INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION For more than ton years, on ay Old Spanish Trail work, and in sy history explorations around South Texas, I have learned ouch about the Spanish Occupation in these Southern or Spanish Borderlands from Florida to California.......3'IT THE HOST IM- PORTANT THING LEARNED IS THAT NO ONE PERSON NOR ANT SMALT GROUP "ILL EVER MASTER THE DYNAMIC AND CONSECRATED STORY OF THOSE SPANISH CENTURIES. Broad and Organized cooperation must be f03tered. A number 0f tines during the past ten years I have thought I understood the old Spanish history well enough to weave together that old and interesting story from Florida to California for the benefit of the travelers and the writers that keep asking for it, but again and again new leads to research and study would open to show that I still lacked important data....and steadily also the "lost" history around ~an Antonio and Spanish South Texas left breaches in the trails continental fabric. There are men and women all thru these southern Spanish States who are intelligently interested, and whose studies and research can be coordinated under proper leadership. My contafcbs with these people are good. Another important fact learned is that San Antonio and Spanish South Texas (of which North Mexico was the base) comprise one of the great areas of Spanish effort and ambition, and that but little of this Spanish history is really known; raich that i3 known is unorganized and not easily accessible, and much that is written and rewritten is wrong. It is clear also that Spanish South Texas and North ''exico must be studied as one area. Far Northeat t Texas is a somewhat different chapter. The Rio Grande in Spanish times was not a boundary, as now. The present Texas includes parts of Spanish colonies whose bares were in North Mexico. The Rio Grande was a river somewhat central in those colonies. Saltillo and '"onclova were colonial capitals. The present-day disposition to think of the Rio Grande ac a colonial dividing line causes much confusion of thought and writing. Extensive historical data that I have collected respecting the Old Spanish Trail territory (Florida to California) has repeatedly proven weak because the historical knowledge of the San Antonio territory has been so deficient or erroneous. Research into the history of this Texas—Mexico area is therefore essential to correct understandings of the Spanish history of the Spanish Borderlands from the Atlantic to the Pacific.