The Decline and Fall of the Native American Indian, Volume 1: The Road to Texas Before 1700 is a rigorously researched narrative history of the first sustained European-Native encounters on the Texas coast and interior. Drawing on Spanish archival records, French journals, and contemporary accounts, Eric D. Ausmus reconstructs the failed La Salle colony on Garcitas Creek, the Karankawa and Hasinai (Tejas) responses, Alonso de León's 1689-1690 entradas, and the broader patterns of trade, conflict, and adaptation that shaped the region long before permanent Spanish missions. The volume places these events in the longer context of Native power and mobility across the Gulf Coast and southern Plains, offering a clear-eyed examination of how coastal and Caddoan peoples, French explorers, and Spanish soldiers navigated a landscape defined by competing interests rather than simple conquest.