Artistic licence
A romanticised 1853 painting shows Spanish
explorer Hernando de Soto discovering the
Mississippi river in 1541. In fact, his mission
was largely a failure, finding neither
gold nor suitable sites
for colonisationState of flux
The Socorro Mission near El Paso,
Texas, originally founded by Spanish
Franciscans in 1682. The ‘Lone Star
State’ was part of Mexico before it
was annexed by the US in 1846
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