Religion.—Accurate recent statistics do not exist. The best approximatiorks are as fol lows: Baptists, 490,000; Catholics, 375,000; Methodists, 375,000; Presbyterians, 85,000; Disciples of Christ, 60,000; Lutherans, 35,000; Protestant Episcopals, 20,000; Jewish, 15,000; all other denominations, 45,000. Most of the negroes are either Baptists or Methodists. Other approximate church statistics are as fol lows: Churches, 9,500; church organizations, 12,500; Sunday-school teachers, 65,000; Sun day-school pupils, 600,000; value of church property, $27,000,000; seating capacitir of the churches, 3,000,000; church debts, 1,350,000. The Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. hol property worth $1,700,000.
Population.— The first United States cen sus taken was that of 1850 when the population was 212,592. In 1870 the population was 818, 579; in 1890 it was 2,235,523; in 1910 it was 3,896,542. The present rate of increase is about 85,000 a year. Native white Americans form 73 per cent of the population, 51 of this 73 being native white Texans, Foreign born Europeans number 3 per cent, Mexicans 7 per cent, negroes 17.7 per cent (20.4 per cent in 1900). A large German element in the popula tion of South Texas dates from 1848. In general Texas is Southern with a strong flavor of the West. The occupation percentages for the male workers (who number about 1,330,000 in 1915) are: Agriculture and stock raising, 60 per cent; manufacturing and mining, 14 per cent; trade and transportation, 15 per cent ; pro fessions, 3 per cent; all other occupations, 8 per cent. White farm tenantry and the percent age of women at work are increasing. The towns are increasing much faster than the country, 68 per cent as compared with 19 per cent during the last census decade. The five largest cities increased 107 per cent. Only 19 per cent of the people live in towns of more than 10,000 population. Sixty-six per cent of the population is rural. According to the esti mates of the United States census for 1916, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth have passed 100,000. El Paso is near 50,000 and Galveston 40,000; Austin, Waco and Beau mont have passed or are nearing 30,000. Be tween 20,000 and. 10,000 in approximately de scending order are Laredo, Denison, Sherman, Amarillo, Marshall, Abilene, Temple, Browns ville, San Angelo, Paris, Texarkana, Clehurne, Palestine, Tyler, Wichita Falls, Corsicana, Cor pus Christi and Greenville.
History.— The first explorers were Span iards, Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, 1540-42. Other Span ish gold hunters traversed the State occasion ally during the next 140 years but it was not till 1682 that a still-existing Indian pueblo under Spanish auspices was found at Ysleta near modern El Paso, 200 years younger. La Salle, driven west by a storm while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi down which he had sailed three years previously, built in 1685 near Matagorda Bay a fort which W2S soon destroyed by the Indians. Four French men found refuge among the more peaceable Tejas Indians who, as a result, have their tribal name perpetuated as °Texas." Alarmed by this accidental and unsuccessful Frenc.h in vasion, the Spaniards of Mexico established in 1690 the Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, near modern Nacogdoches, but this far-away mission was soon abandoned. Later various
other scattered missions and forts were estab lished, but in 1800 those at San Antonio, Na cogdoches and Goliad were the chief results of over 200 years of Spanish colonization. San Antonio, begun in 1718, became in 1730 the first civil European settlement in Texas.
The history of modern Texas begins in 1821. The Spaniards having failed really to settle the country, three abortive invasions be tween 1800 and 1821 by Anglo-Americans were shadows of coming events. In 1821 Mexico finished successfully her war of independence begun with Spain in 1810; in 1821 the United States gave up a claim to Texas arising from the purchase of Louisiana from France. in 1803; in 1821 Moses Austin obtained permission to locate 300 American families but, dying, his son Stephen established the first permanent Anglo American settletnent at San Felipe de Austin on the lower Brazos River in December 1821. During the next 15 years probably 30,000 Americans came to Texas, settling mainly along the rivers between San Antonio and Nacog doches southward to the coast. They came, sometimes bringing their slaves with them, be cause a fertile and unoccupied land was calling to them, not because, as has sometimes been maintained without evidence, they specifically planned to extend the slave-holding area. Re mote from real Mexico, they practically gov erned themselves and formed no close or genuine ties with their adopted country. A federal Mexican republic resulting in 1824, Texas and Coahuila became one state divided into the departments of Saltillo, Monclova and Texas. Revolution and disorder prevailing con tinually in Mexico, when Santa Anna estab lished there a dictatorship in 1835, the American Texans proclaimed a provisional government and declared in favor of a union with the Mexican liberals together with a restoration of the Federal Constitution of 1824. Santa Anna sent troops into Texas and war began. The desperate defense of the Alamo at San Antonio by 183 Texans under W. B. Travis in which the defenders were killed to a man and the battle of San Jacinto in which Santa Anna was defeated and captured by a Texan army under San Houston were the outstanding events of the war. Practical independence re sulted and between 1836 and 1845 Texas was an independent republic, a unique experience for one of the States of the Union. In 1845, after a long conflict over slavery,• Texas was annexed to the United States, retaining all her public lands and the right to subdivide into not more than five States. Claims to a portion of New Mexico were abandoned later for $10.000,000 which were used to pay the debts that the Republic of Texas had accumulated. The annexation of Texas brought on the war between the United States and Mexico which made the Rio Grande an international boundary. After a decade of peaceful statehood Texas abandoned the Union for the Southern Con federacy, furnishing probably 100,000 soldiers. The last battle of the Civil War was fought at Palmito, near Palo Alto, on the Rio Grande, 13 May 1865. Texas was not the scene of very active military operations; Federal troops at tacked the coast but could not penetrate further. A reconstruction •government of the usual type prevailed until 1874 when Gov. E. J. Davis was driven from office.