Spanish Texas counted Indians, mestizos and mulattos, then the mulattos "collapsed" (Province of Texas, 1791–1790s)

SUMMARYSpanish Texas counted Indians, mestizos and mulattos, then the mulattos "collapsed" (Province of Texas, 1791–1790s) [Connections: Gulf, Louisiana, Texas & Mexico, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDThe 1791 census of the Province of Texas (Briscoe Center, UT Austin) recorded each person's "casta": 1,214 Spaniards, 579 Indians, 590 mestizos, 786 mulattos and 41 enslaved people. Historian Jesús F. de la Teja (Handbook of Texas) reports 415 mulattoes and 40 blacks in a casta population of 2,961 in 1792, and from the late 1790s "The collapse of the mulatto population" alongside a "substantial increase in the number of mestizos." He writes that labels were applied "in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner," and that a soldier listed as "Spaniard" could later be recorded as "color quebrado" (broken color). Nacogdoches censuses (1792–1836) used castes including Mestizo, Mulatto, Coyote, Lobo and Indian, and Indians and Africans paid an extra annual tax to the crown

PATTERNCensus race in Texas moved with taxes and status: the same people could slide from mulatto to mestizo to Spaniard

LENS (WW9)The scribes moved people between colors with a pen stroke, so race on paper was never blood

OPENTrace individual families across the censuses year by year (the SFA Nacogdoches project)

SOURCECensus of the Province of Texas (Bullock Museum); de la Teja, "Blacks in Colonial Spanish Texas" (repost); Nacogdoches Census (SFA).