French Colonization of Texas - Legacy

Legacy

Only 15 or 16 people survived the colony. Six of them returned to France, while nine others were captured by the Spanish, including the four children who had been spared by the Karankawa. The children were initially brought to the viceroy of New Spain, the Conde de Galve, who treated them as servants. Two of the boys, Pierre and Jean-Baptiste, later returned to France. Of the remaining Spanish captives, three became Spanish citizens and settled in New Mexico. Although the French colony had been utterly destroyed, Spain feared that another French attempt was inevitable. In response, the Spanish crown for the first time authorized small outposts in eastern Texas and at Pensacola. A fort, Presidio La Bahia, and Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga was built by the Spanish on the site of Fort Saint Louis in 1722.

France did not abandon its claims to Texas until November 3, 1762, when it ceded all of its territory west of the Mississippi River to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. In 1803, three years after Spain had returned Louisiana to France, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States. The original agreement between Spain and France had not explicitly specified the borders of Louisiana, and the descriptions in the documents were ambiguous and contradictory. The United States insisted that its purchase included all of the territory France had claimed, including all of Texas. The dispute was not resolved until the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, in which Spain ceded Florida to the United States in return for the United States' relinquishing its claim on Texas. The official boundary of Texas was set at the Sabine River (the current boundary between Texas and Louisiana), then following the Red and Arkansas Rivers to the 42nd parallel (California's current northern border).