The Nueces Strip or Wild Horse Desert is the area of South Texas between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande .
7-653: According to the narrative of Spanish missionary Juan Agustín Morfi , there were so many wild horses swarming in the Nueces Strip in 1777 "that their trails make the country, utterly uninhabited by people, look as if it were the most populated in the world". In the 1830s, the Republic of Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border; Mexico claimed the Nueces River (150 mi or 240 km north of
14-621: Is not known, but his admission document into the Convento Grande de San Francisco in Mexico in 1760 records he was 25 at the time, indicating a birth date around 1735. His parents were Juan Morfi, an Irishman, and Maria Antonia Cortina, a Spaniard. He had siblings, but nothing else is known of them with certainty. He arrived in America between 1755 and 1756. He was ordained a Franciscan friar on May 3, 1761. Morfi taught theology at
21-884: The Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco and later at the Convento Grande. He was appointed Chaplain to Teodoro de Croix 's 1777-1778 expedition through the Provincias Internas in the north of New Spain . In 1782 he was elected Guardián of the Convento Grande. Morfi's personal library at his death comprised over a hundred manuscripts and over a hundred books, over eighty of which he had ordered from Spain. He carried forty books during his travels with de Croix. He consulted at least 200 government and Franciscan documents, from 70 different authors, and he added his keen observations to frankly chronicle life in northern New Spain. He wrote in 1782, for instance, that
28-807: The Nueces River. In the Thornton Affair , the Mexican cavalry routed the patrol, killing 16 American soldiers. Juan Agust%C3%ADn Morfi Juan Agustín Morfi was a Franciscan friar, born in Asturias, Spain, in 1735, who died in Mexico, New Spain, in 1783. He is considered the most important chronicler and historian of the New Philippines ; Mariano Errasti ranks Morfi among the most prodigious figures in five centuries of Franciscan work in America. Born in Oviedo , his exact date of birth
35-456: The Nueces. He constructed a makeshift fort (later known as Fort Brown/Fort Texas ) on the banks of the Rio Grande opposite the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas . Mexican forces under General Mariano Arista prepared for war. On April 25, 1846, a 2,000-strong Mexican cavalry detachment attacked a 70-man U.S. patrol that had been sent into the contested territory north of the Rio Grande and south of
42-590: The Rio Grande). The area between the two rivers became known as the Nueces Strip. Both countries invaded it, but neither controlled it nor settled it. It was the scene of the first fighting in the Mexican–American War in 1846. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , signed in 1848, Mexico ceded the Nueces Strip to the U.S. Ever since 1848 the border area has had a reputation for lawlessness and smuggling, and
49-622: Was a main zone of activity of the Texas Rangers . It was also used by enslaved people fleeing on the lesser-known southern route of the Underground Railroad . U.S. President James K. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor and his forces south to the Rio Grande, entering the Nueces Strip. The U.S. claimed the land citing the 1836 Treaties of Velasco . Mexico rejected the treaties and refused to negotiate; it claimed all of Texas. Taylor ignored Mexican demands to withdraw to
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