Editing Medina County, Texas (section)

==History==
The county is named after the Medina River, which was named in 1689 after Spanish cartographer [[Pedro de Medina]] by Spanish explorer [[Alonso de Leon]], the first European to encounter the river.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Norris |first1=Lola Orellano |title=GENERAL ALONSO DE LEÓN'S EXPEDITION DIARIES INTO TEXAS (1686-1690): A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE SPANISH MANUSCRIPTS WITH SEMIPALEOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTIONS AND ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS |pages=274, 277|url=https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/148454/Norris.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y}}</ref> Because Pedro de Medina derived his surname from the Andalusian city of [[Medina-Sidonia]], the name Medina comes from the [[Arabic]] for city.

The [[Texas Legislature]] formed Medina County on February 12, 1848, and enlarged it on February 1, 1850, using land taken from [[Bexar County, Texas|Bexar County]]. [[Castroville, Texas|Castroville]] was the county seat, and the county erected the first permanent courthouse there in 1854. The county seat moved to Hondo in 1892, and a new courthouse was completed there in 1893.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Ochoa|first1=Ruben E.|title=Medina County|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcm10|website=Handbook of Texas Online|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|access-date=March 18, 2018}}</ref>

=== Texas-Indian Wars ===
The county was home to tribes such as the [[Lipan Apache]], [[Coahuiltecan]], and [[Tonkawa]].

The county was subject to frequent [[Comanche]] and [[Kiowa]] raids during the 1860s and 1870s. On a June 11, 1873 raid, Comanches attacked four settlers near Hondo. These raids were feared by the local residents, but by 1875, the raiding had stopped. Although the Comanche were gone, other tribes still were raiding the county frequently. 
The last Indian raid of the county happened on April 22, 1877, when 19-year-old Joe Wilton was killed by Indians near [[Devine, Texas]].