Slide Sets

The contrasting perspectives Mexicans and Anglo-Americans have of their common frontier region surfaces on their maps. Following the American revolution and the purchase of Louisiana the United States rapidly expanded beyond the original 13 states to transform the Trans-Appalachian Indian country into new Anglo-American territories and states. Americans associated their expansion at the expense of Indian peoples with the economic and social progress of the nation; even the rough and semi-savage image of the frontier and of the frontiersmen took on heroic and mythic qualities.

For Mexicans the northern frontera (there was also a Southeastern jungle frontera) had far different connotations. Mexico, like Spain or France, was a centralized nation-state dominated by a capital metropolis, Mexico City. The inhabitants of the capital and the central Mexican states viewed the frontera as a distant, barbaric and problematic region.

Prior to Mexico’s independence the image of the North had undergone a shift from being the location of the Aztlan or Chicomozoc of the pre-1521 Nahua Chronicles to Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s 1542 “Cibola,” alleged as the location of the “Seven cities of Gold”; to the “Tierra Adentro” (the back country, or land beyond, with connotations somewhat like the Australian “outback”).

Before independence in 1821 the north was known as the Provincias Internas or Interior Provinces. Stimulated by trade conflicts, imperial and intertribal rivalry, the vast frontier region became a strategic frontier against the threat of Apaches, Comanches, French, English, and Russians. Unlike the positive Anglo-American image of the frontier, the frontera del norte held negative associations for many Mexicans as a savage and threatening region draining military economic resources to hold back hostile peoples.

After 1822 the Mexican government developed plans for the economic development and settlement of the region through foreign colonization. Americans and Europeans were attracted to Texas by virtually free land and tax exemptions. Merchants and adventurers were attracted to New Mexico and Alta California by the opening of trade routes, Mexican silver, and the Fur Trade.

Due to inconsistent policies, internal political conflicts, and the arrival of a small group of opportunistic, aggressive expansionists among the Texas colonists, the specter of old frontier problems came to overshadow now-lost opportunities for Mexico in Texas. As a result of weakness caused by Santa Anna’s military coup, in 1836 a settler revolt separated the Texas Republic from Mexico. Texan claims to the Rio Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) as its border with Mexico, which claimed the more northerly Rio Nueces as the border, created a crisis that the United States inherited when it annexed Texas in 1845.

Conflicting claims fueled aggressive military provocation in 1846 by President James K. Polk. Hostilities ensued, and as a result of that war of 1846-1848, the United States conquered more than half of Mexico’s original territory.

To Anglo-Americans the region acquired from Mexico in 1848 formed a new western and southwestern frontier. The area known as the Southwest prior to 1838 (today’s Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas) became the “Old Southwest.” For Mexicans, the area north and south of the new boundary continued to be the Far North, “el Norte” or “Septentrion.” Twentieth-century Mexicans know the former northern Mexican territories as “el otro lado,” “the other side.” This slide set illustrates selected cartographic images of changing Anglo-American, Mexican and European conceptions of the Mexican frontier with its northern neighbors.

Theodore de Bry’s 1596 map, “America sive Novus Orbis” (“America or the New World”), identifies North America as “America Mexicana” and South America as “America Peruana.” These geographical names reflect the late sixteenth-century dominance of Spanish power in the Americas. Spanish power in the North and the South was centered on Mexico and Peru, and hence these were politically and economically the most important regions to sixteenth-century Europeans. It was logical that contemporary geographers and mapmakers would apply the names of these well-known lands to the entire continents to which each belonged.

De Bry’s map is one of the earliest of a significant subset of European maps of the New World that labeled the two American continents in this way, beginning in 1590 with Petrus Plancius’s “Orbis terrarum typus de integro multis in locis emendatus auctore Petro Plancio” and continuing for over a century to the 1690s. As such it represents an early phase in the identification of the areas which would form the future Mexico-United States frontier—a phase in which Europeans’ predominant view of the region was from the south.

We are unable to reproduce this image on the Web.

Following the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, the United States and New Spain became neighboring countries. The Mexican Revolution broke out on September 16, 1810. The revolutionaries proclaimed the independence of the provinces of “America Mexicana” (including the Provincias Internas) on November 6, 1813. By September 27, 1821 Mexico became effectively independent from Spain.

In the 1820s Mexico invited foreign impresarios to bring colonists to Texas. One such impresario, Stephen F. Austin, became the leading Anglo-American in Texas and the spokesman for the majority of the settlers. His colony, stretching about 200 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, is outlined near the center of this map. By settling in Texas, Austin and his colonists became Mexican citizens. Austin favored a policy of cooperation with the Mexican government, and he himself became a Mexican official in 1823 through his grant, which made him a juez (civil judge) and lieutenant colonel of the militia in the Brazos district of central Texas. Reflecting his concern with economic development, Austin compiled an improved map of Texas which was adopted by many map publishers. The best-known and most numerous editions of the Austin map were published by Henry Schenk Tanner.

The Austin map pre-figures the Texas boundary dispute that contributed to the outbreak of war between Mexico and the United States in 1846. The first of several Tanner editions was published in 1830. Though published in Philadelphia, these editions implicitly embraced the Mexican definition of the Texas boundary with the neighboring Mexican states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas. Even editions published after Texas declared its independence in 1836 mark the Rio Nueces boundary claimed by Mexico, rather than the more southwesterly Rio Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande) asserted by the Texas Republic.

We are unable to reproduce this image on the Web.

The John Quincy Adams/Juan de Onis Treaty of 1819 established a new internationally recognized boundary between the United States and colonial New Spain. This boundary was confirmed by treaty between independent Mexico and the United States in 1832. The treaty negotiators used John Melish’s “Map of the United States with the Contiguous British & Spanish Possessions” (Philadelphia, 1818), but the best map of the frontier region at the time was Alexander von Humboldt’s “Carte générale du royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne,” published in Paris in 1809. It was the basis of most of the better maps of the region until 1850.

Among the maps that relied upon Humboldt for the depiction of the Mexico-United States border regions were those published by Henry Schenk Tanner. The 1838 Tanner map is interesting because, though published in the United States after Texas declared its independence, it still shows Mexico as it was defined in 1819 and 1832. Texas appears as a province of Mexico with the Rio Nueces forming its southwestern limit.

The American-Mexican War of 1846-48 began when Mexican and American troops, each defending their country’s claims, clashed on the Rio Bravo opposite Matamoros. United States politicians, opposed to the war on the grounds that it was the result of bald American aggression, might well have pointed to such a map to make their point. Indeed, Congressman Abraham Lincoln challenged President Polk to show Congress the spot on the map “where American blood had been shed on American soil.” On Tanner’s map, as on most pre-1845 American maps, the spot would have been in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, rather than Texas.

We are unable to reproduce this image on the Web.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed February 2, 1848 by the United States of America and Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the United States of Mexico) ended the war between those two nations. As a result of the treaty Mexico ceded over half of its national territory to the United States and agreed to establish a joint boundary commission to map and demarcate the new border between the two countries. The key map included in the treaty was a copy of John Disturnell’s “Mapa de los Estadoes Unidos Mexicanos” (Philadelphia, 1847). The new treaty fixed the boundaries along the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) and Rio Gila, with a line running between the two rivers at El Paso.

The Disturnell map may have created nearly as many problems as it solved because it showed El Paso del Norte at an inaccurate latitude and longitude. A large undefined portion of the boundary west of El Paso was ignored and then resolved by compromise between the Mexican and American boundary commissioners. Many Americans alleged that the compromise solution was to the advantage of Mexico and the state of Chihuahua.

Following the Treaty of 1848, both Americans and Mexicans took account of the results of the war. Americans had gained California Gold and the Pacific Ocean. Mexicans, finding their country diminished and impoverished, asked themselves how much they had lost and why. Liberal and conservative politicians placed the mantle of responsibility on their political adversaries. Wartime leaders and intellectuals took up the pen to assess the causes and results of military defeat.

One of Mexico's most prominent conservative spokesmen, Lucas Alamán, (a former Minister of the Interior and Foreign Affairs), wrote a major history in which these assessments were made. In the fifth volume of his Historia de Méjico (Mexico City: J.M. Lara, 1849-52) Alamán presented an economic table and map assessing the “Estado Comparativo” (“Comparative State”) of Mexico before independence and after the war of 1846-1848. Alamán argued that Mexico was economically better off as the colony of Nueva España than it was as an independent nation. An inset map compared the territorial extent of post-1848 independent Mexico to the territory of the pre-1821 Spanish colony.

The new boundary and treaty obligations resulting from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo changed concerns and responsibilities along the U.S.-Mexican frontier. One of the most important for both the United States and Mexican governments was frontier defense. The treaty required both governments to prevent Indian raids into the territory of the other. In addition, Mexico faced the threat from continued expansionism on the part of the United States. The government of President Jose Joaquin Herrera responded with a plan for the establishment of military colonies/settlements along the new border from the mouth of the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande to the California coast. The plan incorporated such existing garrisons as Tucson and Presidio del Norte. The 1848 published description of the proposal included a map, “Mapa de la Frontera de la República Mexicana con los Estados Unidos del Norte: en el que se espresa la situacion que debe darse a las nuevas colonias militares,” (“Map of the Frontier of the Mexican Republic with the United States of the North: in which is shown the locations of the new military colonies”).

The map, of course, also shows the Mexican version of the new, yet to be surveyed border. The boundary shown from El Paso del Norte to the source of the Gila River reflects the Mexican desire to keep as much as possible of the El Paso and Janos regions of the state of Chihuahua, and, if possible, to retain the copper mine at Santa Rita del Cobre. The Americans, on the other hand, sought: (1) to secure a route for a level wagon road (and later, a railroad) between Texas and Southern California; (2) to obtain the Santa Rita de Cobre mine; and (3) to gain a port on the Gulf of California. The California terminus of the line runs through the middle of San Diego Bay—the eventual border was drawn entirely south San Diego Bay—reflecting Mexican wishes to maintain access to San Diego Bay and to run the boundary line far enough north of the Gulf of California to maintain a generous territorial link between the Mexican mainland and Baja California.

1. Theodore de Bry, “America sive Novus Orbis respectu Europaeórum inferior globi terrestris, 1596,” from Americae pars Sexta sive historiae ab Hieronymo Bezono (Grand Voyages, vol. 6) (Frankfurt Am Main, 1596). Edward E. Ayer Collection, The Newberry Library.
2. Henry Schenk Tanner, “Map of Texas with parts of the adjoining states, compiled by Stephen F. Austin” (Philadelphia, 1833). Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
3. Henry Schenk Tanner, “A Map of the United States of Mexico as organized and defined by the several acts of the Congress of that Republic..., second edition, 1838” (Philadelphia, 1838). From the American Geographical Society Collection, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library.
4. John Disturnell, “Mapa de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 1847” (New York, 1847). From the American Geographical Society Collection, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library.
5. Lucas Alamán, “Estado Comparativo,” from Historia de Méjico, vol. 5 (Mexico City: J.M. Lara, 1852). Edward E. Ayer Collection, The Newberry Library.
6. “Mapa de la Frontera de la República Mexicana con los Estados Unidos del Norte: en el que se espresa la situacion que debe dares a las nuevas colonias militares,” from Colonias militares proyecto para su establecimiento en la frontera de occidente y orriente de la Republica (Mexico City: Ministerio de Guerra y Marina, 1848). Edward E. Ayer Collection, The Newberry Library.

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Griswold Del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Emory, William H. Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey. Washington, 1857.

Gonzalez, Luis. El Congreso de Anahuac. Mexico: Camara de Senadores, 1963.

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Rios-Bustamente, Antonio. “Tierra No Mas Incognita: The Atlas of Mexican American History.” MASRC, Working Paper. Tucson: University of Arizona, 1990.

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