Southwestern Regional Cookery: Texas

Before Spanish explorers visited Texas in the early sixteenth century, Native American tribes lived in the region, most of them nomadic hunter-gatherers or semisedentary peoples. Because they were not settled agriculturalists, they received scant attention for Spanish missionary efforts, and Spain made no effort to colonize until the French explorer René-Robert La Salle attempted to establish a colony along the Gulf Coast in 1685. Galvanized by the threat of a foreign presence in territory that Spain had claimed, Spanish officials determined to settle Texas. By 1693 an early attempt had failed, and settlements in modern Texas date from 1716 to 1731.