It is not generally known that the San Gabriel River in central Texas was once the seat of Franciscan missionary activity. Yet such is the case, and slender remains of the mission establishments are still to be seen in the valley of that stream. If one will drive nine miles northwest from Rockdale to the Kolb Settlement, and then turn westward up the river for about a mile, he will come to what has long been known in the neighborhood as “Ditch Valley Farm,” a name, the present writer has discovered and established beyond doubt, which comes from the fact that through the farm once ran an “acequia,” or irrigating ditch, constructed in the year 1750 to serve three Spanish missions which had recently been established there. In the river near by are still to be seen at low water the remains of what has long been known as the old “Rock Dam,” whose origin, it is now clear, was the same as that of the ditch.
The remains of the “acequia” as well as of the dam are still to be seen in dim outline. Crossing the main highway near the western end of the farm is a shallow ditch leading toward the river. North of the road it is quite distinct, being some eight feet wide at the top and two or three feet deep in the middle. The land on this side of the road is uncultivated, and in the bed of the ditch are growing hackberry trees nearly a foot in diameter. About one hundred feet from the road the ditch terminates in a natural arroyo or gully, which leads eastward into the river about two hundred yards away. South of the road the ditch leads into cultivated fields, where it is soon lost; but forty rods to the southeast, where it crosses an unplowed lane, it is again distinct, and eight rods farther away it can still be faintly traced across another lane.
In the bed of the river two hundred yards below the mouth of the arroyo the remains of the old “Rock Dam” are pointed out. They now consist of only a heap of large stones, stretching across the stream. A man fishing up the river at low water would certainly notice the stones, though he might not suspect that they are the remains of a dam. But the inhabitants of the neighborhood claim to remember when both ditch and dam were quite distinct—a claim fully supported by the long and commonly used names, “Rock Dam” and “Ditch Valley Farm.” In the fields the “acequia” has been filled in by the plow; while most of the stones of the dam, I am told, have been hauled away and used for building purposes. Besides the ditch and the dam, tradition tells of the remains of old buildings of pre-American origin, once standing on Kolb's Hill, below Ditch Valley Farm. Tradition ascribes the ditch, the dam, and the old buildings to the Spaniards, and neighborhood belief in the tradition is evidenced by perennial digging about the locality of the dam for pots of Spanish gold. But few or none have guessed, what is now established beyond question, that these archaeological remains are the vestiges of what were known in their day as the San Xavier missions.
1. The obscurity of the history hitherto.—The story of these missions is a little known chapter in the history of the labors of the Franciscan Fathers among the Indians northeast of the Rio Grande. Writing a few years ago on “Some Obscure Points in the Mission Period” of the history of Texas, Dr. W. F. McCaleb said, with essential truth, “Though little is known of most of the eastern [Texas] missions, still less is known of some others. Indeed, as to the three missions on the San Xavier River, no historian, so far as the writer's information goes, save Bancroft, has
even mentioned their names.”
2 And Bancroft, he might have added, devotes to them only a little more than a page. Besides Bancroft, Dr. McCaleb should have excepted Shea, who devotes a few short paragraphs to the subject.
3 Had the assertion been intended to include books printed in a foreign language it would have excepted, also, Arrivicita's Crónica Seráfica y Apostólica,
4 a very rare work, which contains a fairly good, though in many respects unsatisfactory, account of the missions, in whose founding and administration the author took part. Arricivita's worst defect is his utter disregard for chronology and geography. There is, in addition, the still rarer treatise, for it is as yet unprinted, by Father Morfi, which devotes a considerable amount of space to the San Xavier missions. This history and that of Arricivita are the chief basis of the brief and obscure paragraphs of Bancroft and Shea.
5
Since Dr. McCaleb wrote the words quoted, no advance has been made in published works, excepting a minor contribution by the present writer. 6 At the time when that was published, only Bancroft had even dared guess the identity of the San Xavier River, on which the missions were established. He conjectured that it might have been a branch of either the Colorado or the Brazos, a guess giving considerable latitude, since these streams are from fifty to seventy-five miles apart in their middle courses. 7 Other features of the history of the missions have been equally or more obscure. Indeed, even the date of their establishment has not hitherto been correctly recorded.
And yet the reason for this obscurity is not that the missions were relatively unimportant, for they were more far-reaching in design, longer in duration, and more successful in operation than the San Sabá mission, for example, of which much more is popularly known. Nor has the reason been the non-existence of data for making the episode fairly plain, for these are abundant. It has been, rather, the inaccessibility of the data, and the fact that considerable material remains of the San Sabá mission have been preserved, whereas those of the San Xavier River have been completely lost to view. Recently, however, a large quantity of documentary sources for the history of the missions on the San Gabriel has been gathered from the archives of Mexico, 8 and the site of the missions and some of their remains have been identified. It is now possible, therefore, to construct with some degree of fulness, on the basis of the newly acquired material and a study of the site, the story of the precarious career of these shortlived but not unimportant missions.
2. The genesis of missionary activity in Texas.—One fact which appears from a study of missionary activities in Texas in the light of the distribution and organization of the native tribes, is that mission development was not haphazard, but bore pretty definite relations to the tribal grouping. The opinion sometimes expressed that the Spaniards set out from the first arbitrarily to establish a “chain of missions” in Texas, is in the main unfounded. Mission distribution was conditioned, as we would expect upon reflection, by native organization, and the practicability of such a plan would depend largely upon the distribution of the native tribes.
The first group of Indians in Texas to receive serious attention from the missionaries were the Hasinai, or Asinai, of the Neches-Angelina country, among whom missionary activity was begun in 1690, and renewed and extended in 1716. About 1700, with the establishment of three missions on the lower Rio Grande, below the present Eagle Pass, work was begun among the large group of Coahuiltecan, or Pakwan tribes, who lived between the Rio Grande and the San Antonio. This enterprise led logically to the founding of missions at San Antonio, for the same group of tribes (1718-1731). Next, in 1722, a mission was established near Matagorda Bay for the Karankawan tribes of the coast, but it was moved inland in 1726 to the Xaranames and the Tamiques. At the same time that missionary work was begun among the Karankawa, attention was directed for a time to the Hierbipiame, of the Brazos country, but without avail, as will appear shortly. After 1731, when the Querétaran missions were transferred from eastern Texas to San Antonio, there was no expansion into new missionary fields for over a decade and a half, although the old field gradually widened as a result of the efforts to supply with neophytes the missions already founded. By this time fifteen missions had been established in Texas.
The next seventeen years, between 1745 and 1762, that is, down to the time when Texas lost much of its political importance because of the acquisition of Louisiana by Spain, was another period of extensive missionary expansion within the present limits of Texas. During that period three missions were established on the San Xavier River, among the Tonkawan tribes; one was founded on the lower Trinity River among the Orcoquiza, one on the lower San Antonio for the Karankawa, and three, on the San Sabá and the Nueces Rivers for the Eastern Apache. At the same time, attempts were made among the Wichita tribes of the upper Brazos and the Red Rivers.
In all this missionary work, activity was much influenced by the movements or the supposed movements of the French of Louisiana, who were constantly regarded as dangerous rivals among the Texas tribes.
3. Early knowledge of the San Xavier River.—The San Xavier River of Spanish days, it is now clear enough, was the San Gabriel of today, which joins Little River—the old San Andrés, or the first of the Brazos de Dios—some twenty-five miles before that stream disembogues into the main Brazos. The way in which the Spanish name became converted by a series of misspellings into the present form, with the resulting loss of the stream's identity in modern geography, is in itself an interesting bit of history, but cannot be indicated here. The San Xavier River early became known to the Spaniards as one of the streams of central Texas endowed with more than usually attractive surroundings. It was visited and given its name by the Ramón-Saint Denis expedition on June 1, 1716. 9 By the same party Brushy Creek, the principal tributary of the San Gabriel, was twice crossed and was given the name of Arroyo de las Benditas Animas 10 (Creek of the Blessed Souls), which it bore in somewhat shortened form almost continuously throughout Spanish days.
From 1716 forward the San Xavier River was frequently visited and mentioned. The expedition led by the Marquis of Aguayo in 1721 passed the Colorado near the mouth of Onion Creek and followed a northward course that took the party across Arroyo de las Animas, the San Xavier River, Little River near Belton, and thence to the Brazos about at Waco. 11 In 1730, when the Querétaran missions were removed from eastern Texas to San Antonio, the Zacatecan missionaries asked permission to remove their establishments to the San Xavier, 12 a fact which indicates some acquaintance with the stream. In 1732 Bustillo y Zevallos, governor of Texas, made a campaign against the Apache that took him to and beyond the San Xavier. 13 In 1744, during the perennial quarrel between the Canary Island settlers and the other inhabitants of San Antonio, it was suggested that one of the parties should move to the San Xavier, 14 but the proposal was not acted upon. Two years later it was asserted that the region of the San Xavier was well known to the inhabitants of San Antonio as a buffalo-hunting ground, 15 and anyone who has beheld the superb prairies between the Colorado and the middle San Gabriel can readily believe the assertion.
It is thus seen that in 1745, when the project of missions for the tribes of central Texas was broached, the merits of the San Xavier river and its surrounding country were not by any means unknown. Its natural advantages were many; its principal draw-back was its proximity to the Lipan country, beyond the rugged hills on the west.
4. First contact with the tribes of central Texas.—But what interested the missionary fathers in any region more than its fertility and beauty, of which they were extremely good judges, was its natives. In this connection, it may be remarked that without the writings of the Catholic missionaries our ethnological knowledge of many portions of America would be almost a blank. This would be true of central Texas in the eighteenth century. In the course of the passage of the Spaniards to and from eastern Texas and of missionary excursions from San Antonio, several tribes became known on either side of the Camino Real, in the region between the Colorado and the Trinity. Conspicuous among them were the four bands which played the chief part in the inception of the San Xavier missions, namely, the group called Ranchería Grande (Big Camp or Big Village), 16 the Mayeyes, the Deadoses, and the Yojuanes.
Ranchería Grande was a most extraordinary aggregation. At its basis the principal tribe was the Hierbipiame, or Ervipiame, 17 for whom a mission had been founded in 1698 between the Sabinas and the Rio Grande, about forty leagues northwest of Monclova. 18 It will be interesting to note in passing that the name given to this first, as well as to the second and third missions founded for the Hierbipiame, was San Xavier. To just what territory the Hierbipiame were indigenous does not appear. In the formation of Ranchería Grande there had been added to this tribe (1) the remains of numerous broken-down bands from near and even beyond the Rio Grande who had fled eastward and joined the Hierbipiame for defence against the Apache and to escape punishment for injuries done the Spaniards of the interior, and (2) many apostate Indians from the missions at San Antonio and on the Rio Grande. Because of the prominence of the Hierbipiame in that group, it was sometimes called “Ranchería Grande de los Hierbipiames.” 19
Ranchería Grande was mentioned as early as 1707, when Diego Ramón, commander at San Juan Bautista, set out to punish it for disturbances at the missions on the Rio Grande. 20 It was then said to be near the Colorado River, at that day called the San Marcos. Again, in 1714 Ramón secured from it apostates who had fled from the San Juan Bautista mission. 21 In 1716 the Ramón expedition passed through it north of Little River and two or three leagues west of the Brazos, apparently near modern Cameron. 22 According to Ramón it then contained more than two thousand souls. 23 In 1721 a chief of the Ranchería Grande, called Juan Rodríguez, was found by the Marquis de Aguayo at San Antonio, with a band of his people, asking for a mission. The Marquis took him as a guide as far as the Trinity River, where he found the major portion of his people mingling with the Bidais and Agdocas (Deadoses). Aguayo ordered the people of Ranchería Grande to retire across the Brazos, “where they were accustomed to live,” promising to establish a mission for them near San Antonio on his return thither. True to his promise, in 1722 he founded for Juan Rodríguez and his band the mission of San Xavier de Náxera, on the outskirts of San Antonio, where the mission of Concepción now stands. 24 It endured, with little success, till 1726, when it was merged with that of San Antonio de Valero. 25
Though reduced in numerical strength by the drain made by the mission, Ranchería Grande continued to give much trouble to the missionaries, since it afforded a refuge for apostates from San Antonio, who must have tended to replenish its population. The missionaries complained that it was a veritable “Rochelle,” and they earnestly requested that it should be either destroyed or Christianized. Its pernicious influence was thus described in 1729 by Fray Miguel de Paredes:
Not only do they impede new conversions, but they also destroy the reductions already established. . . . At present, Most Excellent Sir, since these Indians of the missions know that they have an open door, asylum, and protection in the Ranchería Grande, their flights have reached such an extreme that if their disorders are reprimanded or punished the least little bit, whether by the chiefs or by the missionaries, or if there should be any extraordinary labor—and many times without other cause than to seek their liberty—they flee to the said ranchería. 26
It has been seen that down to Aguayo's time this troublesome aggregation of Indians were “accustomed to live” west of the Brazos, near the Cross Timbers (Monte Grande). But pressure from the Apaches soon drove them to spend much of their time eastward of the Brazos. In testimony of this fact, Bustillo y Zavallos, who had been governor of Texas from 1732 to 1734, wrote in 1746 that “of Ranchería Grande there remained in my time only the name, for their abode being the Monte Grande, they had already, because of their diminutive forces, retired to live in the distance, between the Yojuanes and Acdozas,” 27 that is, between the Trinity and the Brazos. This seems to have been their principal haunt in 1745, when our story begins.
The habitat and movements of the Mayeyes were much the same as those of Ranchería Grande, in so far as those of either are known. In 1687 Joutel, La Salle's companion, heard of the Meghy as a tribe living north of the Colorado somewhere near the place where the Spaniards later actually came into contact with the Mayeyes, 28 and it seems not improbable from the similarity of the names and locations that the two tribes were identical. In 1727 Rivera encountered the Mayeyes at a spring called Puentezitas, fifteen leagues west of the junction of the two arms of the Brazos, that is, of the Little River with the main Brazos, and thirty-five leagues after crossing the Colorado. The place must have been somewhere near the San Gabriel River. 29 According to Bustillo y Zevallos, who was evidently speaking of them as he had known them in his day, the Mayeyes customarily came down from the Brazos de Dios to the Nabasota (Navasota), and ranged from there to the Trinity. As he had seen them several times, he probably spoke with authority. 30 A critical document now in the archive of the College of Guadalupe de Zacatecas, written anonymously about 1748 by someone who had had wide experience in Texas, evidently a Zacatecan friar, says that the country of the Mayeyes was on the east of the Brazos, eighty leagues from San Antonio and twenty from the “place of San Xavier.” 31 The two designations agree essentially with each other and harmonize with the testimony of other documents.
The Yojuane are less easily traced. They were a wandering Tonkawan band, as were the Mayeye, and their general history was much the same as the better known Tonkawa tribe. 32 They were mentioned by Casañas in 1691 as “Diu Juan,” in a list of enemies of the Hasinai. 33 In 1709 Fathers Espinosa and Olivares met a tribe called Yojuan near the Colorado River. 34 About 1714 they destroyed the main Hasinai temple near the Angelina. 35 The Joyuan tribe met by Du Rivage in 1719 near the Red River above the Caddodacho seem to have been the Yojuane. 36 Later on the Yojuane were closely associated with the Mayeye and the Hierbipiame, and for some time before 1745 they lived northward of these tribes between the Trinity and the Brazos. Mediavilla y Ascona, governor of Texas between 1727 and 1730, stated that he frequently saw them on the road to eastern Texas. Bustillo y Zevallos, his successor in office, said that they lived “to the northwest, up the Trinity River, far distant from them [the Deadoses and Mayeyes] and neighbors to a tribe of Apaches called los Melenudos.” Before the middle of the eighteenth century the hostility of the Yojuane toward the Hasinai seems to have ceased, for thereafter the two tribes frequently went together against the Apache.
The sources for the history of the San Xavier missions establish the already conjectured 37 identity of the Deadoses with the Agdocas of earlier times. The name is variously written Yacdocas, Yadosa, de Adozes, Doxsa, Deadoses, 38 etc. The same documents also make it clear that the Deadoses were a branch of the Bidai-Orcoquiza linguistic group. 39 On this point the anonymous document in the archives at Zacatecas, cited just above, says “Yadocxa ought to be called Deadoses. This is a band of Viday Indians who, being dismembered from its vast body, which has its movable abode between Trinidad and Sabinas Rivers, have lived for more than twenty years, for the sake of the trade afforded them by the transit of the Spaniards, on this (western) side of the River Trinidad, and, extending as far as Navasotoc, . . . are accustomed to join the Mayeyes, who reside in the thickets of the River Brassos de Dios.” According to the same document, the Deadoses were habitually forty leagues east of the Mayeyes. 40 These statements harmonize with various other detached items of information. In 1714, for example, the Agdocas were said to be twelve leagues south of the Assinais (Hasinai), that is, in the country near the mouth of the Angelina River, 41 where Bidai continued to live to a much later date. In 1721, as has been seen, Aguayo found the Agdocas west of the Trinity, mingled with Ranchería Grande. 42 They evidently had already begun to move westward.
Bustillo bears testimony that both the Mayeyes and the Deadoses were in his day already succumbing to the principal enemy of the native American race, disease. He says: “Both of these tribes are small. I have seen them various times, the last being in 1734, when I left that province. I do not believe that they have increased since that time, because of the epidemics which they are accustomed to suffer and which they were suffering, of measles and smallpox, which are their sole destroyers.” In 1745 the four bands, Ranchería Grande, Mayeyes, Yojuanes, and Deadoses, were said to comprise 1228 persons. 43
Other tribes intimately connected with the history of the San Xavier missions were the Bidai, of the lower Trinity River, and the Coco, a Karankawan tribe of the lower Colorado. Early Spanish contact with these tribes has been discussed by the present writer elsewhere, and will not need discussion here. 44
1. The petition of the four tribes.—The establishment of missions for these tribes was due primarily to the zeal of Fray Mariano Francisco de los Dolores y Viana, missionary at the mission of San Antonio de Valero. 45 He had come to Texas in the year 1733, 46 and had made occasional visits to central Texas, now to recover apostates, and again in search of new tribes from which to replenish the missions, ever in need of recruits because of desertions and the ravages of disease. In the course of these expeditions he had visited the Deadoses, Yojuanes, Mayeyes, and the Ranchería Grande. The precise details of these visits, unfortunately, have not appeared. We are told, however, that with some of the tribes he had contracted friendship as early as 1734. 47 Presumably the first to be dealt with were the Indians of Ranchería Grande, since, as we have seen, with these the missionaries of San Antonio had frequent and early contact. We learn, again, that in 1741, when Fray Mariano accompanied governor Wintuisen to the Trinity, he carried presents to the Deadoses and the Mayeyes and tried to induce them to enter his mission; 48 and, again, that for some time before 1745 he had been visiting all of these tribes and they him, “either every year or nearly every year.” 49 Thus, contrary to what might be inferred from some of the documents, it is clear that a project to found missions for these four tribes was no sudden thought.
But it was not till 1745 that matters came to a head. On the second of June of that year, after numerous unfulfilled promises, it would seem, four chiefs of the tribes in question, with thirteen followers, came to San Antonio and asked for a mission, requesting that it should be in their own country, at a site which Fray Mariano should select. 50
2. The appeals of Fray Mariano, June-July, 1745.—It happened that just at that time the Commissary Visitor, Fray Francisco Xavier Ortiz, was at the San Antonio missions on an official visitation. Accordingly, although he had already passed by the mission of San Antonio de Valero, on his way down the river, Fray Mariano embraced the opportunity and asked Father Ortiz to return, recommending that the desired missions should be established, with a presidio of thirty soldiers to protect the missionaries from the Indians, and the latter from their enemy, the Apache. From such a step he prophesied great results. Not only would these Indians be brought to a knowledge of the true God, but their friends, the Texas, who had so long been obdurate, would also be converted. Moreover, great advantages would result in case of war with France, for the Indians, if converted, could be relied upon to aid the Spaniards, whereas, at present, they would be sure to join the French. To avoid unnecessary expense, he recommended that half of the garrison of Adaes be put under a captain and assigned to the proposed new presidio. To make possible the two or three missions that would be necessary for the 1228 souls which the four tribes were reported to comprise, he recommended appealing to the king for the required initial sum and a suitable annuity thereafter. 51
Father Ortiz granted the request that he return to the mission of Valero, and, while the Indians were still there, had their petition formally examined by Thoribio de Urrutia, captain of the presidio, in the presence of the other officials. 52 We are told that Captain Urrutia tried to persuade the Indians to settle at San Antonio, where he would provide them a separate mission, but that they refused to go so far from their relatives, their lands, their friends, and their trade with the Texas, from whom they were accustomed to procure their weapons. Next, Captain Urrutia proceeded to test their sincerity, telling them that if they entered the mission they must be subordinate to the missionaries, labor in the fields, attend religious services, receive instruction, and fight the enemies of the Spaniards. When they consented to all this he promised, in the name of the king, to aid them against all their foes, and again they repeated their request for a padre to go with them to their country, see their people, and instruct them as to what they must do in preparation for a mission. 53
In addition to the appeal made to Father Ortiz, Fray Mariano addressed one 54 to the guardian of his College, Fray Alonso Giraldo de Terreros, a zealous soul, who, a decade later, was to suffer martyrdom in Texas. In this appeal Father Mariano stated that, in view of the great number of Indians who would be likely to join the petitioning tribes, the opportunity of the College was the rarest it had ever had in Texas.
According to the reports and the names of the unknown Kingdoms which there are in all that region, making a conservative estimate, at the lowest figure there would not fail to be more than six thousand souls who in time could be reduced. It would be a pity to lose this opportunity, which would lead to another equally holy. . . . It is a fact that on one of the occasions when I went inland, I came upon Indians of whom those which we have reduced had never heard at all. And thus the report which the Indians themselves give is made to appear credible. And even if it were not, it cannot be denied that, besides those who wish to be converted, there are large nations, none of which, we know, will ever become converted unless means be taken to establish missions for them in their own country or near to them, according as there are conveniences in the different places.
Continuing, Fray Mariano suggested that Fray Diego Ximénez, secretary of the visitor and present with him at San Antonio, be sent to assist in the new work, and that the conduct of the matter before the viceroy be entrusted preferably to Father Ortiz, and if not to him, then to Father Ximénez. 55
Father Espinosa, in his Chrónica Apostólica, which was completed in 1747 (though its title page bears the date 1746) 56 makes a statement which may furnish the real reason why the project of a mission for these tribes, which, as has been seen, had been known and dealt with for some time, came to a head just at the time when it did. He says that the mission of La Punta, or Lampazos, had just been secularized, and that the College wished to establish another in its place, and, therefore, promoted one on the San Xavier. As Father Espinosa was at the time chronicler of the College, just completing his now famous history, and as he took some part in the struggle for the San Xavier missions, there is good reason for accepting his explanation 57 as at least a part of the truth. One of the opponents of the project goes so far as to say, but evidently without foundation, that he believed that Father Ortiz's visit to San Antonio was for no other purpose than to see about establishing these San Xavier missions. 58
3. A new embassy and the selection of a site.—While waiting for help and for approval of his project, Fray Mariano did his best to keep the petitioners favorably disposed, and to prepare the way for the establishment of the hoped-for missions. Indeed, for more than a year he and his College labored without help from the central government, and still another year before that government could be induced to authorize the mission, although for much of that time an inchoate mission settlement was in actual existence on the San Xavier.
Before the visiting Indians returned to their homes, they had promised Fray Mariano that they would assemble their people at some specified place to await his coming at the beginning of the winter. When they departed they were accompanied by an escort of mission Indians, who returned in a short time reporting that the news carried by the chiefs had been joyfully received by the people of the tribes, and that a search for a site had already been begun. 59 This report was made before July 26, 1745.
Some time later, just when does not appear, the petitioners sent to San Antonio a delegation who reported that a site had been selected, and told of “many other nations” which had promised to join them in the proposed missions. 60 The names of these tribes, as given in the autos reporting this visit—as yet the autos have not been found—are apparently those given later by Father Ortiz in his memorial to the king. 61 His list was as follows: Vidais, Caocos, Lacopseles, Anchoses, Tups, Atais, Apapax, Acopseles, Cancepnes, Tancagues, Hiscas, Naudis, Casos, Tanico, Quisis, Anathagua, Atasacneus, Pastates, Geotes, Atiasnogues, Taguacanas, Taguayas, “and others who subsequently asked for baptism.” 62 Among these we recognize the Bidai, of the lower middle Trinity, who lived below the Deadoses; the Coco and the Tups, Karankawan tribes of the lower Colorado and the gulf coast; the Naguidis, a little known branch of the Hasinai, of eastern Texas; the Tonkawa, Kichai, Towakana, and Taovayas, tribes then all liying on the upper Trinity, Brazos, and Red Rivers, 63 beyond the Hierbipiames and Mayeyes; and the Tanico, a tribe near the Mississippi. The wide geographical distribution of these tribes might cause one to be suspicious of the genuineness of the report, but this doubt is lessened when we learn that later on a number of the tribes named actually became identified with the enterprise. The most that could be said in criticism of the report is that the outlook was perhaps regarded with a somewhat unwarranted optimism.
After making suitable presents to the delegation, Fray Mariano set out with them, accompanied by some mission Indians and soldiers, to visit the petitioners in their homes, and to view the site which they had selected. The place, it seems, was beyond the first or the second arm of the Brazos. The journey was impeded by high waters, and Fray Mariano was forced to turn back. But he sent forward some of the soldiers and neophytes, who succeeded in reaching a gathering of Indians, of various tribes, who were awaiting them in the Monte Grande on the Brazos. 64
Now, it seems, on account of the difficulties of passing the high waters, the place which had been chosen was given up, and the soldiers were conducted to the San Xavier River, instead, and shown a site there. There are indications also that one of the reasons for a change of site was the discovery by the Indians that in their immediate country the necessary water facilities were lacking. This could hardly have referred to a lack of water, but rather to a topography unsuited to irrigation.
On returning to San Antonio the soldiers reported that they had examined the site shown to them on the San Xavier and that they had found it satisfactory. Hereupon 65 new autos were drawn before the captain and the cabildo, giving an account of the occurrences just related, expressing a favorable opinion of the site chosen, asserting, as a warning, that the petitioners had all come armed with French guns, and giving assurance that “through this establishment of pueblos the malice of the Apache nation will be punished and the communication of the French nation will be prevented.” 66
4. The beginnings of a tentative mission, January-April, 1746.—Various items of rather fragmentary information enable us to record the circumstances and to establish the date of the actual beginnings of tentative missionary work at San Xavier, both of which matters have hitherto been undetermined.
True to his promise, at the coming of winter Fray Mariano went to meet the petitioners at the designated site, where we find him in January, 1746, accompanied by the alférez of the San Antonio garrison, a squad of soldiers, and some mission Indians (and, presumably, with oxen and agricultural implements), making preparations for the hoped-for missions. 67 Besides the original petitioners, he found at the site some of the Coco tribe, with whom he had communicated in the previous October. They assisted in the preparations, promised to enter the missions, and returned to their native haunts for their families. 68 A mission site was chosen on the south side of the San Xavier River, now the San Gabriel, a short distance above its junction with the Arroyo de las Ánimas, now Brushy Creek. 69 Sometime before April 13, evidently, Father Mariano wrote to his president at San Antonio that, since the good intentions of the Indians had proved constant, “he had founded a mission to attract them, on the banks of the San Xavier, 70 in which enterprise he had spent all he possessed; that the place was most fertile, and its fields spacious and watered with good and plentiful water, that he had planted potatoes, and that though he had lost [some], he still had enough for another planting.” 71 The mission was regarded as having been “founded,” therefore, between January and April 13, 1746. Thus far, however, the founding seems to have consisted in little more than the selection of the site and the planting of crops. It had not yet been duly solemnized.
Before the middle of April, Fray Mariano returned to San Antonio, but he left some mission Indians from the latter place in charge, to plant and care for crops with which to support the prospective neophytes. When he departed he promised the assembled Indians that he would return with Spanish settlers and missionaries. 72
The injury to the missionary cause which the fathers frequently had to suffer at the hands of the military authorities is illustrated at this point by Father Mariano's experience with the Cocos. 73 As some members of this tribe were returning from San Xavier for their families, they were attacked, apparently without provocation, by Captain Orobio Bazterra, of Bahía, who was on his return from the lower Trinity, whither he had been to reconnoiter French traders. 74 In the course of the trouble two of the Cocos were killed and others captured. On receiving the news of the occurrence on April 13, Fathers Mariano and Santa Ana complained to Captain Urrutia, saying that they feared that the mission project would be sadly interfered with and that even an outbreak might result unless something were done, and requested that Orobio should be required at once to release the captives. Captain Urrutia issued the order and also sent to San Xavier a delegation of mission Indians to make explanations and to help keep the peace. The result seems to have been satisfactory, for later on the Cocos entered one of the missions at San Xavier, as we shall see. 75
Between April and June, evidently, there were no missionaries at San Xavier, for early in the latter month a delegation of Indians went from there to San Antonio again to urge Father Mariano to return with the promised friars and supplies. Four days later the “principal chief of all the nations” went from another direction to San Antonio to complain of the delay in sending them missionaries. Ethnologists would like to know to what tribe the principal chief belonged, but the information does not appear. Fray Mariano took this occasion to send a new appeal for help, predicting that the Indians could not be expected to wait longer than till October before giving up in disgust. 76 Meanwhile, the crops had been cared for by the new tribes, who had remained in the vicinity in spite of Fray Mariano's absence. 77
Sometime during the summer the construction of mission buildings was begun. We learn this fact from an undated document of this year by Father Ortiz, who writes that “it appears from other letters that the said father [Mariano] has already begun a church, habitation, and other things necessary, in order that the religious may live there, and that they have planted maize, potatoes, and other grains, for which he took from his mission of San Antonio forty cargoes, yokes of oxen, Indian workmen, and others to escort him, besides the soldiers.” 78 Before January 16, 1747, Father Mariano had spent $2262.50 in supporting and entertaining the Indians, and by February, 1747, the sum had increased by $5083.50.
In the spring of 1747 some of the prospective neophytes, twelve in number, were at San Antonio, probably to complain again of delay. At any rate, near the end of March Fray Mariano sent back with them some Indians from the missions of Valero and Concepción, together with a Spaniard, named Eusebio Pruneda. Pruneda was provided with seed grain, and was instructed to plant crops and to “serve as a diversion for the people” until the viceroy should give the necessary orders for proceeding regularly. He found at San Xavier “Deadoses, Cocos, and Yojuanes.” They welcomed him and turned in to help plant the crops, “the said Indians working in person”—a fact that was regarded as noteworthy. When half through with the task, however, Pruneda's enterprise was broken up by the Apaches. A band of twenty-two Cocos who had been sent out to secure buffalo meat for the assemblage met the enemy near by, fought with them, and killed one. But seeing or learning of “many rancherías” of Apaches close at hand, at Parage de las Animas (evidently on Brushy Creek) they returned to San Xavier, where the whole body of Indians remained three days prepared for battle. At the end of that time, fearing an attack by a larger force of the enemy, and “fearful of the ruin which they might wreak upon them,” the Cocos withdrew to the lower Trinity, designating a place where they might be found. Before leaving they sent word by Pruneda to Father Mariano that he had deceived them by his promises to send missionaries and other Spaniards; that until these should be forthcoming they would seek their own safety by retiring; but that when they should be provided not only would they be prompt to return, but several other tribes from “muy adentro” (far in the interior) whom Father Mariano had not seen, would come also. 79
It would seem that during a part of this time Fray Mariano had with him two assisting missionaries, for later on the College of Santa Cruz asked for reimbursement for the stipend paid three missionaries for work at San Xavier during the full years of 1746 and 1747. It appears, however, that during this period missionaries were at San Xavier at most only intermittently. One of the friars who assisted Father Mariano during this time was Mariano de Anda y Altamirano, a missionary formerly of the College of Zacatecas, who had served both at the Bahía mission and at San Miguel de los Adaes. In the summer of 1747, while at San Xavier, he was ordered to hasten to Mexico to assist in securing the desired license for the missions. He passed through Saltillo on his way south in July, 80 a fact which gives us a clue to the approximate time of his departure.
We have thus been able to piece together some fragments of information concerning the circumstances of the beginnings of missionary work on the San Xavier; but practically all that we know of actual operations there between June, 1746, and February, 1748, is that the missionaries were there, from time to time at least, catechising and feeding the Indians, until the project should be definitely authorized and supported, and something permanent undertaken.
1. The approval of the college and of the fiscal obtained.—Meanwhile affairs were taking their slow and uncertain course in Mexico. If one does not care to follow the tedious details of the persistent struggle made by Father Mariano and the College of Santa Cruz for authority from the civil government to found the desired missions, for a presidio to protect them, and for funds to support them, he will do well to pass this chapter by. But as a monument to the zeal and the dogged fighting qualities of the Franciscans, and as a study in actual government in the frontier provinces of New Spain, the struggle deserves to be faithfully and somewhat fully recorded.
On leaving San Antonio in the summer of 1745, Father Ortiz carried with him written evidence of all that had occurred there relative to the request of the tribes for missions. 81 He evidently did not reach his college at Querétaro until late in the fall, for the report of his visitation was certified by his secretary at La Punta, or Lampazos, on October 11. 82 The College heartily approved the plan of Father Mariano, and, as he had suggested, entrusted the conduct of it before the viceroy to Father Ortiz, who, through his representative, Francisco Xavier Marqués, presented the two letters of Fray Mariano, and besought the viceroy's patronage for the enterprise. This was on or before January 18, and on that day the matter was referred, in the regular routine of such affairs, to the royal fiscal, Don Pedro Vedoya. 83 Just a month later this official advised the viceroy to secure, before deciding so important a matter, from the governor of Texas, the officials of San Antonio, and the commissary general of missions, who was then at the College at San Fernando, “detailed information regarding the advantages and the need of increasing missions and missionaries in those places, the nations named in the two letters, the distances from the presidios of San Antonio de Valero and los Adaes, and the direction to each.” On the same day the viceroy ordered that Vedoya's advice should be acted upon. 84
Before these orders could be complied with, the College presented a new memorial based on later news from Texas and urging haste. It told of the additional tribes that had offered to enter the missions, reported that the site selected was satisfactory, and asked for the establishment, in addition to missions, of a presidio of at least fifty soldiers to withstand the warlike Apaches and to cut off their trade with the French. 85
The matter was again sent to the fiscal, and on March 28 he, satisfied with the evidence produced and the importance of haste while the Indians were in the right frame of mind, gave his approval to the project. He proposed that for the present, until a larger number of Indians should congregate, two or three missions should be established and supplied; and that, in order to avoid additional expense for their maintenance, the garrison of Boca de Leones and the presidio of Cerralvo, in Nuevo León, should be extinguished. To provide defence for the missions and for the settlement of Spaniards who it was hoped might locate near them, instead of approving Fray Mariano's plan of dividing the garrison of Los Adaes he recommended transferring to San Xavier the presidio of Santa Rosa del Sacramento, of Coahuila. 86
This proposal of Vedoya to rob Peter to pay Paul, like that of Father Mariano, was altogether characteristic. They are but single examples of a policy widely practiced by the Spanish government on the northern frontier of New Spain. The government was always “hard up,” and yet was desirous of distributing funds and forces where they were most needed. Demands for protection against the Indians and for money to aid the missionaries and colonists were multitudinous. Consequently, the officials were ever under the necessity of cutting off here in order to piece out or patch on there. The truth is, therefore, that many of the new enterprises of the eighteenth century represent rather transfers of effort from one scene to another than real expansion. Actual increase in annual expenditure was in reality slight, or even tended to decrease. 87
2. Opposition by Bustillo y Zevallos, May, 1746.—Vedoya's dictamen was referred to the auditor de guerra, the Marqués de Altamira. He, in turn, on April 13, recommended that an opinion on all the matters involved should be obtained from Juan Antonio Bustillo y Zevallos, at the time alcalde ordinario of the City of Mexico. 88 Bustillo had been twelve years in Texas, seven of them as captain of the presidio of Loreto, or Bahía del Espiritu Santo, and three as governor of the province. As captain at Bahía he had assisted in the transfer of the Querétaran missions from eastern Texas to San Antonio. His administration as governor had been notable for the settlement of the Canary Islanders at San Antonio and for a campaign to the San Xavier and the San Sabá Rivers led by himself in 1732 against the Apaches. 89 Altamira's advice was followed by the viceroy, who in a decree of April 18 requested Bustillo to make the desired report. 90
The opposition to the San Xavier mission project offered by Bustillo in his memorial of May 28 was the focal point of much of the tedious discussion of the matter which followed. 91 He began by paying a generous tribute to the zeal of the missionaries of Querétaro in the northeastern provinces and reviewing the history of the San Xavier matter to date. Then he proceeded to present objections to nearly every point which had been raised. According to him, the country along the highway between San Antonio and the Trinity was occupid by only the two small tribes of the Mayeyes and the Deadoses. The Yojuanes lived far up the Trinity to the northwest, and the Ranchería Grande, now little more than a name, between the Deadoses and Yojuanes. All of these tribes were now beyond the Brazos, and by no means close to the San Xavier, while they were applying for missions merely in order to get the material benefits, “since they will never accept the principal without the accessories.” 92 The Vidais might some day be reduced, but, because of their barbarity and their plentiful supply of food, he doubted very much whether their reduction could be speedily effected. The Karankawan tribes of the coast 93 could never be subjected to mission influence, a fact which had been proved by the failure of his own efforts and those of the missionaries covering many years. He doubted the feasibility of irrigating the lands of the San Xavier, because he had camped on it three days during his campaign of 1732 without noticing any facilities for irrigating ditches. Indeed, he had reported this opinion in December, 1744, when settlement on the San Xavier was being contemplated. As an example of the ease with which one could be mistaken on such matters without adequate information, he said, with truth, one had only to remember the disappointment of the missionaries in 1730 when they had attempted to establish on the San Marcos the missions removed from the east.
Moreover, said Bustillo, the San Xavier River was in a dangerous location, being on the highway by which the Apaches sallied forth from their hills in the west. As to the possession of French guns by the petitioning tribes, they had not gotten them directly from the French, but from the Texas, who were the middlemen in this trade. The French themselves had never entered so far into the interior. The presidio of Los Adaes could not be reduced without great danger to the eastern frontier, and if any of the soldiers were to be taken away they might much better be stationed at Cadodachos, where the French had so long had an establishment. Adaes was the capital of the province, and should be the residence of the governors. The only reason why governors had lived at San Antonio was to avoid the hard life at the frontier post. On the other hand, the garrisons at Cerralvo, Boca de Leones, and Sacramento were all needed in their respective places, as a defence against the Tobosos and Jumanes, and besides, there was more hope of establishing a settlement of Spaniards at the last named place than there ever could be at San Xavier.
After all these objections to the San Xavier plan, however, Bustillo was ready with a substitute. The four tribes in question and the others which had been named, were, he said, nearer to “Texas” 94 than to San Antonio. Why not establish a mission for some of the petitioners at the village of San Pedro de los Nabedaches, as an example to the Nabedache tribe; and another at the Aynais village called El Loco, between the Angelina and Nacogdoches? “In this way,” he concluded, “three desirable ends, in my opinion, will be secured. First, that the moving of the Presidio del Sacramento may be dispensed with; second, that the Reverend Fathers may realize the fruit of their desire, and the Indians the wish which it is said they have manifested; third, and more important, that there may be restored to the poor Texas the consolation which has been taken away from them. Indeed, I am most certain that they will receive it with notable rejoicing, for many times I have seen them lament with tears the fact that they were deserted—not that I should say for this reason that they were weeping for the lack of access to our Holy Faith, for none of the Indians with whom I have communicated give this reason, but rather those of intercourse and of trade in their products.” 95
Withal, it would seem that Bustillo was a man of more than ordinarily sound sense and of candor. His experience with the barbarian Indians had taught him their most usual motives to a first profession of love for Christianity.
3. Rebuttal by Mediavilla and the College.—Again the matter went to the auditor. With the memorial of Bustillo was sent the news from San Antonio that the Indians had proved constant in their desires; that Fray Mariano had actually founded for them a mission and planted crops on the banks of the San Xavier; that the place was extremely fertile and well watered, and that Father Mariano had spent his all on the work. 96 Hereupon, at the auditor's instance, Father Ortiz was called upon for a reply to Bustillo's objections. 97
To prepare an answer, the College called into requisition a gun of like calibre, another ex-governor of Texas, indeed, Don Melchor Mediavilla y Ascona, who was then at Hacienda de Galera y Apaseo. 98 Mediavilla had preceded Bustillo as governor of the province. He had been in office at the time of Rivera's inspection in 1727, had sided with the missionaries in their opposition to that official's recommendation to reduce the Texas garrisons, and had supported their appeal in 1729 to be allowed to retire from eastern Texas. It was for these actions, according to Bonilla, that he had been removed from office in 1731. 99 Evidently the College expected hearty support from him, and it was not disappointed.
Fray Alonzo Giraldo de Terreros, at the time guardian of the College, wrote to Mediavilla relative to the matter on June 23. 100 In his reply, made at his hacienda on June 28, Mediavilla was as emphatic in his advocacy of the San Xavier project as Bustillo had been in his opposition to it. He said that he knew from personal acquaintance with them that the four tribes in question were docile, and that he believed them to be “domesticable.” As they lived near the San Xavier, they could easily be taken there and settled. For such a purpose this river was the best place in the province, having good water facilities and fertile lands. Bustillo, he said, could hardly be taken as an authority on this point, as he had crossed the River near the Brazos, and not near the proposed site; besides, he was rather frightened while in its vicinity on his campaign, and could not have been expected to make careful observations. As to taking the Yojuanes and other tribes in question to San Pedro and the El Loco settlement, this was impracticable, for to say nothing of other difficulties, they would be unwelcome, since they had different rites and customs from those of the Texas. On the other hand,—and the delightful inconsistency did not disturb him—it would be most easy to settle on the San Xavier not only the petitioners, but also the Texas and the Nabedache, who, as Bustillo had said with truth, greatly lamented the departure of the missionaries from their midst. But Bustillo was wrong, he said, in supposing that the Yojuanes and others did not trade directly with the French, for, as a matter of fact, they were visited regularly by traders who came by way of Cadodachos and the Texas. Indeed, entry was so easy that in 1725 five hundred French soldiers (genizaros) had penetrated the country for a distance of ninety leagues, looking for a rumored mine on the Trinity, and had returned by the same route without even being molested. 101 It was clear, therefore, if for these reasons aione, that the province needed the protection of another presidio, whereas those of Sacramento and Cerralvo were not needed where they were, and were at best serving only a temporal purpose. Well might they be taken to the San Xavier to serve so important a spiritual end.
Supported by Mediavilla's opinion and a paper of similar tenor written by Fray Isidro Felix de Espinosa, who had been for several years president of the Querétaran missions of eastern Texas, 102 Father Ortiz prepared his answer. It was dated at the College of San Fernando on July 30. His reliance was mainly on the opinion of Mediavilla, which he submitted with his reply. Father Ortiz himself added to the discussion little that was new. 103
Upon receipt of these opinions, the autos were remanded by the viceroy to the fiscal. This official was of the opinion that Bustillo was completely worsted in the argument, and, considering that he had no reason to change his original views, but, rather, strong additional ones for maintaining them, he reiterated his opinion of March 28. 104
4. Delay due to the undertakings of Escandón.—Now arose a new cause or excuse for delay. The king had a short time previously charged the viceroy with the pacification and colonization of the coast country between Tampico and Bahía del Espiritu Santo, the last portion of the Gulf coast to receive attention by the Spaniards. To effect this important task, José de Escandón, Count of Sierra Gorda, was appointed by the viceroy on September 6, 1746. To enable him to explore, preliminary to colonizing, the large stretch of country assigned to him, Escandón asked the aid of detachments from the garrisons at Adaes, Bahía, Sacramento, Monclova, Cerralvo, and Boca de Leones. 105 In view of these facts, the auditor de guerra gave the opinion 106 that with the garrisons thus occupied, none of them could be spared for the proposed San Xavier missions. He recurred, therefore, to his former opinion that neither could the presidio of Sacramento be moved nor a new one be erected, and recommended that Father Ortiz be asked to propose some other means of securing the end so much desired. 107
5. New plans proposed by Father Ortiz.—On September 28 the auditor's opinion was sent to Father Ortiz, and on October 10 he was ready with his reply. With the courage of convictions that usually marked these frontier missionaries, he dared to question the judgment of the auditor on matters of state, insisting that the garrisons of Sacramento, Coahuila, Boca de Leones, and Cerralvo were unnecessary, and slyly affirming that they could be diverted either to take part in the Escandón enterprise or to protect the proposed missions at San Xavier. Since a suggestion had been asked for, he submitted two alternative plans. One was for a volunteer civil colony, the other for a presidio which should become a civil settlement after a term of years. The first plan was to use the funds now being spent in supporting the Sacramento garrison, for the maintenance of one hundred volunteer settlers at San Xavier, assigning them lands, providing them with an initial outfit, and maintaining them for a term of eight years, after which they might be expected to support themselves. This would make a garrison unnecessary. The second alternative plan was that the company at Sacramento, or another of equal strength, should be maintained at San Xavier for a term of years, with the obligation to remain thereafter as colonists, having been supplied during their period of service with the means of pursuing agriculture. In either way, he said, a substantial village or city of Spaniards would be established at the end of ten years, while the missions would meanwhile have the necessary protection. It will be seen that both of these suggestions involved the use, for the defence of San Xavier, of the funds then being spent in Sacramento, and could hardly be regarded as entirely new plans, or greatly different from that of the fiscal.
Finally, in order that the Indians now gathered at San Xavier might be kept friendly and retained at the spot, Father Ortiz requested that, while the fate of the project was being decided, a sum of money should be assigned from the royal treasury for the purchase of presents and food, for “the eagerness (moción) of the Indians is such that the like was never before witnessed, and ... if this enterprise should fail ... we do not know what would happen.” 108
Notwithstanding the suggestion of Father Ortiz, the advice of the auditor prevailed, and, in view of the operations of Escandón, 109 the viceroy ordered all discussion of the matter suspended. The date of the order was apparently February 1, 1747. That Escandón's projects were the cause of the viceroy's withholding his decision is clearly stated in his dispatches of February 14 and July 27.
6. Tentative approval by the viceroy: funds and a temporary garrison authorized.—Nevertheless, the viceroy and the auditor were sufficiently convinced of its desirability to give the San Xavier project tentative support. On February 1, 1747, 110 as a result of another escrito from Father Ortiz, and in conformity 111 with a recommendation of the auditor made on January 28, the viceroy ordered that the 2262½ pesos which had already been spent by Fray Mariano in attracting and maintaining the Indians at San Xavier should be repaid, and on February 14, in order to prevent the neophytes from deserting whilst the Seno Mexicano was being inspected, to protect them from the Apache, and to aid the missionaries in founding the settlement, he ordered the governor to send at once to San Xavier ten soldiers from Adaes and twelve from Béxar. 112
Students should be guarded against an error at this point. An original despatch of the viceroy contained in the Lamar Papers, here designated as “Erecion,” says that on December 26, 1746, the viceroy ordered the establishment of three missions on the San Xavier. From what has been stated above it will be seen that this is a mistake of the document, although it is an original. 113
7. Father Ortiz appeals to the king, 1747.—Perhaps in despair of success at the viceroy's court, or perhaps at the viceroy's suggestion, and to aid any effort which the latter might make, Father Ortiz now turned to the king himself. In a memorial written some time after the viceroy's decree of February 14, 114 he reviewed the circumstances under which the tribes had asked for a mission, gave a list of those which had subsequently joined the first four tribes in their petition, recounted the efforts that had been made in Mexico by the College, and cited the fiscal's unqualified approval and the viceroy's tentative aid recently given. With great shrewdness he made much of the political advantages of the desired missions, “even more notable because these Indians and their broad, fertile, and bounteous country are coveted by foreign nations, who anxiously try to add them to their crowns, and with this aim maintain commerce with them and supply them with guns, ammunition, and other things which they know they like.” “It follows, therefore,” he continued, “that if they are not heeded, and if—God forbid—France, on whose colonies they border, should become hostile, and, with the desire to gain their affections, should maintain closer friendship with said Indians, and they should become her partisans, she might without any difficulty get possession of not only this province but of many others of New Spain.” But, by making the necessary provision for these Indian petitioners, New Spain would be sufficiently protected and very much increased. Not only would these tribes enter missions, he added, but the Apache, who so infested the province, and yet so many times had asked for missions, would be forced to accept the faith and attach themselves to the crown of Spain. “And in this way the Province of Texas will become a most extensive and flourishing kingdom, which may freely trade and communicate with New Mexico and other provinces of New Spain and even with others of your royal crown if this communication is sought by sea.” With not a little wisdom he argued, further, that by pacifying the Indians and peopling the country, many presidios would become unnecessary, and the crown thereby saved great expense.
On the basis of this argument on political grounds, to which he did not fail to add the obligation to extend the faith, Father Ortiz proceeded to request not only permission to permanently found the missions already being provisionally established, and all the means necessary for the purpose, but also asked permission and funds to establish a hospital in Texas, either at San Xavier or other convenient place, to facilitate the broad missionary project under contemplation. It should serve as an infirmary and a place of rest for sick and wornout missionaries, and be the headquarters of the prelate of the San Xavier missions, who otherwise would be three hundred or four hundred leagues from headquarters with no means of succor or medical aid. In addition to the prelate, there would be necessary two missionary priests, to act as substitutes for the missionaries, care for the military, and serve civilian Spaniards, and two lay brothers, one to serve as nurse for the sick, and the other to act as financial agent, with the title of conductor of alms, to secure funds in Mexico to help on the project.
Father Ortiz closed by repeating his request for reimbursement of the sums that had been spent by the College in maintaining three missionaries at San Xavier in the work of catechizing and otherwise preparing the Indians for mission life. 115
8. Opposition to the plans for a temporary garrison.—It was not enough for the viceroy merely to order a garrison sent to San Xavier, for excuses, or even good reasons for respectful argument, were easily found and hard to resist. And thus it was with the order of February 14. It reached San Antonio on May 7, by a courier who had been delayed on the Rio Grande two months by Apache hostilities. This circumstance, coupled with recent occurrences at San Antonio and the situation at San Xavier revealed by the declaration of Pruneda, made three days before, augured ill for the fulfillment of the despatch.
On the 9th Fray Mariano presented the document to Urrutia, 116 and asked for its fulfillment. Urrutia gave formal obedience, but wrote on Mariano's escrito several reasons why the detachment of the twelve soldiers should be suspended until further orders should be received from the viceroy. Apache hostilities were especially bad just then; in the preceding month the tribe had run off the horse herds of three of the missions, and were now camped near the San Xavier in large numbers; at that very moment he had in his possession a memorial of the cabildo on the subject, dated April 29, waiting till a courier could take it to Mexico; and a petition from the citizens asking him to request the aid of fifteen or twenty of the soldiers of Adaes to strengthen the defense. 117 To support this petition, on the next day he presented the matter to a joint meeting of the military officers, the cabildo, the justicia, and the regimiento of the villa of San Fernando, and this body issued a statement similar in tenor to that of Urrutia, adding to his reasons for suspending the order the shortage of supplies at San Xavier. 118 On May 19 the subsbtance of these deliberations was embodied by Urrutia in a consulta, or opinion, and sent to the viceroy. 119
While the immediate purpose of Fray Mariano was thus frustrated, the College of Santa Cruz seized the occasion to ask not for less but for more. Fray Francisco de la Santissima Trinidad, joint agent with Marqués at Mexico for the College in promoting the San Xavier plan, put in the appeal. In a memorial to the viceroy he referred with evident approval to the reasons for not fulfilling the order of February 14. He then argued at length on the importance of controlling the group of Indians for whom the new missions were desired. They lived on the French border, secured their firearms from the French, and were in pernicious communication with the French. They were dexterous in the use of firearms, and in case of a breach with France it would be important to have them on the side of Spain. The only way to secure this allegiance was to “reduce” them to mission life; this done, they would defend the frontier against both the French and the Apache, and perhaps bring that dangerous nation to Christianity. And to do this properly would require a presidio, not of twenty-two soldiers, but of sixty or more, for which number he now asked. 120
The matter now went again through the regular routine of the viceroy's secretariat. It was first referred to the fiscal, who replied on June 28; and then to the auditor de guerra, Altamira, who gave his dictamen on July 4. Complying with Altamira's advice, on July 27 the viceroy issued new despatches. By these despatches the nine soldiers belonging to the presidio of Bahía but serving at the missions near San Antonio were to return to their post; from the presidio of Bahía thirteen soldiers were to be sent to San Xavier, and from that of Los Adaes seventeen. Each soldier sent was to be of good character and suitable for the purpose. Though the captain of Béxar was exempt from complying in form with the order of February 14, that place was to suffer a loss of the nine soldiers borrowed from Bahía. And the new order must be fulfilled without excuse or interpretation, on pain of dismissal from office and a fine of $6000 for any failure or violation. The viceroy was now showing his teeth. 121
The missionaries were no better pleased with the new order for a temporary guard than had been the commanders in Texas with the former order. The removal of the nine soldiers from San Antonio would be a hardship to the missions; and, besides, what the missionaries demanded was a regular presidio. This feeling was made known in August by Father Mariano de Anda y Altamirano, in a memorial to the viceroy. 122 As has already been stated, he had been assigned to the new missions on the San Xavier River; had been to the site; had been sent to Mexico to aid in securing the necessary license; and had heard of the order of July 27. His argument now was much like Father Trinidad's had been. In his memorial he prophesied that the governor of Texas and the captain at Bahía would give only formal obedience and then proceed to raise objections, with resulting delays. As for himself, he saw two difficulties. If the nine soldiers of Bahía doing duty at San Antonio were to be removed, either they must be replaced by soldiers from that presidio or the missions near San Antonio would be without protection. To take soldiers from the presidio would leave San Antonio exposed to attack. The presidio of Los Adaes, being on the French frontier and surrounded by Indians, could ill spare any of its sixty soldiers, most of whom were constantly needed to escort the governor, the missionaries, and convoys of goods from Saltillo, to cultivate the fields, or to guard the storehouse. 123 The presidio of Bahía was almost as much in danger from Apaches as was San Antonio; and the Cujanes were bad.
Moreover, the garrison of thirty soldiers assigned to San Xavier was altogether too small. Twelve men would be needed to guard the three missions being planned; ten to guard the horse herd; this would leave only six to escort the supply train and the missionaries, making no allowance for desertions and deaths. Finally, any guard less than fifty soldiers would be too small in case of trouble with the barbarian tribes at the new missions or of attacks by their enemies.
The provision of one hundred settlers would not serve at present, since it would take a long time to secure them, especially if the task were left entirely to the missionaries, already overburdened; besides, the allowance of two hundred pesos per family was too small, since, in spite of the greatest economy, the expense for one missionary going to Saltillo or Coahuila, with only one servant, was at least one hundred pesos.
A presidio at San Xavier, on the other hand, would be on the very frontier against the Apaches, and would help to restrain the French, who were now entering by way of the Trinity River. Indeed, it was now well known that they had a large settlement on that stream, with a garrison and fifty or sixty cannon, and were supplying the very Indians of San Xavier.
In view of all the foregoing, Father Anda closed by urging, first, that the presidio of Sacramento be moved to the San Xavier River, and, second, that thirty or forty men be added to it. If this could not be done, he urged that eighty or ninety men be detached from other presidios—not including those of Texas—and formed into a new presidio at San Xavier.
As Father Anda predicted, the disposition of the Texas commanders to comply was no better than before, though in saying this we would not wish to convey the impression that the military authorities did not have good grounds for resisting the reduction of their petty garrisons. But the resistance of the captain at Bahía, Orobio Bazterra, seems to have been in part inspired by ill feeling toward Father Mariano. The Apache situation, at least, was really serious. The captain set forth his objections in communications of November 1 and 21, and the governor, Francisco García Larios, gave his in one of December 12. 124 From a review of these documents given by the viceroy in a despatch of January 29, 1748, it appears that the objectors maintained that all of the soldiers were needed in their respective presidios; that the San Xavier, though called a river, was only an arroyo, and that their soldiers had refused to go there to live. The governor added that he feared that if he should try to carry out the order, the men would desert to Natchitoches. This argument might appear frivolous if we did not know that twenty years afterward nearly the whole garrison of San Agustín did that very thing. The captain concluded by saying, maliciously, it would seem, or at least without foundation, that the favorable reports given of San Xavier were false, and had probably been secured by subornation or collusion of witnesses.
Captain Orobio had a substitute plan to urge as an excuse for non-compliance, and he may have been sincere in his support of it. In 1746, as we have seen, he had gone to the lower Trinity and the San Jacinto rivers to investigate a rumor of a French settlement in that region. While there he had become acquainted with the Orcoquiza tribe and learned of the activities of French traders among them and the Attacapa. 125 He now represented to the viceroy that the “Horquisa” nation was composed of five rancherías and three hundred families; that they had asked for missions, promising to settle between the Trinidad and the Sabinas Rivers, “which is their fatherland”; and that they had repeated their offer, promising to return [to Bahía, it seems], in the following March. “He concluded by proposing various reasons for embracing and not depreciating this opportunity to reduce Indians dextrous with guns, because of their nearness to the Misippi and their communication with the French.” 126
Fear that the viceroy might accept this plan, and that it would interfere with their own, sank deep into the minds of the missionaries, and they did not lose an opportunity to use their influence to defeat it, offering as their best substitute a mission for the Orcoquiza at San Xavier.
9. Three missions authorized by the viceroy (Dec. 23, 1747).—But these arguments of Governor Larios and Captain Orobio came too late, for on December 23, 1747, before they had been received, the viceroy, conforming with two opinions of the auditor, dated December 10 and 19, ordered three missions founded on the San Xavier River within the next eight months. 127 In consequence of this determination, appropriations were at once made of a year's salary in advance for six missionaries, and for the purchase by the royal factor of the necessary ornaments and supplies for the three missions. 128 Thus, after two and one-half years of petitioning and of heroic efforts at San Xavier, Fray Mariano and his college had the satisfaction of obtaining the permission and the help they had so zealously sought.
When the letters of Orobio and García Larios were received by the viceroy they were sent, in the regular way, to the fiscal, who gave them little weight, arguing especially that it would be foolish to give up a project of proved merit, like that of the San Xavier missions, for one which had not yet been investigated, like that suggested by Orobio. In consequence, the viceroy issued a dispatch on January 29, requiring the governor to carry out his former orders at once, and not to neglect that part which provided for the encouragement of as many families as possible to go to San Xavier to settle, in order that in time the garrison might be unnecessary. This despatch was enclosed in a letter of February 24. 129
By virtue of this new order the thirty soldiers were sent under the command of Lieutenant Galván, of the Béxar company. He arrived at San Xavier on or about March 13, 1748. The married soldiers were followed by their families, who remained a short time, as we shall see. 130
10. By the king, April 16, 1748.—Soon after the consent of the viceroy was obtained, the petition of Father Ortiz to the royal court separately bore fruit. The petition was considered in the Council of the Indies, and the resulting action shows that it struck the right chord in the royal breast. On the 16th of April, 1748, more than four months after the viceroy had ordered the missions established, more than two years after a tentative mission had actually been begun, and two months after one of the authorized missions had been formally founded, the king issued a cédula to the viceroy, setting forth that, although he had not sufficient information to form a wholly satisfactory opinion, and though the viceroy had not sent the reports which he might have done, yet, “considering that the gravity of the matter does not admit of delay, and that there are in the province of Texas the nations of gentile Indians mentioned, soliciting religious in order that they may receive holy baptism and attach themselves to the body of the Church (which is the principal object which I have ordered attended to and promoted), and considering that the country, because of its great extent, unpopulated condition, and nearness to the region where the French have intruded, merits greater care and vigilance; in order to prevent them from stirring up and attaching to their side the idolatrous Indians, it has seemed proper to order and command you” to ascertain for certain that the Indians have made such a petition and that the establishment of the missions would be wise. Such being the case, the viceroy was to proceed at once to plant the requisite number of missions, furnishing the means for ornaments and other necessities usually supplied. And if the hospital asked for should prove absolutely necessary, that, too, was to be founded. Finally, the three missionaries must be paid for the time they had been serving at San Xavier. 131
This situation is certainly an interesting example of the actual workings of Spanish government in the distant frontier provinces. Since the summer of 1745 the missionaries of the College of Santa Cruz had been asking for permission to establish missions at San Xavier. Meanwhile they had proceeded without this permission to found a mission—a provisional one, it is true, as early as the summer of 1746. In February, 1747, the viceroy had furnished temporary financial aid for the establishment of missions there, but for their formal erection he had withheld his consent. In December, 1747, he had given that consent, without consulting the king, it seems. In February, 1748, as will appear, one of the missions had been founded with due formality in the king's name, and now, in April, two months afterwards, comes the king's solemn order to the viceroy to found the missions if, after due investigation, they should be considered desirable.
It was apparently but another instance in which the local authorities, and especially the missionaries, took the initiative, and forced the central authorities, reluctantly, to sanction what was already done. In the Spanish as well as in the English colonies a certain measure of independence in actual governments was wrested from the central authorities by virtue of the very necessities of local initiative due to distance. 132
11. Opposition at Zacatecas.—The opinion written at the College of Zacatecas regarding the royal cédula of April 16, 1748, shows that the Zacatecas friars were not altogether pleased with the license permitting the sister college to enter the missionary field in central Texas. It stated that the College of Santa Cruz had four missions at San Antonio, the only ones in Texas at the time of the visit of Father Ortiz; that in the belief of the writer, Ortiz's visit had no other purpose than the founding of missions for the central Texas tribes; the country of the Mayeyes, where the mission was to be founded, was rough and bad; the Tauacana, Quichay, Tancague, and Yojuan tribes were too far to the north to be reduced at the proposed site; the Yadoxa, from whom the padres had got their information, had included them “not to secure Holy Baptism, as is supposed, but for the material benefit of clothing, tobacco, maize, and more than all this, in order that the Spaniards in a presidio may restrain the boldness of the Apache”; it would be better for the sick friars of Rio Grande and San Antonio to come to their college than to go to an hospice at San Xavier. Finally, if the Bidais wished missions they could enter that of Nacogdoches, where they went every year at harvest time and near which they lived, or to Los Ais; in either of which missions they would be near their own country. The Tawakoni, Kichai, Tonkawa, and Yojuan tribes might congregate there also and thus save the expense of new missions.
1. San Francisco Xavier, Feb., 1748.—After the viceroy's consent and promise of aid for founding permanent missions were received, things for a time went favorably with Fray Mariano's cherished plan. To look after preparations in Mexico, the College of Santa Cruz appointed Fray Juan Joseph Ganzábal, who was destined four years later to suffer martyrdom at one of the missions he was helping to establish. 133 He went from San Antonio to Querétaro, arriving there at the end of March.
In February, probably as soon as he received the good news from Mexico, Fray Mariano proceeded to the formal founding of the first mission—presumably that already tentatively established—taking for the purpose from San Antonio, on his own credit, while the royal funds were forthcoming, goods of the value of $5083.50. 134 The date of the formal founding is fixed by a letter written by Fray Mariano himself to Captain Urrutia on May 7, 1748, and is thus put beyond dispute. 135 In the same communication Fray Mariano called the mission “Nuestra Señora de los Dolores del Rio de San Xavier.” This is the earliest name I have seen applied to it, but otherwise it is always called San Francisco Xavier. Perhaps the former name is the one by which the temporary mission had gone.
The progress made at the mission is shown by the report dated March 18, by Lieutenant Juan Galván, who was sent, as has been stated, in command of the thirty soldiers who had been ordered there. 136 Galván stated that when he arrived at San Xavier the missionaries were without a single soldier. He found already provided a strong wooden stockade, huts to live in, and supplies of seed, stock, working oxen, and clothing for the Indians. At the mission there were many Indians, of Ranchería Grande (Hierbipiame), Yojuane, Tonkawa, Mayeye, Deadoses, Bidai, and Orcoquiza, and others daily coming. It will be seen that most of the tribes named here were among the original petitioners. At the very moment when he was writing his report there arrived a band of Bidais, who reported that six leagues away there were more than four hundred others on the way. 137 An Orcoquiza chief offered to bring numerous Indians of the neighboring tribes. Indeed there were more Indians than could be supported, in spite of the supplies which Fray Mariano had brought; and before the end of March he was constrained to tell the neophytes not to solicit any more tribes, to refuse food to all of those already there except such as were actually helping in the fields and at the missions, and to send word to the tribes on the way to remain at a convenient distance. 138
In reconstructing the picture of life at the new establishment the imagination is assisted by the statement that of the twentyeight soldiers there,—two of the thirty assigned were lacking,—one was usually employed in supervising the Indians with the stock, one assisting in the labor of the fields, six guarding the horse herd, ten guarding the missions and the families, and ten escorting the supply trains that brought maize from San Antonio for soldiers and neophytes. 139
Galván filed with his diligencias a certificate that he did not regard the thirty soldiers provided sufficient for the protection of the three missions planned, but that a presidio of fifty men would be adequate. The College made Galván's report the basis of new requests, and before the end of the year Father Ganzábal, in Mexico, presented a memorial reviewing progress at San Xavier, requesting the repayment of the 5083 pesos 4 reales, and the erection of a regular presidio of fifty men. 140
2. Apache attacks and new appeals for help.—Shortage of provisions was not by any means the only trouble that beset the struggling mission early in its career. In April, 1748, in the midst of his pious task, Fray Mariano suffered an accident which compelled him to retire to San Antonio for several months, delayed the completion of his work, and caused it to devolve largely upon Father Santa Ana. 141 When he withdrew he left in charge Fray Francisco Cayetano Aponte, apparently the first minister of the permanent mission (since Mariano was minister of the mission of San Antonio de Valero) and one of those who had been there temporarily, since the six provided by the viceroy did not arrive till much later, as will be seen. Scarcely had Fray Mariano reached San Antonio when bad news from San Xavier overtook him. 142 On May 4 Father Aponte wrote him that two days before, more than sixty Apaches had attacked the place, ransacking the houses, and attempting to stampede the horses. The soldiers and mission Indians, of whom there were more than two hundred present, made resistance, and succeeded in driving the horses into the corral, whereupon the Apaches, seeing themselves outnumbered, withdrew, but not without threatening to come again, with a larger force, to destroy the place. This threat was understood by a Yojuan who had been a captive among the Apaches. In retiring the Apaches killed two mission Indians who were encountered returning with buffalo meat. The mission Indians, seeing their danger, now began to contemplate withdrawing to the woods for safety. 143
Before the end of the year three other Apache raids were made on the mission. In each the raiders ran off horses belonging to Spaniards and Indians. Incident to the four attacks three soldiers and four new converts were killed—not a great number, indeed, but manifestly large enough to cause the missionaries to fear for their personal safety and to lessen the enthusiasm of the tribes for residence at the site. The main facts of the first attack are told by Fray Mariano in a memorial of May 7. Subsequent events are described in a paper written by him about a year later. 144 A second report to Fray Mariano from Fray Cayetano told that on May 5 the Indians made good their threat, returned in a great multitude, and ran off the horse herd, “the settlement retaining its existence solely through divine providence.”
On receiving the second notice Fray Mariano, who was still sick at San Antonio, repaired by petition 145 to Captain Urrutia for help. Urrutia replied that he could not give it because sixteen of his men—all indeed except those actually occupied in guard duty—had gone to Bahía to escort the new governor, Pedro del Barrio, to Los Adaes. 146 Urrutia forwarded the petition with his proveido to Governor Barrio, at Bahía, while Father Mariano waited for the expected aid. Instead of giving it, however, Barrio wrote a sharp reply to Captain Urrutia for having received and forwarded the petition, saying that the king was more in need of Urrutia's sword than of his pen. 147 This attitude on the part of Governor Barrio, at the opening of his term, was quite in keeping with all of his subsequent dealings with Fray Mariano. Indeed, the hostility between these two prominent men was one of the leading threads of the history of the San Xavier mission for more than a year.
Fray Mariano was forced, under the circumstances, to make the trip to relieve Fray Cayetano with only one soldier and some mission Indians. Arriving at San Xavier he found that most of the mission Indians had fled to the woods, frightened, 148 and threatening not to return till there should be adequate protection. Fray Mariano sent for them, and they were found so near by that they returned on the second day, bringing more than had run away. After that, says Fray Mariano, they remained steadfast up to the time of his writing. We thus infer that the mission continued in operation.
Notwithstanding his sharp reply to Urrutia, Fray Mariano Barrio wrote that he would hasten to San Xavier. He did so, arriving on May 26 and remaining two days. During this time he conducted an investigation, about which we shall hear in another connection. Before leaving he ordered the soldiers to send their wives and children away, the inference being that he did so on account of danger from the Apaches. He also suggested, as a means of increasing the temporary defences, that Father Mariano bring from San Antonio fifteen or twenty mission Indians. 149
Fray Mariano continued ill 150 for a year or more after April, 1748, and could not carry on the work at San Xavier, but Father Santa Ana supervised it, and it seems that one or more missionaries spent a part of the time with Father Aponte. 151
By March, 1749, Father Santa Ana was able to report a good beginning for the first mission. He wrote on the 10th of that month: “The mission of San Javier, having some established form, has been situated on this River since February of last year. Not counting those who have died Christians, there are listed in it of the nation of the Mayeye thirty-two men, among them being only two old men, one of sixty and the other of eighty years of age. The women number only forty-one, because this nation has been attacked by the Apaches. The youths, maidens, and children, likewise number only thirteen, for the same reason. Of the nation of the Hierbipiamos there are thirty-one men, there being no old men among them; women, twenty-one, boys and girls, eleven. This nation suffered the same assaults as the former. Of the nation of the Yojuanes twenty-six men, none of them old; women, twenty-three; boys and girls, seven; youths, twenty-eight. With these three nations there are some Tanchagues, who struggle with the Apaches, whom they attacked last year before the governor of Coahuila did so.” 152
3. Assignment of regular missionaries.—At the end of March, 1748, the first regular assignment of missionaries was made by the College. On the 31st of that month the newly elected guardian, Fray Francisco Xavier Castellanos, himself a former worker in Texas, 153 wrote to the president, Father Santa Ana, in regard to his plans. The new missions had been erected into a presidency, and Fray Mariano, of course, made the president. 154 Six new missionaries were to be provided for Texas, but three of them were to change places with three of the “antiguos” (old missionaries) at the San Antonio missions, two from mission Valero and one other. With these three men already in Texas, three of the new ones were to go to San Xavier, the rest to be distributed elsewhere, as President Santa Ana should see fit.
The Valero missionaries at this time were Fray Mariano and Fray Diego Martín García. The latter had been in Texas since 1741, at least. 155 It is to him that we owe the preservation of the earliest records of the Texas missions. Later he saw service in the missions of northern Sonora. The missionaries named in the guardian's letter were Friars Alonso Giraldo de Terreros, Juan de los Angeles, and Saluad de Amaya, all of whom had formerly served in Texas; 156 and Juan Hernández, Mariano Anda, and Fray Domingo, referring by the last name, no doubt, to Fray Juan Domingo Arricivita, later known as the historian. The document does not state in terms that all of these men are among the missionaries to be sent, but such is the implication. It will be seen later on that some of them did and some did not operate at San Xavier. In addition to these six new missionaries, sent in the name of the three new missions, Father Castellanos promised to send others to supply deficiencies.
Of the new workers the guardian specifically assigned to stations only two. They were Fathers Terreros and Hernández, who were to take the places of the Valero ministers. Two of the appointees seem to have been considered hard to get along with. President Santa Ana was instructed to see to it that all did their full duty, and to send them back to the College for discipline if necessary. “Hoc dico sub sigilo with reference to the Fathers Preachers Anda and Amaya, for the others, I have no doubt, will conduct themselves well.”
“With respect to Father Preacher Anda, your Reverence will see whether it is proper for him to remain in those missions or those of San Xavier, and with your accustomed prudence will decide the matter; for I desire to relieve your Reverence as much as possible of the cares which the reverend fathers presidents are caused by the lack of congeniality and agreement of the missionaries.” 157
To aid in their work, the missionaries were to take from the missions of San Antonio, or from the Rio Grande if necessary, as many families of converted Indians as might be needed. Cattle and other supplies were also to be secured from these places, at a fair price it was hoped, and the new missions were to pay them back “when, how, and in what” was possible. Matters not specifically provided for in the instruction were to be decided by the two presidents in conference. 158
The missionaries were all supplied and ready to go when the above communication was written, and presumably they soon set out. 159
4. The supplies delayed.—On June 13, the new missionaries reached San Antonio, but through slowness in the despatch of the supplies, and Fray Mariano's illness, there was another half year's delay. The situation on June 24 is stated in Father Santa Ana's letter of that date to the viceroy: “I am obliged to make known to your Excellency that on the 13th of June I found myself with the religious who ought to be in the missions of San Xavier, and the simple notice that within eight months the reduction of the Indians in three missions should be effected.
“This appears to be a decree of December of the past year, but it is morally impossible to put it into effect until the supplies come (which will be in the month of October or November), for it is certain that among these Indians there is not a thing with which they can sustain and maintain themselves unalterably in that place, since their sustenance depends on the chase.
“And thus the entry of the religious and the supplies must be provided for, certainly with six hundred fanegas of maize for each one of the conversions, and also some cattle, sheep, and goats. All of this up to the present it has been impossible to provide, now for lack of pack mules, and the inseparable cost of freightage; now because the enemies, as I suppose the ministers of your Excellency have reported, make it impossible to travel the road without difficulty. And thus, with great humility, I will do what your Excellency orders, but only in the most opportune time and by the best means. 160
“In case of founding in fact the missions of San Xavier, there will be necessary an order from your Excellency to the effect that the governor of this province or another minister assist at this act with the accustomed formality, giving in your Excellency's name possession of that country to the Indians which, all being recorded by juridical diligencias, may be sent to the Secretaria de Govierno, as a means by which your Excellency may be informed of the number of souls which enter each one of the conversions.” 161
Although the documents are not explicit on this point, it seems that some of the new missionaries went to San Xavier during the course of the summer of 1748, in spite of the delay of the supplies. At any rate, we know that “padres and soldiers” lived there during the “rigor of the drought” of that summer. We have seen that Father Aponte was alone in May, when Father Mariano went to aid him, and that Father Mariano was sick at San Antonio on June 24. Therefore it is evident that someone went to San Xavier to aid Father Aponte after that date, 162 otherwise the plural, “padres,” could not be used. So much, at times, are we forced to depend upon inference.
5. The founding of Mission San Ildefonso, February, 1749.—Because of the illness of Father Mariano, the founding of the two remaining missions fell to Father Santa Ana. As he had predicted, it was December before the supplies arrived at San Antonio. With them he proceeded to the San Xavier, reaching the place on December 27. 163 There were now nine missionaries on the ground, 164 and prospects looked bright.
The time between December 27 and February 25 Santa Ana and the missionaries spent in founding the second mission, 165 which they placed down the river, near the mouth of Brushy Creek, and which was given the name of San Ildefonso. Since adverse reports had been made with respect to the suitability of the site, Fray Santa Ana, immediately on arriving, took testimony of the soldiers and missionaries who had lived on the San Xavier during the dry season, as to the volume of water during the drought, and then proceeded to explore the river himself, up to Apache Pass. Though the soldiers and missionaries agreed that the water supply was plentiful, when Father Santa Ana came to request them to swear to the statement they refused to do so, from which he suspected that they had sworn to the contrary for their officials. 166
Santa Ana's statements as to what he did in respect to the distribution of the tribes among the different missions is of highest value for the ethnology of some of the tribes and for specific information regarding mission beginnings. Following the prescribed practice, not always observed, he separated the various bands on the basis of racial and linguistic affiliation. At the mission of San Francisco Xavier he left the Mayeyes, Hierbipiames, and Yojuanes, all related to and allied with the Tancahues (Tonkawa), a few of whom were there also. Noting that the Bidai, Deadoses, and Orcoquizas were camping together, that they spoke the same language, and were closely intermingled by marriage, he took them to a site about three-quarters of a league (he says about a league, but a later survey called it three-quarters) down the river from the San Francisco Xavier mission and founded for them that of San Ildefonso, which was nearly completed on February 25. 167
When he reported the result of his work on March 10, there were at the mission of San Francisco Xavier fifty-nine Mayeyes, seventy Hierbipiames, and eighty Yojuanes, a total of two hundred and thirteen persons; and at San Ildefonso there were sixty-five families, or two hundred and two persons, comprising fifty-nine Orcoquizas, eighty-eight Bidai, and fifty-five Deadoses. 168
The president reported that of the Tonkawa alone he might proceed to the founding of the third mission, but concluded that since they were related to and allied with the Indians of the San Xavier mission, they might be reduced there, leaving the third establishment—to be located above the first—for the Cocos and their allies from the coast.
In regard to the outlook Santa Ana was hopeful. If what Orobio had said was true, the Orcoquizas alone would supply three missions; since the Cocos had mustered the former tribes, they must have been at least as numerous; while the mission of San Francisco Xavier would yield nothing to the others in point of numbers. “And thus there can be no doubt of the copious fruit which is hoped for in the three missions of the River of San Xavier, and on this score everything that the Father Preacher Fr. Mariano de los Dolores has written too the Superior tribunal is confirmed.” Of the water supply there was no doubt; irrigation would be easier even than at San Antonio; and as to the fertility of the soil, it would support not only three missions but all the Indians of the whole province of Texas and as many Spaniards besides. The climate was good and the natural fruits of the country bountiful and useful. One drawback, however, was the fact that the soldiers did not have with them their families, for there were only two women at the post, which fact would have a very bad effect on the Indians. Finally, a regular presidio was needed. 169
6. Desertion of the Cocos and the founding of Mission Candelaria, 1749.—In the midst of their labors the missionaries were dismayed by the desertion of the Coco Indians to their native haunts. The reason given was the bad conduct of the garrison. They were in ill humor through bad fare and hardship, “and knowing that anything they could do to contribute to the ruin of these missions gave pleasure to their captains, they treated the Indians with excessive insolence, inflicting upon them serious and continued extortions, the supplications of the religious not being sufficient to restrain them.” Under these circumstances the Cocos, who were being maintained at San Ildefonso until their mission of Candelaria should be completed, deserted early in 1749 and fled to their own country.
This was a heavy blow to the missionaries, who feared that the fact of the desertion would be used by their opponents as a weapon against them, and that the example of the Cocos would be followed by the other tribes. But Father Santa Ana did not give up in defeat; on the contrary, he set out alone in pursuit of the Indians, in spite of the danger presaged by soldiers and neophytes.
After extreme fatigues Father Santa Ana managed to find the Cocos in their haunts between the Colorado and the Brazos. At the time the tribe was suffering from measles and smallpox. The friar succeeded in his mission, and it was agreed that those not yet infected should accompany him, the others following when they had recovered. He took back with him eighty-two persons, and with them as a nucleus founded the mission of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria. The Coco chief sent three of his sons to Mission Valero to learn the Spanish language, and later they became interpreters for the missionaries. 170
On April 14, Fray Mariano reported from San Antonio to Father Ganzábal that he had news that the third mission had been founded of Cocos, Tusos (Tups) and other Indians. Even the Jaranames wished to enter it, he said. 171 On August 11 the guardian, Castellaños, wrote a long memorial to the viceroy reporting the evidence that the third mission had been established, and asking for the payment of $5083.50 spent by Fray Mariano in 1748 before the arrival of the funds; for $2700 for the maintenance of three missionaries at San Xavier during the whole of 1746-1747; and for the erection of the hospice. This, he said, should be established at San Antonio, and would cost about $14,000 besides running expenses. He closed by reiterating the need of a presidio. 172
7. Results.—We get some very intimate details of conditions at San Xavier just after the establishment of the second and third missions through the reports of an inspection made of them in May, 1749, by General Barrio. The governor counted in mission San Ildefonso forty-six adult men, forty-eight women and thirty-one children; in mission San Francisco Xavier there were fifty men, thirty-three women, and thirty-seven children; in Candelaria, twenty-four men, twenty-five women, and twenty-two children, a total of three hundred and twenty-two persons. Besides these, some were absent with permission hunting buffalo and eating wild fruit in the woods. 173 The missionaries were still complaining that the lack of supplies was such that they had to turn away numerous Indians who would be glad to enter the missions, “for neither God, the King, nor reason permits the Indians to be congregated to be killed by hunger and made to work. Therefore we have in the missions only those whom we can support well.”
At this time Fray Mariano wrote, in the course of a dispute with the governor, that “In all the missions the Indians say prayers morning and afternoon. They live congregated in pueblos, and labor in so far as their wildness permits, making their fences and clearing their corn patches. In Texas [i. e., eastern Texas] they are not congregated, much less do they say prayers. At the same time, they are in the missions without your lordship having ordered them called or the soldiers bringing them. Therefore, it is because they desire it. It is thus manifest that these missions are a fact, and that the Indians do not live like the Texas up to the present.” 174
Some time before this the lands and the river had been inspected with a view to opening irrigating ditches. The inspection had been made by Fathers Mariano and Pedro Yzazmendi, for, as Fray Mariano wrote, “Of all those in the provinces, we alone understand [surveying] both theoretically and practically.” 175
The garrison which had been taken there in May, 1748, was now under a cavo named Phelipe de Sierra, from whom Governor Barrio withheld even the right of jurisdicción ordinario. It was not up to its full quota of thirty men, for during much of the past year from two to four of the seventeen assigned from Los Adaes had been lacking.
In the previous May, Barrio, during his first visit, had ordered the families of the soldiers sent away, perhaps on account of the Apache hostilities. The order had been carried out, and during the whole year the soldiers had been without the comforts of family life, at which they complained, especially since it increased their labor, for, “having no one to prepare a mouthful for them, they were obliged to do it themselves, their ordinary food being maize, boiled and toasted.” 176 The Indians, too, Fray Mariano complained, were displeased, since they concluded that with the families there, the Spaniards would better defend the place against the Apaches, which was one of the cardinal points to be considered. Documents of a later date show that, according to the usual custom in founding new missions, Christianized Indians from San Antonio were taken to San Xavier to serve as teachers and interpreters. Among them were Sayopines, Cocos, Pajalaches, and Orejones.
The foregoing study has set forth the story of the inception of the missions in the San Gabriel valley, of the struggle for legal authority to establish and for means to support them, and of their actual beginnings, down to the middle of the year 1749. A subsequent paper will trace in like detail the struggle of the missionaries to secure Spanish settlers and a regular presidio for San Xavier; their difficulties with the soldiers and with governors Barrio and Barrios y Jáuregui; the survey of the site by Eca y Músquiz; the opening of the “acequia” and the building of the dam; the troubles due to Indian desertion and the terrible scourge of smallpox; the violent contest of the missionaries with Rábago, the commander of the new presidio, and his excommunication by Father Pinilla; the murder of Father Ganzábal and the abandonment of the San Xavier site; the removal of the garrison to the San Marcos River, the founding of a mission on the site of New Braunfels for some of the surviving neophytes, and the absorption of the San Xavier forces by the new mission enterprise on the San Sabá River. 177
3. See Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days (1886), 500-501; Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, I, 623 (ed. of 1884).
4. Mexico, 1792. Pp. 321-338.
5. Morfi, Memorias para la Historia de Tejas, cir. 1781. A copy is in the Bancroft Library, and is now being edited for publication.
6. The reference is to the article by the present writer entitled “Spanish Missions in the San Gabriel Valley” published in the Williamson County Sun, March 21, 1907. This article correctly identifies the site of the missions and gives a general outline of their history, but it contains some errors and is indefinite at points where definite information is now at hand. The same article was published contemporaneously in the Rockdale Express. It was written for the purpose of arousing local interest in the mission remains and obtaining local information concerning them.
7. Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, I, 623.
8. The larger part of them come from the archives of the extinguished College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, which founded the missions and where they were discovered by the present writer. Specific references to the materials are given throughout this paper.
9. Espinosa, Diario derrotero de la nueva entrada a la Prov. de los Tejas, Año de 1716, entry for June 1. It is seen that this expedition, led by Saint Denis, did not by any means follow the “Old San Antonio Road” of later days. The original of this rare manuscript is in the Archivo General y Público, Mexico.
10. Ibid., entries for May 28 and June 2.
11. Peña, Derrotero de la Expedición en la Provincia de los Texas, Mexico, 1722. This is the original government print. The copy in the Memorias de Nueva España, vol. 28, has numerous errors, and is there given a wrong title. I am indebted to the paper by Miss Eleanor Buckley on “The Aguayo Expedition” for the results of her study of Aguayo's route. This paper was her master's thesis written at the University of Texas, 1908-1909. Father Pichardo made a map of the route in 1811, which corresponds roughly to that made by Miss Buckley.
12. Ynforme al R. Discreo. de los PPs. Pres. y Misss. de Tejas en que piden salir al Rio de S. Xavier.
13. Bustillo y Zevallos, Memorial del Govor. Bustillos en contra de la fundacion de Sn. Xavier, May 28, 1746, paragraph 7; Cabello, Informe, 1784.
14. Cabello, Ibid., par. 6.
15. Ortiz, Satisfaccion de los Missioneros á las objecciones hechas por el Govr. Bustillos contra las fundaciones de. Sn. Xavier, 1746. This is a memorandum of points by Father Ortiz and Father Espinosa in reply to certain objections raised to founding a mission on the San Xavier.
16. These tribes were sometimes collectively called at San Antonio “the Eastern Indians.”
17. See articles by Bolton on “Rancheria Grande” and “Ervipiame” in Hodge, Handbook of American Indians.
18. Portillo, Apuntes para la Historia Antigua de Coahuila y Texas (Saltillo, 1888), pp. 269-271. These pages contain the autos of the founding of the mission, copied from the archives of Coahuila. The name given to the mission and pueblo was “San Francisco Xavier y Valle de Cristobal.”
19. Communication of Father Paredes, July 12, 1729. K, leg. 19, doc. 19, Archive of the College of Santa Cruz.
20. Diary, 1707.
21. Ibid.
22. Diaries of Espinosa and Ramón, 1716 (MSS.).
23. Ramón, diary of 1716.
24. Peña, Derrotero de la Expedición.
25. See Bolton, “Spanish Mission Records at San Antonio,” in The Quarterly, X, 298-300.
26. July 12, 1729. K, leg. 19, doc. 19, Arch. Coll. Santa Cruz.
27. He says, “in the former time.” He may mean the administration preceding his own. Memorial, May 28, 1746, par. 4.
28. Journal, in Margry, Découvertes, III, 288.
29. Peña, Derrotero.
30. Memorial, May 28, 1746.
31. This document consists of a copy of the royal cédula of April 16, 1748, which authorizes the establishment of the San Xavier missions, and of critical comments on the tribes named therein. It is of great value for the tribal distribution of this region. I shall cite it as “Anonymous Commentary,” Arch. Coll. Zacatecas.
32. See Bolton, article on “Tonkawa” and “Yojuane,” in Hodge, Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico.
33. Casañas, Relación, 1691. MS.
34. Olivares, Diario, 1709. MS.
35. Espinosa, Chrónica Apostólica, I, 424.
36. La Harpe, Relation, in Margry, Découvertes, III, 616.
37. By the present writer.
38. Penicaut (1714) gives the name “Aquodoces” (Margry, Découvertes, V, 504); Peña, 1721-1722, gives it “Agdocas” (Diario, in Mem. de Nueva España,” XXVIII, 31); Espinosa, 1746, “Yacdocas” (Chrónica Apostólica); Morfi (cir. 1781), “Igodosa” (Mem. Hist. Tex., II, 26).
39. Several years ago the present writer conjectured that this might be the case. See his card notes on Texas tribes, under “Deadoses.”
40. Anonymous Commentary.
41. Margry, Découvertes, V, 504.
42. Peña, op. cit., 31.
43. Memorial, May 28, 1746.
44. See Bolton, “The Founding of Mission Rosario” in The Quarterly, X, 113-139; and “Spanish Activities on the Lower Trinity River,” Ibid., XVI, 339-377.
45. This priest signed his name Fr. María Ano Franco de los Dolores y Viana, though his associates and superiors always wrote it Fray Mariano. He has frequently been referred to in The Quarterly as Father Dolores.
46. In a memorial dated Jan. 22, 1757, he said that he entered Texas in 1733, and began to journey northeast, east, and southeast. In a communication written in April, 1746, he said that he had been in Texas 13 years (Escrito by Fray Mariano addressed to the governor of Texas, April 16, 1746). In a letter to the viceroy written March 13, 1849, he said that he had been engaged in the work seventeen years, by implication, all the time in Texas). Father Ortiz wrote that Fray Mariano had had relations with the petitioning tribes before Bustillo y Zevallos left Texas, which was in 1734. (Satisfaccion de los Missioneros á las objecciones hechas por el Gov. Bustillos contra las fundaciones de Sn. Xavier).
47. Ortiz, Satisfaccion, fol. 1.
48. Anonymous Commentary, Arch. Coll. Guadalupe.
49. Ortiz, op. cit.
50. This is the story told by Father Mariano to Ortiz, June 13, 1745 (Copia de autos seguidos. Arch Coll. Santa Cruz, K, 6, 17); Francisco Xavier Marquez to the viceroy, Jan. 18, 1746. Ibid. Note that the later documents imply that the Indians chose San Xavier at the outset.
51. Fray Mariano to Fray Ortiz, June 12, 1745. The numerical strength of the tribes was learned from the four chiefs (Copia de autos seguidos en el superior govierno.).
52. K, leg., 6, No. 5, Arch. Coll. Santa Cruz.
53. Arricivita, Crónica Seráfica, 323.
54. Dated, July 26.
55. Letter of Fray Mariano to the guardian, July 26, 1745, in Copia de autos seguidos en el superior govierno. For more detailed information relative to Fray Ximenes, see Ortiz, Visita de las Missiones hecha, de orden de N. M. R. P. Commo. Gral. Fr. Juan Fogueras, por el P. Fr. Franco. Xavier Ortiz, en el año 1745.
56. For proof of this see Espinosa, Chrónica Apostólica, 467.
57. Ibid
58. Anonymous Commentary, par. 3.
59. Fray Mariano to the Guardian, July 26, 1745.
60. Our knowledge of this second visit of the Indians comes from the Memorial of Bustillo, dated May 28, 1746.
61. Memorial of Ortiz to the king, after Feb. 14, 1747.
62. This list is copied in the royal cédula of April 16, 1748, granting the petition of, Ortiz, the spelling of which I follow, instead of that of the copy of the Ortiz memorial. (Reales Cédulas, Vol. 68, 1748. Archivo General y Público, Mexico).
63. For the identification of some of these tribes, see the Anonymous Commentary.
64. The exact circumstances of the selection of the site are not quite clear. Some later statements make it appear that the San Xavier was designated at the outset, but putting all the evidence together, this does not seem to be the case. (1) In the two petitions of Fray Mariano nothing is said of the San Xavier, and it is distinctly intimated that the site was as yet unchosen, while emphasis is put upon the fact that the Indians desired a mission in their own country. This, we have seen, was characteristically beyond the Little and the Brazos rivers. (2) The story related above of Fray Mariano's unsuccessful attempt to visit the site is given by both Bustillo and the Anonymous Commentary. While the former hints that there was some disappointment in regard to water facilities in the immediate country of the Indians, it gives the floods as the reason for the change of site. The words are as follows: “Tired of crossing so much water, since the Indians were waiting in the Monte Grande, and in order that the soldiers might return, they [the Indians] showed them the Rio de San Xavier.” (3) That the site was changed is definitely asserted by Fray Santa Ana, who, at the same time was president of the missions at San Antonio, but he gives as the reason the lack of water facilities in the immediate country of the Indians. In a letter written to the viceroy on June 24, 1748, he explains the increased demands by Fray Mariano for military protection at San Xavier by saying that at first the Indians had asked that the missions be in their own lands; that none of them “reside where they would be exposed to the invasions of the Apaches,” and that, therefore, it was at first thought that thirty soldiers would be enough; but that when it was later learned that suitable water facilities were lacking in their country, the Indians insisted on gathering on the San Xavier, which, being a site exposed to the Apaches, required more protection (Copia de autos seguidos en el superior govierno).
65. Or, possibly, after Fray Mariano's first visit.
66. Bustillo, op. cit., par. 1. For a summary of the autos, see Bustillo, and for the petition of the College based on the autos, see an expediente in the Lamar Papers entitled “Erecion de la Mision [Presidio] de Sn. Xavier,” 3, and Terreros to Mediavilla, June 23, 1746.
67. Fray Mariano tells us this in a document dated April 13, 1746. See also documents dated June 10 and 11, 1746, in Copia de Cartas del R. P. Guardn.
68. See documents cited in note 23.
69. For the location of the site, see page 323 and map.
70. Fray Mariano says that “many of them lacked even the leaves of the trees to cover their shame.” Communication of April 16, 1746.
71. Erecion, 5, is the authority for this assertion. It is quite clear that the letter referred to must have been written during Father Mariano's first stay at the San Xavier, which ended before April 13, for he was in San Antonio thenceforward till June 11. The facts stated above are referred to in a document written near Querétaro on June 28.
72. Testimony concerning the Cocos, April 13, 1746.
73. In October, 1745, he had communicated with this tribe, who lived on the lower Colorado, through the Bidais. Just at this time Capt. Orobio Bazterra, of Bahía, was about to undertake his expedition to the lower Trinity to look for a rumored settlement of the French. The Bidais, hearing that the expedition was to be directed against the Cocos, sent a delegation to San Antonio, in the middle of October, to ask Father Mariano to request Orobio not to harm the Cocos. He did so, and took occasion also to ask Orobio to take the Xaranames, who were living with the Cocos, back to their mission at Bahía. In order that the Cocos might not become entangled in the trouble likely to ensue, he sent to them a request that they should separate from the Xaranames. No doubt he also told them of the San Xavier mission project, for a number of them met him at San Xavier and agreed to enter the mission there. (Communication of April 16, 1746.)
74. See Bolton, “Spanish Activities on the Lower Trinity River,” in The Quarterly, XVI, 339-377.
75. Docs. of April 13, 15, and 16, concerning the killing of two Cocos by Orobio.
76. Fray Mariano wrote to the guardian of his college the following account of the event and of his helplessness to carry out his heart's desire: “I would gladly refrain from further molesting your attention, for I assume that you are sufficiently occupied, but, knowing that these people understand the language of hands better than that of tongues, and are more easily subdued by gifts than by words, I am compelled by my great poverty not to lose any opportunity to the end that the promptest provision may be undertaken there, and, in case delay is necessary, that assistance with the most urgent expenses may be solicited, for our lack of everything makes it impossible to send more now to the multitude of Indians which are to be reduced. This and what I noted in my former [letter] oblige me to inform you that on the fourth day of June there came to this mission of San Antonio some of the new Indians, and that on the eighth the principal chief of all the Nations came from a different direction to inform me that a multitude of people have gathered on various occasions to await me with the Fathers and Spaniards to establish missions for them, but, seeing my delay and being dissatisfied at the lack of provisions, they have again deserted. They told me that grass having grown up in the crops, the chiefs were obliged to go and assemble their tribes to clean them, aside from the fact that they are maintaining the post, not having been made cowards by fear of the Apaches, who had killed five Indians in that neighborhood, and that I should send them maize, tobacco and other dogas which they needed, for which purpose and the transportation of which I asked for mules. Since I was in San Xavier I have concluded that the greatest delay would be until October, for in more than eight months there would be sufficient time.”
77. Urrutia, certificates of June 10, 1746, in Copia de Cartes del R. P. Guardn.; Fray Mariano to the guardian, June 11, 1746, Ibid.; Fray Benito de Santa Ana to Urrutia, April 15, 1746, in Dos testimonios de diligencies, sobre los Yndios Cocos; also related documents of April 13 and April 16, 1746.
78. Satisfaccion de los Missioneros á las objectiones hechas por el Govr. Bustillos. This must have been in 1746, for then was the time when the Bustillo fight was on.
79. Memorial del Pe. Anda al Exmo Sor Virrey sobre Sn. Xavier.
80. This account is based on an escrito presented by Father Mariano to Urrutia, telling of the event, May 4, 1747; the sworn declaration of Pruneda, of the same date; a diligencia, or opinion given by the cabildo, justicia, and regimiento of the villa of San Fernando, together with the officers of the presidio of San Antonio de Béxar, May 10, 1747. The story was confirmed by ten Cocos who went to San Antonio on May 7. (All in Dos peticiones del P. Fr. Mariano sobre los Yndios de Sn. Xavr. año de 1747.)
81. Arricivita, Crónica, 323.
82. Visita de las Missiones.
83. Viceroy's decree of this date, endorsed on the memorial of Marquez.
84. Dictamen fiscal, Feb. 18, 1746, and viceroy's decree of the same date. These decrees, the letters of Fray Mariano, and the memorial of Marquez, constitute “Copia de autos seguidos en el superior govierno.”
85. The memorial was evidently based on the new autos drawn at San Antonio after the second visit of the petitioning tribes and drawn with a knowledge of the decree of February 18, therefore after that date. My knowledge of the memorial comes from the summary in Erecion de la Mision de Sn. Xavier.
86. My knowledge of this dictamen is gained from the summaries contained in the memorial of Bustillo y Zevallos and Erecion de la Mision de Sn. Xavier. The former is in some respects the clearer as to the points of the dictamen.
87. Thus, the founding of the mission of San Antonio de Valero in 1718, considered in one light, was but the transfer of that of San Francisco Solano from the Rio Grande to the San Antonio. The establishment of the mission on the Guadalupe above Victoria in 1736 and that on the lower San Antonio in 1749 were but two transfers of the mission of Espíritu Santo from the Gulf coast. The establishment of the missions of San Juan Capistrano, Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción, and San Francisco de la Espada at San Antonio in 1731, was in reality a transfer of three missions thither from eastern Texas. Finally, the establishment of the San Sabá mission was but the transfer to another site of the missions established at San Xavier. Numerous other examples might readily be cited.
88. Erecion de la Mision de Sn. Xavier, 5; Bustillo, Memorial, par. 3.
89. For an account of this campaign see “Apache Relations in Texas, 1718-1750,” by W. E. Dunn, The Quarterly, XIV, 225-237; Bonilla, “Breve Compendio,” Ibid., VIII. 41-42.
90. Bustillo, Memorial, par. 3.
91. Memorial del Govr. Bustillos en contra de la fundacion de Sr. Javier, presentado al exmo. Sor Virrey. May 28, 1746.
92. On this point he was certainly borne out by the facts of missionary history among the wild tribes.
93. The Carancaguases, Cocos, Cujanes, Guapites, and Cujanes.
94. At this date the term “Texas,” as a territorial designation, was still often restricted to what is now eastern Texas, then the country of the Texas, or Hasinai Indians.
95. Memorial, par. 19.
96. Erecion, 5.
97. Erecion, 6. The opinion of the auditor and the viceroy's decree carrying it out must have fallen between the date of Bustillo's memorial and June 23, when the opinion of Mediavilla was asked by the College.
98. Bonilla, “Breve Compendio,” The Quarterly, VIII, 41.
99. Copia de autos seguidos.
100. K, leg. 6, No. 15, Archive of the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, The Erecion gives the date of Mediavilla's letter as June 21, but this is evidently incorrect.
101. The present writer does not know to what event Mediavilla alludes.
102. Apuntes que dio el R. P. Fr. Ysidro, undated, in Satisfacion de los Missioneros á las objecciones. One paper drawn by Father Ortiz seems to have been a preliminary outline of a reply and not to have been presented. The copy which I have seen contains no date, salutation, or signature, but is labeled, Respuesta del Pe. Ortiz.
103. Memorial del R. P. Ortiz al Exmo. Sor. Virrey exponiendo las razones para fundar en Sn. Xavier, año de 1746. The memorial is signed also by Fray Alnso Giraldo de Terreros, guardian of the college, Fray Mathías Saenz de San Antonio, prefect of missions, Espinosa, and Fray Pedro Pérez de Mesquía, all of whom had served in the missions of the northern frontier.
104. Erecion, 7. The date of giving this opinion does not appear, but it was between July 30 and September 24.
105. See Bolton, “The Founding of Mission Rosario,” in The Quarterly, X, 118-122, for a sketch of the plans of Escandón. See also Erecion, p. 7.
106. The date was September 24. See Erecion, 12.
107. For a summary of this opinion, see Erecion, 7; for the date, see Ibid., 12. It is not absolutely certain that the two opinions referred to are identical, but of this there seems little doubt. For more light on the contents, see the memorial by Ortiz, October 10, 1746, in response to the new request. The autograph copy of this document has no title, but a copy of it is labeled “Instancia, y razones representadas al exmo. Sor Virrey para la fundacion de Sn. Xavier.”
108. Father Ortiz to the viceroy, Oct. 10, 1746, “Instancia, y razones.”
109. The date of this order was Feb. 1, 1747. See p. 361, note 47.
110. The date Feb. 1, 1747, is fixed by K, leg. 6, Nos. 5 y 11, Arch. Coll. Santa Cruz; K, leg. 19, No. 67 is indefinite but corroborates the opinion.
111. On January 16, 1747, Father Ortiz presented to the viceroy an escrito which he concluded by asking for the repayment to the College of the 2262 pesos 4 tomines already spent in attracting the Indians at San Xavier, and repeated his request for the assignment of a sum for a like purpose till the matter should be decided. The date of the escrito and its contents are gathered from the viceroy's orders of February 14, 1747, requiring soldiers sent to San Xavier.
112. Viceroy's decree of February 14, reciting the contents of the auditor's opinion of January 28 and the decree of Feb. 1. See the letter of Ortiz to the king, 1747 (after Feb. 14). Arricivita quotes an order of identical tenor, but gives the date as Feb., 1748. I suspect that he refers to this one of Feb. 14, 1747 (Crónica, 325).
113. See also the erroneous statement in Memorias de Nueva España, XXVIII, 179, to the effect that the mission were authorized on Feb. 14, 1747.
114. The decree is referred to in the memorial, and reference is made to “this year of forty-seven.”
115. Memorial of Father Ortiz to the king, after Feb. 14, 1747.
116. Fray Mariano to Urrutia, in Escrito sobre los 12 Soldados, qe avian de hir a Sn. Xavier.
117. This consulta is summarized, also, in Memorial del R. P. (Ibid.) and in Presidente al Capn. de Sn. Antonio, May 7, 1748.
118. Diligencias of the cabildo, May 10, 1747, in Dos peticiones del P. Fr. Mariano sobre los Yndios de Sn. Xavr. año de 1747.
119. This fact is stated in the viceroy's despatch of July 27: “Todo lo qual me participio el citado capitan en consulta de diez, y nueve de Mayo passado de este año.”
120. He continues with a statement of the duties of such a guard, which might be interesting to quote (Memorial, en qe. insiste pidiendo la licencia para fundar en Sn. Xavier). The archive copy is undated, but it evidently fell between May 19, when Urrutia's consulta was written, and June 28. The despatch of July 27 refers to a prolix memorial following the consulta of Urrutia and preceding a document of June 28. “Y Sabidor de esto la parte del referido colegio insto en su pretension alegando difusamente, quanto le parcio convenir a su derecho.”
121. Altamira gave the opinion that if the missionaries were to ask for a hundred settlers for San Xavier he would recommend a subsidy of two hundred dollars apiece and liberal grants of land, exemptions, and privileges; but in order not to venture too freely the royal funds, and since the presidio of Sacramento was destined for other purposes, he made the recommendation which the viceroy adopted (Desptach of July 27, to the governor of Texas and the captain of Bahía). There is some doubt as to whether the date of the despatch is July 17 or July 27. My copy from the original despatch of February 24 to Governor Larios refers to the order as of July 17. But my copy of the original despatch in the archive of the College of Santa Cruz is dated July 27. In both cases the words are spelled out in full, and I am of the opinion that the correct date is July 27 (See despatch, February 24, 1748, Lamar Papers, and Arch. Coll. Santa Cruz, K, Leg. 19, No. 71).
122. Memorial del Pe. Anda al Exmo. Sor Virrey sobre Sn. Xavier. I infer the date from the reference in the document to the decision of the “past month,” alluding to the order of July 27, 1747.
123. Father Anda's paper gives an interesting statement of the duties of a presidial guard. Cf. note 40.
124. These objections are reviewed in the viceroy's despatch of Jan. 29, 1748. loc. cit.
125. Bolton, “Spanish Activities on the Lower Trinity,” The Quarterly, XVI, 339-377.
126. Summary in the viceroy's despatch of Jan. 28, op. cit.
127. I get the contents from the summaries in Erecion, 8, and letter of Santa Ana to the viceroy, in K, leg. 6, No. 18.
The Erecion, page 8, says that on Dec. 26, 1746, in conformity with the auditor's opinions of Dec. 10 and 17, the viceroy Horcasitas authorized the three missions. This cannot have been the case. In the first place, it is in conflict with the decrees of Feb. 1 and July 27, 1747, in which the viceroy states that he is suspending final action until the outcome of Escandón's work is known, and of Feb. 14, 1747, granting temporary aid, while the matter of approval is under consideration. In the second place, Espinosa, writing in 1747 of the San Xavier enterprise, says that “although it lacks the confirmation of the Most Excellent Viceroy” it appears to “have accepted his Catholic Zeal” (p. 467) ; in the third place, other contemporary documents besides the summary in “Erecion,” give the date December 23, 1747. See Fray Santa Ana to the viceroy, March 10, 1749. Dictamen fiscal, July 21, 1748, in Memorias, XXVIII, 73.
128. This had been done by January 23, 1748. See dictamen quoted in the viceroy's despatch of Jan. 20, 1748, loc. cit.
129. The original despatch is in the Béxar Archives, Miscellaneous, 1742-1793, and the accompanying letter in the Lamar Papers.
130. Fray Mariano tells us in a document written about May, 1749, that the soldiers were followed by their families, who remained till May, 1749.
131. Royal cédula dated at Buen Retiro, April 16, 1748. Arch. Gen. y Púb., Reales Cédulas, Vol. 68, No. 52.
132. Anonymous Commentary in Cartas del R. P. Comiso. Fr. Manl. Sylva. College of Guadalupe de Zacatecas.
133. Communication of Ganzábal, June 14, 1748, in Memorias, XXVIII, 70.
134. Memorial of Ganzábal, Memorias, XXVIII, 72.
135. Memorial of Fray Mariano to Urrutia, May 7, 1748. The same date is also given in Músquiz's report, based on the original baptismal records of the mission.
136. Arricivita, Crónica, 325. There are some indications that Arricivita confused the orders of Feb. 1747 for soldiers with that of January, 1748. The order of 1747 provided for sending soldiers from San Antonio and Adaes; that of 1748 from Bahia and Adaes. Cf. Arricivita, 325.
137. Memorial del Pe. Ganzábal, pidiendo fuerzas para el resguardo de las missiones de Sn. Xavier; report by Galván, in Ganzábal's memorial (Arricivita, 325). Also in Memorias de Nueva España, XXVIII, 71, where I find this date. Fray Mariano states at the end of March there were at San Xavier the Ranchería Grande Indians, Yojuanes, Tancagues, and others; the Deadoses, Vidays and other nations were at the Brazos, on the way; while the other promised tribes were gathering to come.
138. Mariano to Urrutia, May 7, 1748. It was impossible to take from San Antonio more than 500 fanegas of maize, and by May 7 this had not all been transported (Ibid.).
139. Memorial del R. P. Presidte. al capn. de Sn. Antonio, May 7, 1748.
140. Memorial del Pe. Ganzábal, pidiendo fuerzas para el resguardo de las misiones de Sn. Xavier. See also Arricivita, Crónica, 325, and Mem. de Nueva España, XXVIII, 71. Galván's report is described as “7 foxas utiles.”
141. Fray Mariano to the viceroy, March 13, 1749. Santa Ana to the viceroy, March 10, 1749. The nature of the accident does not appear. After reaching San Antonio other ills beset him, almost depriving him of the use of his right arm, and extending the duration of his incapacity.
142. Fray Mariano, Memorial, May 7, 1748.
143. Ibid.
144. Communication to the governor. In it he speaks of a year having transpired since the Apache attacks. I infer that the document was written as late as May, 1749.
145. Escrito of May 7.
146. Memorial del R. P. Presidte. al Capn. de Sn. Antonio pidiendo fuerzas para la defensa del Presidio, y misiones de S. Xavier. May 7, 1748. The word “Presidio” in the title, which is an archive label, is misleading.
147. Escrito presentado al Govr. Dn. Pedro del Varrio sobre Sn. Xavier, 1749. Fray Mariano later wrote that at the time he attributed this position of Barrio “not to passion but to his recent arrival, and his not having heard of a person who, sin dablar la hoja y sin embolar los filos, does his best to perform his duty (Ibid.).
148. Cf., letter of March 13, 1749, for these events.
149. K, leg. 19, Nos. 79 and 80, Arch. Coll. Santa Cruz.
150. Santa Ana wrote to the viceroy March 10, 1749, that Fray Mariano was entirely free from blame for any shortcoming at the new missions, having been since the month of April of last year gravely ill; “for which reason I was obliged, from that time, to continue with the matters pending relative to the three new missions of said river. But as soon as he is restored from his illness he will perfect and complete what he has begun.” Dictamen del Auditor de guerra.
151. My evidence for this is given further on.
152. Dictamen del Auditor. For the attack by the governor of Coahuila, see Dunn, Apache Relations in Texas, 254.
153. He had been at the mission of Valero twenty years before. See Schmidt, Franciscan Missionaries in Texas, 7.
154. Nevertheless, the San Xavier missions continued to be administered as belonging to the presidency of San Antonio.
155. See Schmidt's list, op. cit.
156. Terreros had been at Valero in 1730 and 1731; Amaya was in Texas during the period 1728-1734. Schmidt, op. cit.; and Los Angeles in 1744. Schmidt, op. cit.
157. Castellanos and Amaya had been in Texas about the same time.
158. Father Castellanos to Fray Santa Anna, March 31, 1748.
159. “Por hallarse ya los Ministros en vn todo hauiados, y para salir a las nuebas conversiones.” Castellanos, op. cit.
160. At this point the president explained why the demand for thirty soldiers had been changed to one for fifty, the reason given being the change of site from the country of the petitioners to the San Xavier.
161. Carta Ynforme qe. hizo a Su Exa. el Rdo. Pe. Preste. Fr. Benitto, June 24, 1748. The main contents of this communication are quoted in a letter of Santa Ana to the viceroy dated March 10, 1749. He there states: “In June of the past year there came to my hands a simple copy of the decree of your Excellency issued in December, of the year 47, and at the same time entered the religious who were to assist in the three missions of the Rio San Javier, and without loss of time I made supplication from this decree in the following terms,” quoting what has been given above.
162. Letter of Santa Ana to the viceroy, March 10, 1749.
163. Santa Ana to the viceroy, March 10, 1749, in Dictamen del Auditor. “Llegando a esta pais de Sn. Javier al mismo tiempo, que los avios, y fue el dia 27 de Dizre. del año pasado.”
164. This is not mere inference; Father Santa Ana states the fact. Ibid., 12. He does not state that there were not more than nine.
165. “En confianza de dha. dilijensia, y aver entrado en Dizre. los avios, a las Misiones de Sn. Anto. y Sn. Javier, en 27 de dho mes, no se pudieron asertar las tres conversiones tan prontas como la deseava, y mas no teniendo dia asentado asta el dia 25 de fro; en que se conocio alguna serenidad, y todo efectuo.” (Report to the viceroy, March 10, 1749, in Dictamen del Auditor de guerra. In the same report he twice says that he was just finishing the founding of this mission on February 25 when a despatch reached him.
166. Ibid., p. 12.
167. “I observed that among the Indians who were at San Xavier and who wished to enter the missions there were some Horcoquisas Indians who camped among the Vidais and Deadoses; that the language of these and the Horcoquisas was the same; and finally, that many Orcoquisas women were married to the Vidais and Deadoces, and that the women of these nations [had] relations with the Horcoquisas Indians (Indios). Accordingly, as soon as I began the foundation of the mission of San Yldefonso, which is distant from the already founded San Xavier about a league, going down to the east, I decided that all of the souls of the three said Nations should go to said new foundation of San Yldefonso which they have done.” Ibid., p. 9.
168. “There are in it [San Ildefonso] 65 families; of the Orcoquisa nation, 21 families, which, with men, women and children comprise the number of 58 souls, including their captain, who is the oldest of all, being about 69 years old. Of the Vidais nation there are 26 families, which include 26 men, 32 women, and 30 boys and girls, making altagether 80 persons, in which are included eight old women. Of the nation of the Deadoses there are 18 families, composed of 18 men, 21 women, 16 boys and girls. In all 65 persons, and of the three nations the number of persons with which this mission was founded appears to be 199.” Ibid., 10.
169. Santa Ana to the viceroy, March 10, 1749.
170. I have these details from Morfi, Bk. VIII, paragraphs 30-33.
171. Memorial by the guardian, Fr. Francisco Xavier Castellanos, July, 1749. Presented Aug. 11, 1749.
172. K, leg. 6, Nos. 5 (y 11), Arch. Coll Santa Cruz.
173. Morfi, Bk. 8, par. 56. This shows that Mission Candelaria was founded by May, 1749, and that Músquiz was wrong in his report on this point, wherein he says it was founded in July.
174. Escrito presentado al Govr. Dn. Pedro del Varrio sobre Sn. Xavier, 1749.
175. Ibid.
176. Ibid.
177. A part of this story is briefly told in the following paper by Mr. Dunn.
How to cite:
Bolton, Herbert E., "THE FOUNDING OF THE MISSIONS ON THE SAN GABRIEL RIVER, 1745-1749 ", Volume 017, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 323 - 378. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v017/n4/article_1.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 10:04:58 CST 2009]
