Unitll 1880 Native Texans were rare. You only had to be here a few months to be considered a Texan cuse we didn have enough of our own. Fact is Natives were a minority in 1880. But alas, the number being born in Texas out paced the number moving into Texas until 1940 when more than 3/4's of the population were native to Texas. Then WWII came and there was a decline in natives. But not so great as in the 70's and early 80's. In ten years the state's population increased by three million. Most of the newcomers moved here from nearby states and other parts of the South that we could identify with. But there was an unusual number of them there people from up North. Lots of em didn come here willingly and difficult as it is to imagine, lots of em didn lik Texas. That made them hard to tollerate.

Bad enough we had to put up with over-crowded roads, them pushy people came here and thought they culd change our culture and what we wuz. They also brought a lot of yankee companies to Texas. Lots of them even professed to like our whiney music and claimed they remembered the Alamo. Them folks threatened to rob us of our character. They wanted Texas to be jest lik everywhere else.

The Natives began to fester. Native Texan clubs were formed, pro-native, "nautralized Texas", and shamful anti-Yankee bumper stickers began to appear.  Politicians had to present their pedigree in order to get a vote. Ifn you cudn do the two-step and the Cotton-eyed Joe,  you were no Texan.  The court houses could over look incomplete paper work when you needed to transfer a title on a car ifn you culd prove you were a Native (thereby proving you were honest) but a Yank better have everything jest right.

Texan's have a lot of pride in our culture, we fear things and people foreign, of losing our way of life. To be born in Texas is to be part of a Proud people, who believe themselves to be different, carrying on a tradition of a glorious past.

Thank the Lord the flood of immagrants has stopped and by the end of the 70's the population  was 65 percent Native Texans. Texas still has more natives than California, Colorado, Florida and Arizona.

So, rather your a native or not can be debated. My oldest son, for example, claims to be a native Texan. I tell him thats not a true statement. For a brief period of time we lived in Louisiana and he was born there. Although we moved back to Texas when he was three weeks old, hes not a native Texan. I call him a "coon ass".  Hes 42 now, so for all but three weeks of his life he has lived in Texas. He gits riled when I say hes a "coon ass".

The most important identifying characteristic of a native Texan is the desire to be one. Get you a bumper sticker that proclaims yor love of Texas, tell another yankee to go home and we'll let you be a native.