The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 6, July 1902 - April, 1903 Page: 89

The Southwest Boundary of Texas.

can Gulf, occupied by the many barbarous, gentile, and apostate
nations." Possibly these dimensions were not to be closely adhered
to, and, indeed, it is doubtful if the government authorities in
Mexico knew precisely what territory the above distances would
include. In order to make the matter more certain they defined the
limits of the new province by means of those already existing. On
the north the territory to be conquered by Escand6n was to be lim-
ited "by the kingdom of the aforesaid government of Coahuila and
the beginning of the province of Texas."
In December, 1748, Escand6n left Quer6taro to accomplish his
mission, with a force of seven hundred and fifty, afterwards in-
creased to twenty-five hundred by levies from various parts of
Nueva Espafia, including Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. Iis expedi-
tion was not wholly warlike, for he was to found missions and vil-
lages, wherever the situation -or the people promised success to the
venture. Before starting out he had selected such places as he could
from the data in his possession, and had marked them on a map.
This map was approved by the authorities who had authorized his
expedition, and it worth while to note that a place for a settlement
had been designated on the left bank of both the Nueces and the
San Antonio. Thus it was clearly implied that in order to extend
his territory to the confines of Texas, he must conquer the terri-
tory beyond the Rio Grande.2
A very important reason for the extension of Escand6n's con-
quests beyond the Rio Grande was the fact that a strip of territory
about two hundred leagues wide, through which the river ran, was
the favorite hunting ground of the Apaches and Lipans, forming
"a pouch (bolsa) of land between New Mexico, Texas, and Coa-
huila"3 and extending nearly to the mouth of the Rio Grande. The
authorities of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila either could not subdue
these savages, or else had not taken the trouble to do so. Escan-
d6n's expedition offered a fitting opportunity to accomplish this
necessary preliminary to the settlement of this vast region. In his
first plan for the conquest of Nuevo Santander, he had proposed
1Prieto, Historia, Geografiea y Estadistica del Estado de Tamaulipas,
40. The author says that the above extracts were taken from Colecci6n
de Menmorias de Nueva Espaa, 29.
2Ibid., 135 note.
"Carta of Ximenes, Colecci6n de Memorias de Nueva Espaa, 28 199.