Hubler history W. R. Hubler, Jr., M. D

The HUBLER Family in Texas

Texas

The history of Texas is as complex and gargantuan as the state itself. Condensing the Bunyanesque Texan historical enigma is not easy. Recently, prodigious novelist and historgraphic manuscript maestro, James Michener (of Hawaii fame), tried to capture the spirit, geography and history of the state in his novel, Texas, but his tome eventually just rivaled the readability and length of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece, War and Peace, and ended up as a magnificent paperweight--another failed attempt at scaling a slippery slope. Actually, Texas is not just a state; it is a mindset that defies delineation. Condensing Texas is as ethereal as photographing the wind, bottling the aroma of a thought or recording a multi-linguistic marketplace—the essence is there, but defining its soul is the problem. Even though I was born a Yankee, I was reared in Corpus Christi and claim to be a Texan; so, I am proudly biased.

In a nutshell, American Indians controlled Texas until the 19^th century, although “white eyes” claimed ownership. By the 21^st century, Texas has served under six flags, has a kaleidoscope of ethnicities (such as, African-American, Hispanic, European, Slavic, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, and more), polysyllabic linguists (such as, English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, German, and more) diverse occupations (such as, ranching, medical, astrophysics, petroengineering, and more) and divergent religions (such as, Christianity, Judaism, Islamism, atheism, agnosticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and more) in a multifaceted geography (such as, seashores, lakefronts, mountain peaks, deserts, plateaus, brush land, and more) and varied living communities (such as, sprawling cities, desolate deserts, collapsing colonias, monied metropolises, poverty-plagued parts, family farms, and more). Clearly, compression is challenging.

Humans lived in the Texas area 15,000 years ago. Between 1,000 BCE and the arrival of Europeans, several Native American cultures existed in different parts of what is now Texas. A well-developed society existed in the wooded areas of eastern Texas, the Mound Builders (the same industrious culture that populated Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana). They raised corn, beans, squash and tobacco, and built houses of poles, thatch, and mud plaster. They made beautiful pottery and used stone implements.

When the first European explorers arrived, they found settled, agricultural, peaceful Native Americans. The peoples of eastern Texas belonged to the Caddoan linguistic group and were loosely organized into two confederacies, the Caddo of the Texarkana area and the Hasinai on the upper Angelina and Neches rivers. When Spanish explorers first met the Hasinai, the Spaniards were greeted with the word techas, or allies; and the Spanish pronounced the word as Tejas (Texas), and adopted it for both the area and the people. These people lived in small villages with 7 to 15 dome-shaped huts. They were accomplished farmers and raised many different crops. Deer, bears, and fish were plentiful, and these peoples sometimes made long trips to hunt buffalo. Along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico early inhabitants (the Karankawa) lived principally on seafood and practiced ceremonial cannibalism. They made pottery that was waterproofed with asphalt and used dugout canoes to catch seafood from the lagoons along the shore, smearing their bodies with fish oil to repel mosquitoes.

The Spanish were the first Europeans to explore present-day Texas. In 1519, a contengent of the group led by Alonzo Álvarez de Piñeda mapped the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Vera Cruz, spending 40 days at the mouth of the river they named Rio de las Palmas (probably the present-day Río Grande). In 1528, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and other members of an expedition led by Pániflo de Narváez were shipwrecked on the Texas coast. Cabeza de Vaca and three others made their way across Texas, wandered through what would become the southwestern United States, and in 1536 reached a Spanish settlement in Mexico. [The native inhabitants told Cabeza de Vaca tales about cities full of gold and jewels, and in 1540, an expedition led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado marched northward from Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cíbola (actually a village of the Wichita in present-day Kansas) and the city of Quivira (actually a pueblo of the Zuñi people in present-day New Mexico). The group spent much time wandering over the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain, of western Texas and eastern New Mexico in 1541, but returned empty-handed.]

At about the same time, the Spanish adventurer Hernando de Soto was exploring the Mississippi River. After de Soto died of fever, his men tried to reach Mexico by an overland route. They traveled through eastern Texas, but when they reached the plains area, they turned back to the Mississippi. The Spanish lost interest in the territory after the disappointing reports of the two expeditions. In 1682, the Spanish established the first mission in Texas at Ysleta (a village near present-day El Paso) to bring Christianity to the native peoples. In 1685, the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, built Fort Saint Louis near Matagorda Bay and claimed for France all the lands drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries; but soon afterwards, La Salle was killed on another expedition, and the men at the fort died from disease or were killed by the native inhabitants. The French claim alarmed the Spanish, however, and they sent several expeditions to find and destroy the French fort. In 1690, churchmen from these expeditions established the first of several missions among the Tejas people of eastern Texas.

The missions were difficult to maintain and were quickly abandoned. The eastern province of what was called New Spain was ignored until 1714, when a French trading expedition crossed Texas and founded a settlement on the Río Grande near present-day Eagle Pass. Again the Spanish were alarmed by the French activities. In 1716, fearing more French incursions into their territory, the Spanish re-created the eastern Texas mission system and built more than 30 new missions. No official boundary had ever been set between the territories claimed by Spain and those claimed by France, and even when the United States bought the Louisiana territories from the French in 1803, the boundary was still unclear.

Between 1800 and 1820, Spain’s hold on the province of Texas became even more insecure. Although Spain had claimed Texas for more than 300 years, there were only three settlements between the Río Grande and the Sabine rivers: San Antonio, Goliad, and Nacogdoches. Spanish officials realized that more settlers were needed to prevent other countries from trying to claim the land. In 1820, Moses Austin, a United States citizen, asked the Spanish government in Mexico for permission to settle in Texas. Austin died soon after making his request, but his son, Stephen Fuller Austin, was permitted to continue with the project in 1821. Mexico gained its independence from Spain in a revolution that same year, and Austin negotiated a contract with the new government to settle 300 families in Texas. It was the beginning of the empresario system. Empresarios were people who contracted with the Mexican government to bring Roman Catholic settlers to Texas in exchange for 9,300 hectares (23,000 acres) of land for each 100 families that they brought. The first Anglo-American settlements were at Washington and San Felipe de Austin on the Brazos River, and at Columbus on the Lower Colorado River.

From 1821 to 1836, the population of Texas increased to about 50,000. Most of the immigrants were from the southern United States. They only pretended to be Catholic, spoke English, did not have much respect for authority, and refused to assimilate. Most importantly, they brought black slaves with them to cultivate cotton. The Anglo-Americans were worried about promised land titles; and as the population increased, they wanted to be separate from the Mexican state. Mexican officials were too busy with internal political problems to give much attention to the new settlers.

Realizing that there were more Anglo-Americans in Texas than Mexicans, the Mexican government restricted further Anglo-American immigration and prohibited the importation of slaves. A Texan army was quickly gathered, and won a series of battles in the fall of 1835. However, the Texas forces were defeated at the Alamo, a former mission in San Antonio. On March 2, 1836, during the siege of the Alamo, a convention of American Texans met at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declared independence from Mexico. The Texans defeated Santa Anna and his troops at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Santa Anna was captured, and forced to recognize Texas’s independence and to withdraw south of the Río Grande.

The Republic of Texas was beset by many problems, principally financial ones. Although Texas had much land, until it was farmed by settlers little money would be available. Mexico refused to recognize the boundaries of Texas, arguing that the treaty signed by Santa Anna claimed territory that was not part of the original state of Tejas. The republic asserted that the Río Grande from its mouth to its source was the western boundary of the new country, which would have given Texas parts of present-day New Mexico and Colorado. Mexico maintained that the southern boundary of Texas should be the Nueces River and not the Río Grande.

Texas joined the Union on December 29, 1845. Mexico immediately broke off diplomatic relations with the United States. U.S. General (and future U.S. President) Zachary Taylor was ordered to the Río Grande to enforce it as the Texas boundary. [He set up headquarters at Corpus Christi, where W. R. Hubler (1916-1993) settled.] Mexico held that the boundary was the Nueces River, considered Taylor’s advance a provocation and sent troops across the Río Grande. So, Congress declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1846. General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico City, and it fell on September 14, 1847. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, Mexico relinquished its claims to Texas, and the United States acquired land that would become the states of California, Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Slavery accompanied Southern immigrants to Texas, but the plantation system for growing cotton did not penetrate farther than east Texas. Prior to the Civil War, pro-Union sentiment was strong in west Texas (since it neighbored Mexico and needed federal protection against the attacks of Native Americans) and in central Texas (since German settlers opposed slavery). Although the governor,Sam Houston strongly opposed secession, in February 1861, delegates voted to secede and join the Confederate States of America. The majority of Texans supported the Confederacy once secession took place. Few Civil War battles were fought in Texas.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the Southern states that had seceded from the Union were governed by a combination of appointed federal officials and the army until Congress readmitted them to the union. Texas grew rapidly. By 1900, the population of Texas surged over 3 million. In the 1880s, railroads opened new lands across Texas, and farmers flocked to those areas and planted staple crops—wheat, corn, and cotton—encouraged by new mechanical reapers, barbed wire (which helped control wandering cattle), and better farming techniques.

The cattle industry also grew after the Civil War. The Spanish introduced cattle to Texas, but because of the long distance to markets, the cattle had little value. Ranching had been neglected during the Civil War, and vast herds of wild cattle roamed southwestern Texas, where the famed longhorn breed originated. Before the Civil War, cowboys riding horses had rounded up the cattle and driven them from East Texas to Louisiana markets, but after railroads were built from Chicago to Kansas it was possible to send beef to the large Chicago market. The first major cattle drive all the way from Texas to Kansas took place in 1866. [The cattle drives often began with free-roaming head in south texas, where W. R. HUBLER (1916-1993) lived, and cattle outnumbered people when he settled there in 1847.] As the railroads pushed farther west, the cowboys drove their herds to the railroad terminal points, called cow towns. As the railroads pushed west, they opened new land for growing cotton, which could be shipped to Galveston, Houston, or transported to St. Louis and then into the international trade. By 1890, Texas produced more than one-third of the cotton grown in the United States. [When W.R. HUBLER (1916-1993) and his family moved to Corpus Christi in 1947, the 1st bale of the cotton harvest brought a reward to its procreator.]

During World War II, Texas benefited from the rapid construction of defense-related factories. The Gulf Coast became a center of naval activity. [Corpus Christi had one of the world’s largest U. S. Naval bases when W.R. HUBLER (1916-1993) and his family moved to Corpus Christi in 1947, and its station is still important to the economy of the area.] Although some of these military sites were shut down after the war ended, many remained open, providing jobs as the nation geared up for the Cold War, the economic and diplomatic struggle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) that followed World War II.

Although the oil industry was important to the economy of the Gulf Coast, it did not dominate the state’s economy before 1930. The demand for oil and petrochemicals (chemicals based on oil or natural-gas) during and after the war made the strip from Houston to Lake Charles in southwestern Louisiana along the Gulf Coast the most industrialized area in the South.

In the 1960s, the economy of Texas remained centered on oil, defense and agriculture. Oil created new jobs, which attracted new settlers, which in turn encouraged real estate, financial, and manufacturing booms. Farms continued to grow in size, and the 1970 U.S. Census reported that less than 3 percent of the population owned farms. East Texas and west Texas became almost uninhabited, with an occasional island city that served the vast territory. No one discounted the importance of agriculture to the Texas economy, however; somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the state was involved in the $33 billion “agribusiness” industries. Many towns or cities, for example San Antonio, listed military bases as their major employer. In addition, the location of the manned-space center near Houston and the 1958 development of the microchip attracted high-tech defense contractors to the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas. Although the economy was much different than that of prewar Texas, it remained one based on raw materials and defense.

In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, the Texas economy and population grew spectacularly. The price of Texas oil tripled, and Texas oil profits caused real estate prices to soar, construction to skyrocket, and banks to enjoy unprecedented growth. Texas agriculture, however, suffered from the high oil prices, which increased the cost of running machinery and petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Nevertheless, the economic boom brought 2.5 million people to Texas between 1970 and 1985.

In the early 1980s, after world oil demand decreased and the embargo collapsed, oil prices dropped quickly. Real estate and banking fell into a depression that was accented by a reduction in the increase in defense spending, particularly after the end of the Cold War. By the mid-1980s, the Texas economy had been badly damaged.

Beginning in 1989 the state’s economy improved, and lost its reliance on raw materials industries. Service industries, high-tech companies, finance, and trade all prospered in the 1990s. The number of people in trade and trade-related jobs increased, but Texas has also continued to lose petroleum-related and defense jobs. In addition, Texas farmers faced drought conditions in the late 1990s. Texas’s population grew by 1.5 million in the early 1990s, making the state the second largest in the country—after California. In the 1980s and 1990s, the largest immigrant group came from south of the U.S. border, mostly from Mexico, but also from other Latin American countries. Mexican immigration to Texas, both legal and illegal, has made Hispanics the largest minority in the state. Demographers predict that by 2010 Texas will have a population composed of 36.7 percent non-Hispanic whites; 9.5 percent blacks; 45.9 percent Hispanics and 7.9 percent of other racial and ethnic groups.