Tamaulipas - History

History

The area known as Tamaulipas has been inhabited for at least 8,000 years. Several different cultures (north coastal, south coastal, lowlands, and mountains) have come and gone during that period.

Tamaulipas was originally populated by the Olmec people and later by Chichimec and Huastec tribes. Between 1445 and 1466, Mexica (or Aztec) armies commanded by Moctezuma I Ilhuicamina conquered much of the territory and transformed it into a tributary region for the Mexica empire. However, the Aztecs never fully conquered certain mostly nomadic indigenous groups in the area.

Although Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs rather quickly, it took a gradual process for Spain to subjugate the inhabitants of Tamaulipas in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first permanent Spanish settlement in the area was Tampico in 1554. Further settlement was done by Franciscan missionaries, widespread cattle and sheep ranching by the Spanish bolstered the area’s economy while forcing native populations from their original lands. Repeated indigenous rebellions kept the area unstable and weakened colonial interest in the region. What is now Tamaulipas was first incorporated as a separate province of New Spain in 1746 with the name Nuevo Santander. The local government capital during this time moved from Santander to San Carlos, and finally to Aguayo. The territory of this time spanned from the San Antonio river to the north east to the Gulf of Mexico, then south to the Panuco River near Tampico and west to the Sierra Madre Mountains. This area became a haven for rebellious Indians who fled here after increased Spanish settlements in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila.

In the middle 17th century various Apache bands from the southern Plains, after acquiring horses from Spaniards in New Mexico, moved southeastward into the Edwards Plateau, displacing the native hunting and gathering groups. One of these groups was known as Lipan (see Hodge 1907 Vol. I:769 for a confusing list of synonyms). After 1750, when most Apache groups of the central Texas highlands were displaced by Comanche and moved into the coastal plain of southern Texas, the Spaniards of the San Antonio area began referring to all Apache groups in southern Texas as Lipan or Lipan Apache (Campbell and Campbell 1981:62-64).

Many Indian groups of missions in southern Texas and northeastern Mexico had recently been displaced from their territory through the southward push by the Lipan Apaches and were still hostile toward Apaches, linking arms with the local Spanish authorities against their common foe.

By 1790 Spaniards turned their attention from the aboriginal groups and focused o­n containing the Apache invaders. In northeastern Coahuila and adjacent Texas, Spanish and Apache displacements created an unusual ethnic mix. Here the local Indians mixed with displaced groups from Coahuila and Chihuahua and Texas. Some groups, to escape the pressure, combined and migrated north into the Central Texas highlands.