1797――Philip Nolan, an Irish-American at New Orleans, enters Texas with a party to capture wild horses and to report on the country. 1800――Nolan and a party again enter Texas, in defiance of Spanish protests. Nolan is killed by the Spanish troops and the others are imprisoned. 1800――Spain cedes the Louisiana province back to France. 1803――France sells Louisiana province to the United States. Spain claims that France was under contract not to deliver the province to any other power, and protests the transfer. 1804――The United States claims that the province extends west to the Rio Grande River; Spain denies the right of the United States to any territory west of New Orleans. War is threatened. 1806――United States troops encamp on the east bank of the Sabine River, in Louisiana; the Spanish troops encamp on the west bank, in Texas. By a truce the United States forces retire to the Red River in Louisiana, and pending a settlement of the Texas boundaries dispute, the strip thirty miles wide between the Red River and the Sabine River is made a Neutral Ground. 1806–1819――The Neutral Ground is the resort of desperadoes, who much annoy the Spanish authorities of Texas. 1811–1812――Lieutenant Augustus Magee, a young American army officer, joins with a Mexican revolutionist, Colonel Gutierrez de Lara, in an attempt to seize Texas from Spain. The project fails. 1817–1821――The freebooter, Captain Jean Lafitte, Frenchman, occupies the Island of Galveston; reigns there under the title “Lord of Galveston.” 1818――Generals Lallemand and Rigault, French officers under Napoleon, establish a French colony, entitled the Champ d’Asile (Field of Refuge), twelve miles up the Trinity River. They are soon driven out by the Spanish troops. 1819–1821――Dr. James Long, an American merchant of Natchez (Mississippi), with a company of seventy-five adventurers, invades Texas, declares it an independent republic, but finally is defeated and shot. 1820――Moses Austin, from Missouri, petitions Mexico to be permitted to bring into Texas 300 colonists from the United States, but he dies before he can complete his project. 1821――Mexico separates from Spain, and Texas is now Mexican territory. 1821――Stephen Fuller Austin, son of Moses Austin, and to be known as the “Father of Texas,” brings in from New Orleans the first of the American colonists, who settle on the lower Brazos River. 1823――Mexico issues a general colonization law, encouraging the settlement of Texas by foreigners, upon tracts granted by the government. 1823――The town of San Felipe de Austin in the Austin colony on the Brazos is founded――the first American town in Texas. 1825――The State of Coahuila and Texas (as the two Mexican provinces were known) passes a more liberal colonization law, and settlement by Americans proceeds rapidly.