Mary Margaret McAllen Amberson

The history of the Southwest is wild and spectacular, edgy, and sometimes unbelievable. The stories that derive from this region far surpass the fiction it has inspired.

Southwest and Texas history is as rich as the northeastern American tradition we so closely associate with our own lessons in school. However, this history did not start in English colonial America. It began in Mexico, in 1519, after expansionist movements into the Southwest territories led to exploration north into the territories of what would become New Mexico and Texas. Though the English began to colonize the eastern shores in approximately the late 16th century, almost simultaneously Spaniards and others began to enter the Southwest and establish small settlements. These early movements have come to forge the colorful and vivid history of Texas and the borderlands, specifically charged as indigenous cultures met the newly encroaching Europeans, resulting in seismic lifestyle changes and new cultural paradigms revolving around assimilation and survival in a land with little organized law enforcement.

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