The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923 Page: 30

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

SOME ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF WEST AND
NORTHWEST TEXAS SINCE 1845
R. C. CRANE
While West and Northwest Texas were settled and developed
after Texas had ceased to be a republic and had become a state
of the Union, yet that settlement and development came under
conditions and policies inherited from the republic.
The fixed and almost uniform policy of the people of our coun-
try from the earliest colonial adjustments with the aborigines had
been one of agreement by treaty regarding boundaries and mutual
rights and relations. President Sam Houston in his first term
had followed that policy for Texas with the result that little trouble
was experienced with the Indians in the young republic during
that administration; but President Lamar, following him, fixed on
Texas for all time the policy of warfare on the Indian and expul-
sion from Texas, or extermination.
For nearly forty years West and Northwest Texas felt the ill
effects of that policy; and the consequent animosity always exist-
ing between settlers and Indians in Texas had a marked effect in
delaying the settlement and development of those regions of the
state especially.
Nearly every other part of Texas was settled under a system of
land laws under which the first colonists were granted their homes
at the rate of a league to the family and a third of a league to the
single person. Several million additional acres were granted for
military and other services. Later, settlers were granted smaller
-tracts conditioned on occupancy.
But the settlement and development of that part of the state in
question had its commencement after Texas became a state, and
-under conditions materially different; and its history (including
the Panhandle) is as distinct, and its growth and development
especially during the past forty years just as phenomenal as had
been that of any other part of the state. By coming into the
Union, Texas had a right to look to the general government and
its army for protection against the Indian and his depredations.
And yet that the history of this region is peculiar to itself, calling