It is one of the iconic Texas History artifacts that all of our School Children who come to the capital to learn about Texas History and learn about how to be a good citizen, they have an opportunity to see these kinds of artifacts up close and personal. The capital welcomes more than a million visitors a year and we are thankful to show them the capital itself and furnishings but we have a number of monuments on the grounds to various causes. On the south grounds we have four of the most historic monuments, Texas Rangers alamo, Confederate Monument and volunteer fireman monument. In the early 1990s the capitol under went a massive restoration exterior and interior. During the interior restoration we were able to return ten spaces to their turn of the century appearance. One of the spaces is the Supreme Court room. When myers completed the capitol in 1888 we were able to house all of State Government within these walls. State government has grown since then and at this point the Supreme Court offices in another adjacent building. This room gives us an opportunity to talk a little bit about the Supreme Court and Judicial Branch of government. We have appeals courtroom and between these two the tour guides are able to tell about the branch of government and provide a great deal of information about how texas Government Works today. We are very hopeful that yall have a chance to visit the Texas Capitol personally. We love to see not only texans walk through the doors but hundreds of thousands of people walk through doors from not only all 50 states in the United States but several foreign countries, as well. Visit us so we can tell you the story of texas and tell you about Texas History and hopefully able to share wonderful Texas Capitol with you. The Archives Commission is the state agency that was founded by the state with a very simple but powerful mission and that is to make sure that texans have the information that they need to live informed, productive lives. We also provide and house the archives of the state of texas which is the historical record of the state of texas going back to the republic of texas days and earlier than that. What you are going to see today is a collection of some of the most iconic and Important Documents from our collection that document Texas Freedom and the struggle of various groups in texas for freedom equality and civil rights. Today we are in the state archives and Library Building in austin, texas. This is an original portrait of Steven Austin who is considered father of anglo colonization in texas. We believe this portrait was painted from life before his death in 1836. This is a very important map that was researched and compiled by austin. If he and his father knew that if texas was to be successful that they would have to have a good map of the area. And so he worked with the tanner Publishing Company in philadelphia to create this map. The earliest one was in 1830. They issued several editions the last one being in 1836. This is an original imprint of that 1836 map. You will notice that it still has the mexican eagle down here because at this time even though it is dated 1836 it was at the time of publication it was part of mexico. This book was actually a publication of the proceedings of the convention of texas enoctober of 1832. And he was the president of this convention. And it was a number of the prominent men who met to draw up a list of grievances that they had with the Mexican Government for a variety of reasons we are not sure about it was never presented to the Mexican Government. The one significant thing about it was that the delegation from bayer and the delegation from Southeast Texas was not present for the convention. And basically it was the work of white male colonists. So thats rather significant. The hispanics were not represented. This is another of our most iconic documents. This is the hand written original copy of the texas declaration of independence. And the convention met on march 1 of 1836 at washington, texas which is now known as washington. 59 delegates eventually signed this. There were three hispanics that signed it. One was a Mexican National for whom the archives and Library Building was named. There was Jose Francisco ruiz. As we talked about before steven f. Austin and his fathers hopes for texas was to colonize it and make it a very prosperous place. This was mainly a dream for white colonists who came from the United States and from some european nations. The same promise was not necessarily available to people of other ethnicities. If you were of african dissent you had basically no rights. This is really a fascinating document basically a letter of passage, you might say a passport for emily west who was a free woman of color from new york who had come to texas before the Texas Revolution with captain morgan. During the revolution she was trying to return home to new york and got this letter which would have allowed her free passage. In the meantime she was captured by santa ana and detained for a while. A myth grew out of the story that somehow she was a woman who had distracted santa ana at the battle and there is not much evidence for that. It was a myth that grew out of the events and was perpetrated later on. It may have been the inspiration for the famous song the yellow rose of texas. This is an original imprint from 1858 of that sheet music which is mysterious because we dont know for sure who the composer initials j. K. Is. This is a treaty with the cherokee indians and other tribes in 1836, actually very early 1836. It is signed february 23 which was right at the beginning of the siege of the alamo. This was work done by sam houston who had always had a close relationship with the cherokees. And the significance of this was that the texans wanted to try to be sure that the cherokees and other bands of native americans would be either neutral or on the side of the texan colonists and they do not want to side with mexico if hostilities arose. This was something that had been worked on for some months but with war with mexico impending there was much urgency to get this signed. Unfortunately, these the stipulations of the treaty were not honored and the cherokee did not get their lands and the major sigatory on here was colonel duali. He was killed in 1839 at the battle of natchez in northeast texas and the rest of the cherokee, most of them had to cross the border into indian territory which is now oklahoma. This contains the signatures or the marks of the indians who participated in it as well as the texans sam houston and others. So after texas gained its independence in 1836 after the battle there was some belief that texas would probably be annexed by the United States but that did not come to pass very quickly. And once it became apparent that texas was not going to be quickly annexed, then texas had to be about the business of establishing relationships with other nations. One of the most obvious was with the United States. And so this treaty from 1838 establishes the boundaries between the United States and texas, a very important detail. And this was when Martin Van Buren was president. This particular document does not contain the actual terms of the boundary treaty but it does its the i guess you call it the document of transmission of that treaty and includes the beautiful seals which contain sealing wax from the United States. Texas also entered into treaties with other nations notably great britain. This one was from 1840 and addresses the suppression of the slave trade. Its actually signed by queen victoria. After the civil war and after reconstruction texas experienced a new era of immigration mostly from the United States into texas. This is a railroad map in effect from an Organization Called texas colony association. But, again, it was a new attempt to colonize the vast lands of texas. In an attempt to address many of the issues that should have been corrected by reconstruction and this is the constitution that was written in 1875, signed in 1876 and interestingly texas still operates under this constitution today even though it has had hundreds of amendments to make changes to it we can flip to the signature page of the document which contains all of the original signatures from 1876. As you can imagine these are many of the most prominent men of their day. While this document addressed some issues of inequality of course these problems did not go away with equality,