Texas is well known to everyone as the setting for Indian tales and Wild West romances and most have also heard of the oil wells and sulfur pits, cattle herds, and cotton fields that secure it a place in the world economy. But who knows anything about the fact that in the vast areas that stretch between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande deep into the Plains, historical events as charming as they are significant to have taken place, that Texas also has a place in world history? And yet it does! Texas has by no means led an insular existence far removed from the course of great events, but has stood in the midst of the force field of the manifold political tensions which determined the development of the North American continent. Against the backdrop of its wildernesses and prairies, an eventful, colorful and turbulent historical spectacle unfolded, telling of the doings and activities of many men and nations, of a world full of wild, harsh sounds, shrouded in the air of an adventurous romanticism known only to the colonial and frontier era of North America. The curses of Spanish soldiers and the prayers of Spanish monks are mixed with the voices of French rangers and the war cries of Indian horsemen until all these sounds are drowned out by the ax-blow of Anglo-Saxon pioneers who penetrate the fertile plains and valleys of the country with the strength of rolled-up shirt-sleeves.