TEXAS UNDER SPAIN FLAG

Spain established the first European claim to what is now Texas in 1519 when Cortez came to Mexico, and Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda mapped the Texas coastline. A few shipwrecked Spaniards, like Alvar Nunez, Cabeza de Vaca, and explorers such as Coronado, occasionally probed the vast wilderness, but the first Spanish settlement in Texas – the Ysleta Mission near present-day El Paso – was not established until 1681. Until Mexican independence in 1821, other Spanish missions, forts and civil settlements gradually followed. After 1785, the red and yellow striped Spanish flag depicted a shield with a lion (Leon) and a castle (Castile) topped by a crown.

Original flag images are from http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/6flags.htm, accessed March 21, 2005. "Flags of Texas," Handbook of Texas Online at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/FF/msf1.html, accessed March 24, 2005. See alsohttp://www.pinette.net/chris/flags/texas/texflags.html, http://www.pinette.net/chris/flags/texas/sixflags.html.