1900 – The Galveston Hurricane

The city of Galveston sits on Galveston Island which is two miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The island is only about 50 miles from Houston, and it is a part of what are called the barrier islands. The islands sit between the mainland of Texas and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. As such, they often bear the brunt of any storm that arises in the Gulf.  Galveston has a natural harbor and in the early days of Texas was regarded as the best Gulf port site between New Orleans and Veracruz.

Karankawa Indians lived on the island and it is thought to be the most likely location of the shipwreck landing of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528. It received its name in 1785 from José de Evia, who named it in Bernardo de Gálvez, the viceroy of Mexico. Mapmakers then used the name Galveston for the entire island and in 1816 Louis Aury established a naval base at the harbor in order to provide support for the Mexican revolution.

It was during that time when the pirate Jean Laffite, set up a pirate camp called Campeachy to dispose of contraband and provide supplies for the freebooters. In 1821, however, the United States forced Laffite to evacuate. Mexico designated Galveston a port of entry in 1825 and established a small customshouse in 1830. During the Texas Revolution the harbor served as the port for the Texas Navy and the last point of retreat of the Texas government. Following the war Michel B. Menard and a group of investors obtained ownership of 4,605 acres at the harbor to found a town. After platting the land in gridiron fashion and adopting the name Galveston, Menard and his associates began selling town lots on April 20, 1838. The following year the Texas legislature granted incorporation to the city of Galveston with the power to elect town officers. Between that time period and 1900 Galveston struggled during the civil war and then in 1867 the island and town was ravaged by the yellow fever, and it is estimated that 20 people a day died from the disease. Regardless of the hardships, Galveston eventually thrived and in fact, It had the first structure to use electric lighting, the Galveston Pavilion; the first telephone; and the first baseball game in the state. The Galveston News, founded in 1842, is the state's oldest continuing daily newspaper.

Back in the old days, many of us would get up early in the morning, walk out to our front porch and pick up the daily newspaper. It was a ritual, that was how we got our news. Now we don’t do that anymore, most of us turn on our TVs, phones or computers and get our news from there. But back in 1900, on September the 8th, if you were one of the approximately 38,000 people who lived in Galveston, Texas at that time and had awakened early and picked up your morning edition of Galveston News, you would have seen a story, not a headline, but a story on page 3 about a tropical storm that seemed to be roaming about in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s not an unusual type of story for people living along the gulf coast, especially during the month of September. 

However, one thing that made this story a little different was that on Friday, The Weather Bureau, now days known as the National Weather Service, had placed Galveston under a storm warning. The paper also contained a small one column story, that said that great damage had been reported from communities on the Mississippi and Louisiana Coast from the storm. Unfortunately, the story, which had originated in New Orleans at 12:45 AM, was only one paragraph and didn’t really contain much information. 

The local paper did print a story beneath the report that said, "At midnight the moon was shining brightly, and the sky was not as threatening as earlier in the night. The weather bureau had no late advice as to the storm's movements and it may be that the tropical disturbance has changed its course or spent its force before reaching Texas." So based on that type of reporting,

Welcome to a new series from the Hidden History of Texas. In this series I will be discussing the various Extreme Weather Events that have taken place in Texas History. This episode is an introductory one, in which I talk about Texas, what a hurricane is, and then I talk an in-depth look at what took place before, during, and after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane struck the Texas Coast.

Texas is a land of extremes. From the dry deserts of the Trans-Pecos to the humid Gulf Coast, from the rolling Hill Country to the flat prairies, no state in America faces such a wide spectrum of natural fury. The very size and diversity of Texas mean that when disaster comes, it comes in many forms, hurricanes that drown entire cities, flash floods that sweep away homes in the night, tornadoes that reduce downtowns to rubble, droughts that starve farms for years, and even man-made catastrophes born of fire, gas, and explosives.

In no other place is the saying “everything’s bigger in Texas” truer, or more tragic. Disasters here are not just local events. They ripple outward, changing laws, inspiring massive engineering feats, and reshaping the way communities think about safety, survival, and resilience. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the drought of the 1950s, Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and the Kerrville floods of 2025—each stands not only as a story of loss, but also as a turning point in Texas history.

That's the question. Was Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, a great Texas leader or a terrible human being? And are the two ideas necessarily incompatible? Can a person be a terrible human being and still be considered a great leader? Who was Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar?

He was the 2nd president of the Republic of Texas and served from 1838 until 1841. His tenure stands out, at least to me, for two totally contradictory issues. On one hand he absolutely despised the indigenous peoples of Texas and on the other he was a major support of funding public education. Well, public education for white children not all children, but I digress. Lamar was a product of his time.

The story is in the podcast ---

Welcome to the Hidden History of Texas I’m Hank Wilson, and I’m talking about the presidios (or forts) the Spanish established alongside the missions.  I’ll also talk about how the French became involved with Texas and their influence on the Spanish expansion of both missions and presidios. Before I go further, please if you don’t mind subscribing to the podcast, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Once the Spanish decided to expand their territory northward from its base in central Mexico, they knew that in order to be successful, they needed to send more than just missionaries, and so they created the  missions.  They also understood that they needed to send soldiers to protect the missions and they needed civilians to build towns.  The combination of presidio, the mission, and the civil settlement became the major foundation the Spanish used for colonization. Martín Enríquez, who was the fourth viceroy of New Spain (1568–80), is generally given credit with being the first to build presidios in the Southwest. He ordered the construction along the main road from Mexico City northward to Zacatecas of casas fuertes (which is translated to "fortified houses"). Over time the name was changed to presidio (from Latin praesidium, "garrisoned place"). The pattern of the early presidios was learned from the Moors and by the early eighteenth century, when Spaniards settled Texas, the patterns had not changed much.

The Spanish Build Missions

In this episode I want to talk about the missions that the Spanish established when they colonized Texas. I’ll talk about the reasons for the missions, how many were established, and some of the good and the bad that took place in and around the missions. Spanish explorers operated under the philosophy of the three G’s, God, Gold, and Glory, the Spanish missions in Texas are a direct result of that philosophy. How did that come about?

When Spain began to colonize the Americas, it was a Roman Catholic nation. That meant that while there was a King and a Queen (Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile) , they in fact owed their power to Rome and the Catholic Church. 

They had received Papal Dispensation for Marriage: Ferdinand and Isabella were second cousins, and under canon law, their marriage required a papal dispensation (special permission). They obtained this from Pope Sixtus IV. Once they were in power they established what we know as the Spanish Inquisition.

It was founded in 1478 with the aim of suppressing heresy within Spain and its territories. While initially focusing on individuals suspected of practicing non-Catholic beliefs, the Inquisition later targeted forced converts from Judaism and Islam (conversos and Moriscos) who were suspected of secretly practicing their former faiths.

They were granted this power to establish the Inquisition in Castile, when Pope Sixtus IV published a bull granting them the exclusive authority to name inquisitors, although the papacy retained the right to formally appoint the royal nominees.

As defenders of the Catholic Church, they believed that whenever they encountered new peoples, and that goal was to convert the natives to Catholicism.  Missions played a major role in that effort.

Once the Spanish had established settlements in Mexico they turned their vision north, in search of fabled cities of gold and between 1632 and 1793, in order to establish a foothold in their northern most territory, they sent expeditions which all had at least one Spanish friar as a member.  These teams traveled north from Mexico into present-day Texas, where they built dozens of missions and presidios.  A presidio is a military fort and usually was built in very near proximity or at the same location as the mission in order to provide security to the friars and those who lived and worked at the mission.

In all, 26 missions were established and maintained in Texas with various results. According to the Spanish belief system at the time their goals were somewhat noble. Establish Christian enclaves with communal property, labor, worship, political life, and social relations all under the guidance and supervision of the missionaries.  The missionaries and Spanish authorities sought to make life within the mission communities resemble that of any Spanish villages and echo Spanish culture.  To do so, the priests not only taught the Indians religion but also life skills, they felt the native peoples lacked.

They introduced European livestock, fruits, vegetables, and industry into the Texas area.  The introduced a very structured format for day-to-day living including a highly organized routine of prayer, work, training, meals, and relaxation. Now of course in order to round out the training the missionaries also made certain to celebrate religious holidays and they held other types of celebrations.  As I mentioned, the Spanish plan was for the natives to become productive Spanish citizens and to meet that goal they were taught several vocational skills, such as blacksmithing, masonry, carpentry, weaving, and more.

Unfortunately the results didn’t meet the expectations, for several reasons.  The day-to-day life in the missions wasn’t anything the Native Peoples had ever experienced.  The priests supervised all activities in the mission; however, when we look at their methods from our current social beliefs,

The Hidden History of Texas Looking for Gold and Glory – Before I get too far into it today, how about subscribing to the podcast. Tell your friends that you’ve found the coolest place on the net to learn about Texas history. Well maybe not the coolest, but a pretty cool place, thanks I’d appreciate it.

As I’ve discussed in the past, the Spanish presence in the Americas was pretty much an accident. Until Columbus bumped into the islands of Guanahani (Watling Island in the Bahamas) which Columbus named "San Salvador", Cuba, and Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). They had no idea anything or anyone was between them and Asia, remember they were looking for a shortcut route to India. Even then it wasn’t until 1519 when Alonso Álvarez de Pineda mapped the Gulf Coast for the first time that they began to realize they had stumbled upon something far different than what they originally thought. So, what intrigued the Spanish so much about this new continent they encountered?

I’ve talked about how in 1528 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, explored the Gulf Coast and his exploration fell apart. He got shipwrecked and he and some of his crew wandered across present-day Texas and northern Mexico. During their journeys and capture they heard stories from the people about cities or places that were “wealthy”. Now we don’t know exactly what the indigenous people meant by wealth or how they described the various locations, but de Vaca’s later telling of those encounters sparked an interest in what the Spanish called or were labeled the "Seven Cities of Gold" or “the Seven Cities of Cibola” But why? Why would these stories matter to the Spanish?

In the early 8th century Muslims had conquered what is now Spain and Portugal. The story goes that in 714 seven Catholic bishops and their faithful followers fled across the Atlantic to a land known as Antilia, the name of which, incidentally, was the source of the name Antilles, which was initially applied to the West Indian islands of the Caribbean. The story was that when they fled, they took with them vast amounts of wealth, especially in gold and silver and each of the bishops had established a city. The story, or fable, was that those 7 cities were to be found in this ‘new’ country.

However, the Antillean islands failed to produce large quantities of gold and silver, but by 1539 the lands that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions reported on were thought to contain an El Dorado (or The Gold) known as Cíbola. In that year, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza dispatched Fray Marcos de Niza and the African Estevanico to search the area. This exploration cost the life of Estevanico at Háwikuh, the southernmost of the Zuñi pueblos in western New Mexico.

On his return to New Spain (today’s Mexico), Fray Marcos reported that he had seen golden cities, the smallest of which was larger than Mexico City. Today we know that the good frier exaggerated what he saw, why I have no idea, but he definitely didn’t see any golden cities and certainly not one larger than Mexico City would have been at that time. In 1539, Mexico City, then known as Tenochtitlan, was a large and populous city. Estimates for its population ranged from 200,000 to 400,000, so as I said, the good frier was a, as we say, a teller of tall tales.

However, in 1540 a follow-up expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado captured Háwikuh and learned the true nature of it as well as other nearby pueblos. In the following year, disappointed over the failure to find the Seven Cities of Cíbola Coronado launched a futile search for Quivira-(another legendary wealthy city) an undertaking that crossed the Panhandle. His toute took him from Arizona to New Mexico into Texas up to Oklahoma, and finally Kansas. It was there that he did find Quivira, it was situated in what is now central Kansas, now nobody is really certain of its exact location, and most think it was near present-day Lyons or Salina. What did he find?

Welcome to Episode 67 of the Hidden History of Texas – I’ve been discussing the 1st peoples of Texas, those who were here when the Spanish arrived and today, I’m going to discuss The Comanche, Kiowas, Tonkawas.Remember how I discussed some of the differences between the Hunter-gathers tribes (mostly nomadic lifestyle) and the farming tribes (mostly stationary lifestyle). I brought up some of the religious beliefs and how the majority of tribes embraced the idea of a supreme being or multiple gods, and they had creation stories. For agricultural tribes, various ceremonies accompanied the planting and harvesting of crops. Hunter-gatherers often sought the help of spirits before searching for game, which served as food for the tribe.

One of the major tribes of hunter-gatherers was the Comanche. The Comanches started out in the Great Plains and began to migrate south due to pressure from other tribes such as the Blackfeet and Crow. It’s important to remember that throughout human history, groups of people have consistently been replace by other groups who were more powerful. Eventually the Comanche ended up in Texas, where there was abundant game, a warm climate, and an animal that would eventually become almost synonymous with them, the wild mustang.The Comanche inhabited most of the South Plains including much of North, Central, and West Texas, this part of Texas was known as Comanche country, or Comanchería. Once they arrived and settled on the Southern Plains the Utes called them Komántcia, which means "enemy," or, literally, "anyone who wants to fight me all the time." However, they called themselves Nermernuh, or "the People."

We know of as many as 13 different Comanche groups and most likely there were others that were never identified. Several major bands played important roles in recorded Comanche and Texas history. The southernmost band was called Penateka, or "Honey Eaters" and their range extended from the Edwards Plateau to the headwaters of the Central Texas Rivers.

A band named Nokomi or “Those who Turn Back” lived in an area north of the Penateka, they roamed from the Cross Timbers region of North Texas to the mountains of New Mexico. Their range was shared by two smaller bands, the Tanima ("Liver-Eaters") and the Tenawa ("Those Who Stay Downstream") and are often referred to as the Middle Comanches. The Quahadis ("Antelopes"), roamed the high plains of the Llano Estacado. One interesting fact about the Llano Estacado is that the Southern end of the plateau lacks a distinct physical boundary; it blends into the Edwards Plateau, (in Central Texas, where this program is recorded) and the Johnson Creek branch of the Colorado River, east of Big Spring, which is most likely its boundary. The Llano Estacado comprises all or part of thirty-three Texas and four New Mexico counties and covers approximately 32,000 square miles, a larger area than all of New England.

It is part of what was known to early explorers and settlers as the Great American Desert, a semiarid region with average annual precipitation of eighteen to twenty inches. The Comanche weren’t the only tribe that lived in that area, the Kiowa also shared territory that was mostly in the Panhandle and Oklahoma.

The Kiowas originally came from the Montana area around the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. As they migrated southward, they quickly learned to adapt to the South Plains by acquiring and using horses, especially in their hunting of buffalo. They gained their horses from the Spanish who also supplied them with slaves and guns and over time they became almost a completely nomadic group, and eventually they became one of the most feared and disliked of the Plains tribes. They entered into peaceful co-existence with the Comanche and with help from the Wichitas and Taovaya received guns and ammunition from the French and British.

The Kiowa camps were designed to be broken down and moved quickly, often within 30 minutes.

This is a more in-depth look at the First Peoples of Texas. Why” because there were people here long before the Spanish and any other Europeans set foot on the land, First, allow me to try and clear up some terminology especially one word and that word is “Indians”.  The people Columbus encountered when he first reached the shores of the continent where misnamed, because Columbus thought he had reached India and as we know, he was wrong.  That’s all I’m going to say about the subject.

The inhabitants themselves did not refer to themselves in any specific way, other than often using the term “the people”, they did refer to other tribes with names. For example, the early Spanish encountered a group of nomadic buffalo hunters, they called Querechos.  That group was later named Apache, which came from the Zuni word for enemy “apachu” which is what they were called by the Navajo.  While some tribes were “farmers” the Apaches were hunter-gatherers and didn’t do a lot of agriculture. 

When we speak of the tribes, it is important that we remember that those tribes that were hunter-gatherers had a certain lifestyle dictated by necessity as did those who were farmers.  There is no one broad brush we can paint all tribes with; however, there are certain characteristics that many tribes have in common with one another.

One area that was of particular importance to all tribes was in the area of religion or spirituality. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, the tribes that lived in the area that is now Texas maintained a variety of religious practices.  The majority of them embraced the idea of some type of supreme being and they all had creation stories.  They were usually not monotheistic; many held a belief in a variety of powers often organized in a form of hierarchy. For agricultural tribes, there were various ceremonies that accompanied the planting and harvesting of crops. Hunter-gatherers often sought the help of spirits before searching for game which served as food for the tribe.

Most tribes saw the universe in three levels.  The upper level was one of predictability, lower level of chaos, and the level where humans lived which was a mixture of both of the other levels.  The world was divided into 6 regions, north, south, east, west, up, and down and the year had a cold period and a hot period.

All believe there is a spirit in everything, including animals such as buffalo, wolves, bears, etc.

Spiritual leader shaman,AKA medicine man while all shamans were medicine men, not all medicine men were shamans.

Shamans in addition to using plants and instructions from spiritual helpers, they also went into trances to visit land of the dead, where they gathered information on the sickness.

What were some of the Hunter-Gatherer Tribes and where did they live?

Comanches – North Central / Northwest Texas

Kiowas – Panhandle – shared territory with Comanche

Held a summer Sun Dance – to insure regeneration of the Buffalo

Tonkawas - Gulf Coast (Houston area)

Venerated the Great Wolf

Karankawas – Gulf Coast (shared territory with Tonkawas – inner gulf coast)

Apache – (Lipan) South and Southwest Texas – (Mescalero) West Texas – El Paso

Coahuiltecans (KOE-ha-HWEE-ta-kanz) Rio Grande valley in what is now southern Texas and northeastern Mexico

Farmers

Farming groups tended to revere the earth, corn, rain, sun, and developed their beliefs based on fertility, and crop cycles.

Spiritual leader priest –

The medicine man or woman, acted like Shamans even going into trances for healing help. 

Priests, who most often were men, were religious specialists, had a long period of training valued not for healing abilities but because they knew the rituals and ceremonies to ensure bountiful harvests and healthy people.

They also had witches who were evil.  Could change their appearance, become animals, or even sparks of a fire. They stole people’s lives and souls.

Previously I talked about the world in the 14 and1500s and how the early Spanish explorers while looking for a path to India bumped into Texas, and a little bit about the Native peoples they encountered.  Today, I will further explore some of the trials and Tribulations of The Early Spanish Explorers of Texas.  I’ll also touch on the geography of Texas because that plays a major role in how Texas was explored, and it affected the lives of those who lived here. 

There is an old Texas saying, “the sun has rose, the sun has set, and I ain’t out of Texas yet”  Texas is huge, if you are going to drive from Louisiana through Texas to New Mexico, you will travel at least 982 miles (or 1,580 km for our non-American listeners).  When you look at a map of Texas, you can see it does take up a whole bunch of the middle of the country; in fact, it takes up over 250 thousand square miles, and that’s a lot of real estate.  Texas has four distinct physical or geographical regions and, in my opinion, those regions played an important role in the exploration and early settlements in Texas.  How the early Spanish explorers dealt with the physical conditions and the people who were native to the various regions often decided if they lived or died.  The four regions are the Gulf Coastal Plains, the North Central Plains, the Great Plains, and the Basin and Range Province.

Not a complete trancript

(Partial Transcript) Episode 64 -Texas isn’t Texas, Mexico isn’t Mexico and Europeans go exploring and bump into a continent and are surprised to find people already there.

When Europeans first encountered Texas, the world was a very different place. Well, maybe not too different because countries were fighting over land, gold, religion, natural resources, and political power much like we do today.  However, it was still different; there were no cars, planes, trains, buses, electricity, fast food joints, and certainly no TV, Radio, and Internet. Moreover, without modern technology, it took a whole lot more courage to go exploring than it does today.

In the late 1400s, around 1488 Portugal became the first country whose sailors were brave enough to sail out into the Atlantic Ocean. Actually they weren’t, the Vikings were. Vikings sailed the  Northern Atlantic around 1100 AD; but for the sake of this story, we’ll give the Portuguese some credit. The Portuguese exploration was primarily along the coast of Africa.  Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was the first to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, which is the southern tip of Africa and made it to Asia.  OK, remember that most of the history you learned in school was originally written by Europeans and then turned into something that Americans could relate to so it is all very Americanized.

It turns out that the Chinese admiral Zheng He, sailed all around Africa and Asia around 1404. Still though Dias’ trip was important because otherwise, to travel to Asia for trading purposes to pick up all the goods that society wanted required a lengthy overland trip.   His success lead mariners from other nations to wonder if there might be a shorter way to Asia that did not encroach on Portuguese routes.  Even though people wondered about a shorter route, there were few nations with the capability to send ships out into the Atlantic to find an answer.  Things changed when Isabella of Castille and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon succeeded in driving out the Muslims who had ruled Southern Spain for over 300 years and united the country under a Catholic flag.  The conquest was complete by 1492 and it was at that time, Christopher Columbus convinced the monarchs that by finding a Western route to India, Spain would have increased military, economic, and just as important, religious power.  As many remember from American history classes in grade school children are taught that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America. In truth, while he was one of the first Europeans (right now I won’t talk about the Vikings who landed on the Coast of Canada 300 years earlier) to reach what, in his time, was the “New World”.  The islands he encountered are the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola in 1492 and in 1493; he landed in our current Puerto Rico.  All islands inhabited by people as they had been for thousands of years.  Columbus claimed all the land he encountered for Spain, and three years later in 1496, the Spanish put their first settlement in Santo Domingo in what is now the Dominican Republic.  From those early arrival points and settlements, the Spanish began to explore the region, usually going up and down the coast and mapping the shorelines, still looking for a short cut to India. 

By 1501, Spanish sailors had explored all the way, up to what is now Newfoundland and Labrador in present day Canada.  To reach North America from the islands, it was inevitable that the ships would bump into Florida, and they did. However, they thought that Florida was just another island.  In 1519, the governor of Jamaica, Francisco de Garay, sent out an expedition to explore what was considered an unknown country between the Río Pánuco of Mexico (which empties near current day Tampico, Mexico) and the "island" of Florida.  Lt. Alonso Álvarez de Pineda set out with four ships and 270 men to explore, and he sailed into the current Gulf of Mexico. Upon reaching the west coast of Florida and sailing nort...