Today, the outline of Texas is familiar enough to be a well-known image, an icon. The shape has also become a symbol, that is, something concrete implying a much larger idea which can raise strong feelings. The curves and straight lines of the Texas border serve as neon signs, billboards, book covers, television images, packages, and brochures to advertise calculators, trash bags, insurance agencies, cigars, houses, used cars, railroads, cans of beans, clothing, cosmetics, and the state itself. The gloriously uncopyrighted shape of Texas has become swimming pools, cakes, masks, hats, shirts, piñatas, buildings, evergreen topiaries, sculpture, and balloons.

The Texas outline can be shown to most people even as a mirror image and still be recognized, which is more than an artist designing a logo can hope for.

Likewise, the name is recognized internationally. In many places, a person can say “Texas” with nearly as much understanding as “United States.” The Spanish commonly used the word Texas since the beginning of the 18^th century, and subsequent events recorded the name in the minds of millions of people. The name is used in such compounds as “GTT” (“gone to Texas,” a common euphemism for escaping crushing debt or an onerous family through a quick move west over a century ago), “Texas-sized,” “Texas leaguer,” “Texas tower,” “Texas deck,” and “Texas bedbug,” among scores of others.

And, with or without the name, the map’s outline has been etched in discovery, forged in war and revolution, bent by agreement and disagreement between governments, and even drawn by local accord.

The shape has shifted. Modern boundaries date from 1850, when the state ceded a huge slice of western land to the United States in return for substantial relief from public debt that was a legacy of the Republic of Texas.

In 1850 it was a matter of little concern that the recently defunct Republic of Texas never occupied or held—with either political or military power—western lands stretching to present-day Wyoming. It was enough that the United States, wanting northern Mexico one way or another and having the best army in the continent, had earlier validated the claim.

Thus, the vast lands of the Republic of Texas, mostly paper claims appropriated by the new State of Texas, were geometrically reduced by the Compromise of 1850 to the familiar shape of today.

But the shape and the name took a while to form.

Human occupation of the land that became today’s Texas began, of course, during what later people called “prehistoric” times—that is, before written record. The Native Americans, themselves immigrants and settlers, had many names for the land. But these groups were numerous, and none in the “Texas”" area apparently had what Europeans would call written languages. Oral stories, painted records, pictographs, they had. But because of the near-total destruction of indigenous groups in Texas, only guesses can be made as to what they called the lands of their homes and journeys.

But all humans name their land, even if they feel they do not possess it. Some groups give local names to springs, rivers, mountains, valleys…and human cultures that form complex political systems usually call the region they control by the name of a prominent physical feature, a notable king, or a convenient god.

In Texas, few of these names remain. Native American groups in Texas were fairly small—even in the case of well-developed Caddo confederacies—and no match for European conquest and disease. European explorers and colonists did, on occasion, record local names, but within a haze of confusion and ignorance and through the distorting lenses of different languages. Besides, the first Europeans to arrive did not have the object of preserving native culture.

Still, some local names were transliterated into Spanish and French, the first two significant European languages in Texas. But the Native American names, for the most part, were lost except in the fragile memory of descendants.

The Spanish, in particular and with few exceptions, were interested in Europeanizing the natives—or driving them away through military action if that failed—not in preserving languages. Yet the Spanish picked up a word that stuck: Texas.

What happened is not precisely known. Spanish missionaries and soldiers around 1690 heard the word “tejas,” or something like this, as used in the Hasinai confederacy—one of several Caddo alliances—near the Sabine River. The word, as the Spanish understood it, meant either a group of people or the ideas of “friendship” or “alliance” among the Caddos. The “kingdom of the Texas” was a phrase used in early European record—perhaps meaning nothing more exact than the “kingdom of the allies.”

Only as a coincidence, it seems, was a similar word encountered by the Spanish on the high plains. In the 17^th century, Spanish explorers recorded the name “Teyas” for a group of natives met in the eastern Panhandle. They may have been a western Caddo group who had taken up the ways of high plains life, or they may have been Apache. But the name Teyas did not attach itself to the land.

After 1690 the land of present-day East Texas—and certain native groups as the Spanish saw them—became either “Texas” or “Tejas.”

And, by this time, the Spanish had called the land Amichel, the New Philippines, and Florida. The French, in their disputes with the Spanish, often insisted on Louisiana. Modern borders overlap the Spanish areas of Nuevo Santander, Nuevo León, Coahuila, New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Santa Fe. Spanish Texas was not considered a part of the original New Spain but was a province, part of the Provincias Internas; later, under Mexico, the Department of Texas was part of a compound state with Coahuila.

Texas it became.

But the borders were slow to be defined—even though some were drawn in the early 18^th century. Reacting to what the Spanish saw as the threat of the French encroaching from the east (what the French considered simply a move into their own territory), Spanish military convoys marched into the area east of the Sabine River with missionaries, supplies, livestock, and brave plans. To go as far as the Mississippi—effectively held by France—would have been pushing things.

Thus, the first European, Spanish capital of Texas was established east of the Sabine River near present-day Robeline, Louisiana. Los Adaes was never a large place. This settlement, capital of Texas from 1729 to 1773, was mainly a Spanish outpost intended to establish the edge of empire.

The border between the claims of Spain and France, west of the Mississippi, was arguable. For France, even though La Salle had appeared in Texas in 1685, a claim beyond the drainage of the Mississippi was a stretch. Some French maps, through an ignorance of geography or hopeful politics, moved the Mississippi River next to the Rio Grande. Other maps drained all Texas rivers into the Mississippi. Such cartographic fantasy was convenient but ineffective. Spain put the best geographical survey teams on the Texas coast and, with a bit of military presence and a few settlers, carried the day.

The Rio (or Arroyo) Hondo, barely east of Los Adaes and just short of the Mississippi, marked the not-quite-agreed-on boundary of Spain, and therefore Texas. By most reckoning, the border departed the Hondo on an arbitrary line to the Calcasieu River and thence south to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1721 the Spanish presidio at Los Adaes and the French trading center at Natchitoches were separated by a morning’s horseback ride.

The Red River perhaps marked the northern boundary, but French traders and Spanish soldiers were on both sides in insufficient numbers to stop each other, so that line was best left indefinite.

Then, in 1762, Spain received France’s New World claims to the west of the Mississippi (as Great Britain assumed France’s claims to the east and north). This result of Europe’s Seven Years’ War (part of which was called the French and Indian War in British North America) resolved Spain’s argument with France. To the east, the Arroyo Hondo still served as the boundary between Louisiana and New Orleans (now under the capitancy-general of Cuba) and Texas—which was regarded as a province, a part of the Provincias Internas—Spain’s frontier.

Los Adaes, no longer necessary as a frontier guardpost, was ordered abandoned in 1772. In the next year, the provincial capital was transferred to San Antonio de Béxar.

By 1800, however, Napoléon Bonaparte, then in his ascendancy of power, convinced Charles IV of Spain to return the Louisiana property. Charles apparently had a verbal commitment that France would never transfer the land to another country. But in a movement of consolidation, indifference, economic need, and to avoid a United States-Great Britain alliance, Napoleon sold the entire territory to the young United States.

Without clearly defined boundaries, at least 529,920,000 acres of land was sold to the United States for $27,267,622. A bargain…and a new frontier condition for an irritated Spanish government.

Thereupon, United States President Thomas Jefferson, recalling French claims, suggested the Rio Grande as the nation’s border. Naturally, Spain recognized the threat, and armies were readied on both sides. Spain, while once again putting the best historians in the archives and the most accurate surveyors in the field, prudently moved an army east of the Sabine to meet an expected invasion from the United States.

A war boiling from the historical claims of Spain and the expansionist desires of the United States seemed inevitable to diplomats, but local wit stabilized the day. Simón Herrera and James Wilkinson, the Spanish and United States military field commanders at the border, agreed on a neutral ground. From 1806 land between the Sabine River and the Hondo and Calcasieu was to be considered neutral and free from either government’s entry or control—until things could be worked out.

Things were not worked out, and the land remained the Neutral Ground until 1819. In spite of two agreed-upon, joint military patrols in 1810 and 1812, the ground was a haven for criminals, pirates, and deserters.

From 1803 to 1819, even less was done about the northwestern boundary. Neither the United States nor Spain could quickly put a decisive military presence into this land occupied by Native Americans who were occasionally well armed, a handful of illegal traders who would oppose anyone, a few hardy settlers who wished to remain anonymous, and a fair number of bear, buffalo, and wildcats.

The Spanish considered the southwestern border between Coahuila/Nuevo Estremadura and Texas to be the Medina River; the Nueces River was the border between Nuevo Santander and Texas. On some maps in 1805, the western limit of Texas was defined from the headwaters of the Medina to the San Saba, then northwest to the intersection of 32⁰ North and 103⁰ West. From that point, the border ran back northeast to the intersection of the Red River and 100⁰ West.

But the western border of Texas was seldom carefully defined. It was a rather vague line wandering to the Red River. Often enough in these days, the legal boundaries in written descriptions crossed or never closed an area due to an ignorance of the land.

In 1819 the United States and Spain came to a slow accord about their common boundary. The Adams-Onís Treaty set the eastern boundary of Texas at the western bank of the Sabine River, extending to the north until the river’s intersection with the 32^nd parallel of latitude and at that point due north to the Red River.

The Adams-Onís Treaty also defined part of the northern borders of future Texas. The treaty line continued up the Red River to 100⁰ W, then north on that line of longitude to the Arkansas River and west to the river’s source, then due north to the 42^nd line of latitude. From that point the international boundary ran west to the Pacific. Spain gave up its claims to the far northwest but retained Texas. And Texas acquired the eastern edge of a future panhandle.

But there were complications to the treaty. Spain delayed ratification and, in 1821, Mexico established, very successfully, its independence from Spain. The new government refused the United States’ request to recognize the boundary. By 1828 Mexico had agreed only to a survey of the line. Although no one could organize a reliable survey effort, the Mexican government accepted the line in 1832 in the light of some opinion—from commentators in the United States—that the Neches River should be the eastern boundary of Texas.

During these years, a number of significant colonial and political events transpired which could have affected the border of Texas but did not. In 1811 the insurrection of Juan Bautista de las Casas briefly held sway over a Texas independent of Spain, but royalists quickly regained control. In 1813 another attempt at independence was made when a band of revolutionaries led by José Bernardo Gutiérrrez de Lara and Augustus W. Magee entered Texas from the United States’ side. They captured Nacogdoches, La Bahía, and the capital of San Antonio, then issued the first formal “Declaration of Independence of the State of Texas” with a constitution. No borders were changed—borders being the least of anyone’s problems—and shortly, a Royalist army recaptured San Antonio and ended the independent “state.”

The European population of Texas—never large—decreased sharply after the bloody vengeance of the Spanish troops; and by 1821, as Mexico, the government was ready for colonists from anywhere—even the United States.

Briefly in 1824 Texas was part of a triple state—Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Texas—but shortly Nuevo León was separated, and Saltillo became the capital of Coahuila and Texas. This was a huge area stretching some 800 miles from southwest to northeast. The political union endured for over a decade.

As part of Coahuila y Texas, Texas was first considered a Department, then, by 1827, as three departments: Bexar, Brazos, and Nacogdoches. Later, Monclova became the capital city, but this move—and subsequent confusions of political and military coups—did not affect the outer boundaries of Texas.

Various citizens from Monclova to San Antonio de Béxar advocated the separation of Texas from Coahuila, but the matter did not come to pass until the successful Texas Revolution of 1836.

And the government of the new Republic of Texas, in December of 1836, claimed the Rio Grande as the southern border. One origin of this rather startling claim was probably the treaties of Velasco which, after the 1836 Mexican defeat in Texas, called for the removal of the Mexican army beyond the Rio Grande while Texas officials agreed to make no claim south of that river.

Even though the legislatures of Texas and Mexico did not approve the treaties, even though the wording was ambiguous, the Rio Grande became the border—from the viewpoint of the Republic of Texas. This claim was later approved by the United States which, in anticipation of the Mexican War, put troops into southern Texas even before the republic had become the 28^th U.S. state.

Such a military move, into an area that had been part of Nuevo Santander under Spain and part of Tamaulipas later under Mexico, was seen by Mexican officials as an invasion of the homeland, not just a disputed province or a temporarily independent rebellious state. But from the Texian side and the United States’ position, the expansive claims of the Republic of Texas were valid. Most United States and Texas citizens, delayed only by the question of slavery in efforts toward annexation, found borders at the Rio Grande—to its source and thence north to the old Adams-Onís line—very convenient. The fact that land south of the Nueces River and to the west had never been a part of Spanish or Mexican Texas was swept aside.

And the Mexican War, as it was called to the north, settled the question. The shape of Texas became, officially at least and for a very short time, the “Republic of Texas” area, which included even Santa Fe. New Mexico citizens of European descent, with a heritage a century older than the Spanish settlement of Texas, naturally objected.

After the Mexican War—and in the politics of the day dealing with the swath of Mexico which is now the present U.S. Southwest extending to the Pacific—Texas ceded its near-imaginary rights to the far west. After the Mexican War, United States troops, not Texan, occupied New Mexico. Texas promptly named the area Santa Fe County, but locals disputed the claim. Arguments in the United States and Texas approached armed conflict, but a second revolution was avoided. By the Compromise of 1850, the southern border (an international border) extended up the Rio Grande to near El Paso at the 32^nd parallel. The new state border then ran back east to the 103^rd line of longitude and on that, north, to 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude and on that, east, to the 100^th line of longitude. There, the line ran south to the Red River.

The line of 36^° 30” was chosen because Texas was a slave state, and that line was an extension of the Missouri Compromise line between slave and free territory established in 1820 to cover Louisiana Purchase lands.

The Compromise of 1850 could have turned out several other ways—mostly seen as incredible shapes by the few people in the present century who have seen the suggested maps. Two of the plans provided for a division of Texas into two or three states as voters might decide.

But after the final version of the Compromise, the general, recognized, modern shape of Texas was fixed.

Almost.

A surveying error at the 103^rd meridian put Texas’s boundary about two miles west of the line. In 1911 this mistake was confirmed by the United States Congress as the true border. Relatively small shifts in the Rio Grande resulted in Texas acquiring 25,000 acres of New Mexico in 1929 and shifted a few thousand acres of land between the United States and Mexico in 1933. Map and survey errors had misplaced the 100^th meridian a few thousand feet, Texas lost final claim to the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River, finally agreed to the south bank of the Red River (surveyed as it was in 1819 with preserved oil rights), and reargued the line at the Sabine.

At the Sabine River, the western bank was the clear early line, but this became the middle of the river, under United States law, in 1848. After 1941, however, the border shifted back and forth a few times—at least in the courts—and, in most respects, was reestablished as the geographic middle of the river in 1973. Technicalities, including the line as it runs into the Gulf of Mexico, are still being discussed.

Still, all but a few gunshots were avoided over later details which usually concerned oil rights and new meanders of the Rio Grande. The details did not affect the recognized shape of the modern state as seen on a relatively small map.

That shape has become symbol.