Spain established the first European claim to what is now Texas in 1519 when Cortez came to Mexico, and Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda mapped the Texas coastline. A few shipwrecked Spaniards, like Alvar Nunez, Cabeza de Vaca, and explorers such as Coronado, occasionally probed the vast wilderness, but the first Spanish settlement in Texas – the Ysleta Mission near present-day El Paso – was not established until 1681. Until Mexican independence in 1821, other Spanish missions, forts and civil settlements gradually followed. After 1785, the red and yellow striped Spanish flag depicted a shield with a lion (Leon) and a castle (Castile) topped by a crown. Original flag images are from http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/6flags.htm, accessed March 21, 2005. "Flags of Texas," Handbook of Texas Online at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/FF/msf1.html, accessed March 24, 2005. See alsohttp://www.pinette.net/chris/flags/texas/texflags.html, http://www.pinette.net/chris/flags/texas/sixflags.html.
