Only the earliest Texans paid much attention to these requirements and the vast distance from the Mexican central government left the settlers free to follow their own inclinations. This area's great attraction was the fertile soil, ideal for cotton production. By the early 1830s, transplanted Americans, many of them slave owners, outnumbered the Tejanos; the Mexican government soon understood that it had committed a great error by encouraging the migration of U.S. citizens with a hankering for independence.