Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 44

The nonindigenous population of Texas stood at about 500 persons in 1731. It grew to about 3000 during the 1770s and 1780s, and then leaped to about 4000 in 1800. Despite high birth rates, many factors kept this population from growing rapidly. The adversities of frontier life included a high infant‐mortality rate (Figure 2.3), continual warfare with the Indians, farming methods that yielded only a paucity of agricultural foodstuffs, traditional (and by modern standards improper) notions of diet and hygiene, a lack of doctors and hospitals, and periodic waves of virulent diseases. Epidemics such as cholera, which swept through San Antonio in 1780 and took the lives of three people daily, also kept the population’s growth in check.

Other forces, nonetheless, do account for demographic growth. Immigration from the interior of New Spain, much of it sporadic, played a part, as resolute settlers struck out for the Far North. In addition, convicts were occasionally dispatched to the region to help build presidios; in time, the former inmates intermixed with the indigenous population. Still, natural propagation accounted for most of the Tejano population growth.

Figure 2.3 The funeral of an “angel” or baptized infant. Infant mortality rates were high on the frontera.

Source: Theodore Gentilz, Entierro de un Angel, Yanaguana Society Collection, Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library.

Those who peopled Texas in the eighteenth century had a range of ethnic makeups, and they lived with a degree of sexual imbalance, with men outnumbering women. This led presidial soldiers and mestizos (mixed‐bloods who descended from European‐Indian parents) to mix with assimilated Indians, especially those around San Antonio. The process of mestizaje (racial and cultural union involving Europeans, Indians, and some Africans), which dated back to the earliest years of Spain’s contact with the New World civilizations, continued in Texas unabated.

Although the censuses of the 1780s show that españoles (Spaniards) made up about one‐half of the population of the province, those figures are misleading, for the term did not designate undiluted Spanishness. Rather, it served as an all‐embracing label that described relative wealth, social and occupational standing, degree of cultural assimilation, and even the attitudes of the census takers. In reality, few European Spaniards lived in Texas, and those classified as such really belonged in the mestizo category. Even the Canary Islanders had mixed with the rest of the Tejano population within two generations of the founding of San Fernando de Béxar, so that none of them could truly speak of their own racial purity.

Classification regarding “Spanishness” derived from the accepted feeling on the frontier that people of darker skin hues and of mixed blood could “pass” as Spaniards, especially when they had achieved some sort of social standing as ranchers, government officials, or military personnel. Thus, on the frontier, economic success tended to override racial makeup in one’s classification. Lower‐class mestizos and other people of color such as mulattoes and slaves, however, almost always encountered difficulties in achieving the more prestigious status of “Spanish.” However, it was possible for Hispanicized Indians, people of African descent who had attained their freedom, and mulattoes to break through the mestizo stratum.