His chaplain, Father Miguel Muldoon, records the agreement reached with Juan Augustus Magee, from County Down, who was leading the Texan-Irish in the colonial war against Spain. Once Mexico received independence, Magee found that he was having to fight attempts by the United States to move settlers into the Texas province, led by Austin and Houston, who wanted to make it a slave state. It was the Irish-Mexicans who lost land, rights and their standard of living when the Texas Republic came into being. Knowing this makes more sense of the story of the Los Patricios who fought for Mexico against the United States during the land-grabbing wars a decade or so later. U.S. histories would have us believe that this Irish unit of the Mexican army was simply a collection of Irish deserters.
People seem to prefer to believe in myths than reality.
One obvious area where we have come along in leaps and bounds has been in the field of women's studies. The Ban-shenchus is a record of the lives of hundreds of Irish women who lived prior to the 12th Century. We have seven surviving copies of this book. One ends with mention of Gormflaith, who died in 1030. She was a Leinster princess who became the wife of Br an B roimhe, also mother of Sitric, King of Dublin.