runs from 90 N (North Pole) - 0 (equator) - 90 S (South Pole

Countries Texas has been apart of

six independent countries: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the United States

Quanah Parker

son of Comanche chief and an Anglo American Women; fought as a leader in the Frontiers Wars; devoted to making life better for his people

The Basin and Range Province in extreme western Texas

stretches west of the Pecos River beginning with the Davis Mountains on the east and the Rio Grande to its west and south. The Trans-Pecos region is the only part of Texas regarded as mountainous and includes seven named peaks in elevation greater than 8,000 feet. With less than 12 inches annual rainfall, this region includes sand hills, desert valleys, wooded mountain slopes and desert grasslands.The vegetation diversity includes at least 268 grass species and 447 species of woody plants.

Political features

such as state and county divisions or roads and railroads can be compared numerically, but examining their geographic distribution may be more informative. This provides information on settlement density and population. In addition, road and railroad density may show regions of intense urbanization, agricultural regions, or industrial centers

Natural features

such as waterways, wetlands, beaches, deserts, mountains, highlands and plains can be compared between regions by type, number,distribution, or any other physical characteristic.

Texas in the 1820s and 1830s population

was very sparse and the Mexican government had difficulty in attracting Mexicans to the area. Thus, in order to populate and develop the area Mexico sought settlers from Europe and especially the neighboring United States. When Mexico reached an agreement with Stephen F. Austin, it allowed several hundred families from the United States, known as Texians, to move into the region. Thousands of additional settlers soon flooded into Texas. When Mexico abolished slavery nationwide, some immigrants from the U.S. refused to comply with the law. This was coupled with complaints about the tightening political and economic control over the territory by the central government in Mexico City, which expected its citizens to be members in good standing of the Catholic Church, whereas the settlers from the United States were Protestant.

The first Europeans established in the main part of Texas

were the French.

Texas comptroller decides

whether expected state income is sufficient to cover the proposed state budget.