The first Europeans in Texas were members of an expedition led by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda in 1519. They spent forty days mapping the Texas coast.
Panfilo de Narvaez left Cuba in 1528 to explore the southeastern part of what is now the United States. Ill-fated from the beginning, a ship wreck lead to the first recorded exploration of Texas. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three companions survived the ship wreck. They lived with the Karankawas for several years, eventually making their way into Mexico in 1536.
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado explored the High Plains from the vicinity of present-day Lubbock north into Kansas from 1539 to 1542, while at almost the same time a similar expedition led by Luis Moscoso travelled among the Caddo in East Texas.
These explorations would become the basis of Spain's claim to Texas, but the failure to find gold and silver led the the Spanish to turn elsewhere for more than a century, when in 1681 missions where established in El Paso.
An Indian uprising in New Mexico forced Spanish missionaries and Christian Tigua Indians to flee to the El Paso area. The missions of Corpus Christi de la Isleta and Nuestra Senora del Socorro were established. Ysleta pueblo was originally founded south of the Rio Grande, but a change in the course of the river moved it into Texas. The pueblo, now part of El Paso, is considered the oldest European settlement in Texas.
In the winter of 1682 Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sledded down the frozen Illinois River to the Mississippi, and descended it by canoe after the river was free of ice. Reaching the eastern mouth of the river on April 7, 1682 he claimed for France all the lands drained by the river.
Two years later La Salle returned to try to establish a French foot hold on the lands he had claimed. Due to inaccurate maps he missed the mouth of the Mississippi by some 400 miles, winding up at Matagorda Bay on the Texas coast on February 20, 1685.
La Salle and his colonists built a temporary fort on the eastern end of Matagorda Island. A more permanent settlement, Fort St. Louis, was established on Garcitas Creek in what is now Victoria County. As work progressed on the fort, La Salle set out to explore the surrounding country. There is evidence that he traveled as far west as the Rio Grande and ascending it as far as the site of what is now Langtry.
Realizing that the bay he was on lay west of the Mississippi, La Salle made two easterly marches hoping to find the river. On the second of these he was slain in an ambush by a disenchanted follower, Pierre Duhaut on March 19, 1687. Fort St. Louis survived until sometime around Christmas on 1688, when the Karankawas attacked the settlement by surprise. The Indian women succeeded in saving five children, who were adopted into the tribe.
The Spanish, having heard of the French challenge to establish a foot hold in Texas, started a series of expeditions to bring Christianity to the natives. A chain of missions were built in East Texas, many of of them not lasting more than a year or two at a time. In 1693 the Spanish ended their mission effort in East Texas, quickly having lost interest when the French threat of colonization ended.
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