The Forgotten U.S. Colony of Tabasco
In 1806, an American colony was briefly established in Tabasco, Mexico, a chapter lost to most U.S. history lessons.
Early American history is full of tales of expansion and unlikely settlement schemes, but few know about the short-lived American colony that sprang up in Tabasco, Mexico, more than a decade before Texas was even a thought. The story begins with a little-known adventurer named William Barr.
William Barr was a merchant from Philadelphia, and like many ambitious Americans in the early 1800s, he was drawn south by trade. At the time, Spanish-controlled Mexico had a sparsely populated coastline. Spain, eager to develop these remote areas and frustrated by constant British and French incursions, sometimes turned a blind eye to foreign traders on their shores.
In 1805, Barr and his business partners reached out to the Spanish authorities in the province of Tabasco along the Gulf of Mexico. Barr proposed settling Americans in the area: in exchange, his colony would foster agriculture and defend the coastline against European pirates. Surprisingly, Spanish regional officials approved the plan, either thinking it would bolster development or simply because they were desperate to see some kind of economic activity in the region.
Within a year, a group of about 40 Americans—mostly traders, artisans, and farmers—landed near the mouth of the Grijalva River. The settlers constructed wooden houses, planted crops, and began to build docks for river trade. According to Mexican records, these Americans introduced new agricultural techniques and even set up a rudimentary school and church, which were rare in the region at that time.
Locals began to call the area “La Colonia Americana.” For a brief moment, it was a blend of languages, cultures, and ambitions. Some Mexican officials saw the American newcomers as useful allies against British smugglers, who had long used the Gulf as a backdoor route for illegal trade. The American settlers in turn traded American goods for Mexican sugar, tobacco, and cattle.
However, in 1808, Spain underwent a major political upheaval as Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula. News reached the Americas, and uncertainty gripped the colonies. The new conservative officials in Mexico grew suspicious of the Tabasco Americans, fearing they could be an opening wedge for eventual U.S. territorial ambitions.
By early 1809, Spanish authorities in Mexico City ordered the small American enclave disbanded. Many settlers returned north, some fleeing to Louisiana, while a handful integrated and married into local Mexican families. The settlement itself was reclaimed by the jungle, and by the time Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, most traces of the American outpost had vanished.
The story of the Tabasco colony was quietly documented in regional archives in Mexico and in scattered references from American merchant logs. The episode—preceding the better-known filibuster expeditions into Spanish territory—would later inform Mexican suspicions during the decades leading up to the Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War. Today, only a handful of historians know that for a brief time, the United States had something of a toe-hold on the Mexican Gulf, decades before Manifest Destiny swept west.
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