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This Treaty marked the start of the Mexican American experience in Texas and across the country.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, that brought an official end to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), was signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a city north of the capital where the Mexican government had fled with the advance of U.S. forces. By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including the present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. Mexico also relinquished all claims to Texas, and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary with the United States. 

With the defeat of its army and the fall of the capital, Mexico City, in September 1847 the Mexican government surrendered to the United States and entered into negotiations to end the war. The peace talks were negotiated by Nicholas Trist, chief clerk of the State Department, who had accompanied General Winfield Scott as a diplomat and President Polk's representative. Trist and General Scott, after two previous unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a treaty with Santa Anna, determined that the only way to deal with Mexico was as a conquered enemy. Nicholas Trist negotiated with a special commission representing the collapsed government led by Don Bernardo Couto, Don Miguel Atristain, and Don Luis Gonzaga Cuevas of Mexico.

President Polk had recalled Trist under the belief that negotiations would be carried out with a Mexican delegation in Washington. In the six weeks it took to deliver Polk's message, Trist had received word that the Mexican government had named its special commission to negotiate. Against the president's recall, Trist determined that Washington did not understand the situation in Mexico and negotiated the peace treaty in defiance of the president. In a December 4, 1847, letter to his wife, he wrote, "Knowing it to be the very last chance and impressed with the dreadful consequences to our country which cannot fail to attend the loss of that chance, I decided today at noon to attempt to make a treaty; the decision is altogether my own."

Ignoring the president's recall command with the full knowledge that his defiance would cost him his career, Trist chose to adhere to his own principles and negotiate a treaty in violation of his instructions. His stand made him briefly a very controversial figure in the United States.

Under the terms of the treaty negotiated by Trist, Mexico ceded to the United States Upper California and New Mexico. This was known as the Mexican Cession and included present-day Arizona and New Mexico and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado (see Article V of the treaty). Mexico also relinquished all claims to Texas and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary with the United States (see Article V).

The United States paid Mexico $15,000,000 "in consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States" (see Article XII of the treaty) and agreed to pay American citizens debts owed to them by the Mexican government (see Article XV). Other provisions included protection of property and civil rights of Mexican nationals living within the new boundaries of the United States (see Articles VIII and IX), the promise of the United States to police its boundaries (see Article XI), and compulsory arbitration of future disputes between the two countries (see Article XXI).

Trist sent a copy to Washington by the fastest means available, forcing Polk to decide whether or not to repudiate the highly satisfactory handiwork of his discredited subordinate. Polk chose to forward the treaty to the Senate. When the Senate reluctantly ratified the treaty (by a vote of 34 to 14) on March 10, 1848, it deleted Article X guaranteeing the protection of Mexican land grants. Following the ratification, U.S. troops were removed from the Mexican capital.

To carry the treaty into effect, commissioner Colonel Jon Weller and surveyor Andrew Grey were appointed by the U.S. Government, and General Pedro Conde and Sr. Jose Illarregui were appointed by the Mexican government, to survey and set the boundary. A subsequent treaty, the Gadsen Purchase, of December 30, 1853, altered the border from the initial one by adding 47 more boundary markers to the original six. Of the 53 markers, the majority were rude piles of stones; a few were of durable character with proper inscriptions.

As time passed, it became difficult to determine the exact location of the markers, with both countries claiming the originals had been moved or destroyed. To solve the problem, a convention between the two countries was concluded in the 1880s; and a survey was done that verified the need for definite demarcation of the boundary. The International Boundary Commission was created to relocate the monuments and mark the boundary line. The U.S. commissioners employed a survey photographer to record various views of each monument located and erected by the U.S. Section.

This text was adapted from an article written by Tom Gray, a teacher at DeRuyter Central Middle School in DeRuyter, NY.

Materials created by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain.

The history of the Texas Rangers spans nearly 200 years. Thousands of Rangers patrolled the frontier, fought in military battles, and arrested cattle rustlers. Their story contains heroic acts of bravery, but also moments that challenge our idea of the Rangers as noble lawmen. They protected settlers and enforced laws, but also sometimes executed thieves without a trial, drove Native American tribes from their homelands, and some Rangers even lynched Mexicans and Mexican Americans along the Texas-Mexico border.

The history of the Texas Rangers is as complicated as Texas history itself

On Friday, November 30, 2018, the THC held a dedication ceremony for the Porvenir Massacre Undertold Marker in Marfa, Texas.

With Texas’ proximity to the Mexican Revolution and U.S. involvement in World War I, the nation confronted racial and social instability that fed, and fed on, the bloody conflicts.

Schemes to claim tracts of the U.S. for Mexico were publicized—some might say propagandized—building on the paranoia already prevalent in that area. Stories of bloodshed created a state of dread among residents on both sides of the border. 

Ultimately, U.S. troops were dispatched to the border—more than 100,000 from California to Texas. These troops, along with Texas Rangers and other state officials, were tasked with policing the border. With the manpower pouring over the border, the presence of these troops dramatically heightened tensions—escalating an already volatile situation.

Only a month before the Porvenir Massacre in 1918, several Texans—mostly Mexican American citizens—were killed at Brite Ranch on Christmas Day 1917, allegedly by revolutionaries from Mexico. 

Porvenir was a remote community in northwest Presidio County on the Rio Grande. The small farming and ranching settlement was the site of a notorious tragedy that took place in the midst of military conflicts, raids across and along the international border, and in the immediate area during the Mexican Revolution.

A group of Texas Rangers from Company B in Marfa, U.S. Army soldiers from Troop G of the 8th Cavalry, and local ranchers arrived at Porvenir in the early morning hours of January 28, 1918. They came to the ranch of Manuel Moralez and separated 15 able-bodied men and boys from the women, children, and other men.

Though initial accounts denied any wrongdoing, later testimony confirmed that these 15 victims were shot and killed.

Family members crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico to bury Antonio Castañeda, Longino Flores, Pedro Herrera, Vivian Herrera, Severiano Herrera, Manuel Moralez, Eutemio González, Ambrosio Hernández, Alberto García, Tiburcio Jáquez, Róman Nieves, Serapio Jiménez, Pedro Jiménez, Juan Jiménez, and Macedonio Huertas.

In June 1918, Gov. William P. Hobby and Adjutant Gen. James A. Harley disbanded Company B, dismissed five Rangers for their actions at Porvenir, and forced Capt. J.M. Fox’s resignation.

JUNE 8, 2020 1:23 PM ET HEARD ON  FRESH AIR By Dave Davies

Author Doug Swanson chronicles centuries of abuse within the famed Texas law enforcement agency, including burning villages, hunting runaway slaves and murdering Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

The heroism and exploits of the Rangers have been portrayed for decades in Broadway plays, dime-store novels, radio dramas and movies and TV shows, most notably "The Lone Ranger." But in the five years he spent researching the Rangers, Swanson also found a dark side to their story. They burned villages and slaughtered innocents. They committed war crimes, hunted runaway slaves and murdered so many Mexicans and Mexican Americans that they were as feared on the Mexican border as the Ku Klux Klan was in the Deep South. Throughout it all, Swanson writes, the Rangers operated a fable factory to burnish their image as heroic defenders of the innocent.