The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 9, July 1905 - April, 1906 Page: 111
ix, 294 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Spanish Abandonment and Re-Occupation of East Texas. 111
pueblo. Here they raised at least one good crop of wheat before
the settlement was abandoned.
Hoping to enable the place to supply its own blankets and coarse
cloth, Ybarbo took from Bexar cotton seed, sheep, and a negro
weaver, who was expected to teach his craft to the settlers. With
a Bexar merchant, one Dn. Juan Ysurrieta, Ybarbo made a con-
tract to have Bucareli furnished with merchandise in exchange for
the prospective agricultural products of the place. Ripperda pro-
fessed to hope that Bucareli would in time prove especially pro-
ductive of horses, cattle, small stock, tallow, soap, corn, wheat, and
rice, and that it would not only furnish the presidios of Bexar
and Bahia with horses, but also put an end to the frontier smug-
gling by furnishing the Indians with a substitute for French
goods. Mezieres, who visited Bucareli in March, 1778, reported
that the place was well capable of becoming the basis of a rich
trade with New Orleans, by way of the Trinity River and Opel-
ousas, if such a boon should be allowed by the government.'
Such dreams as these could have come true only on condition
that the settlement had enjoyed a longer existence, that its popula-
tion had been intelligent and enterprising, and that the govern-
ment had changed its blind policy of discouraging the trade best
calculated to induce the colonists to effort. As it was, the set-
tlers were poor and shiftless, and during their short stay there
they eked out an existence not far above that of their Indian
neighbors, supplementing the scanty products of their fields and
herds by hunting the buffalo and wild cattle that abounded between
the Trinity and the Brazos.2 From the testimony in the docu-
ments we are led to think that they spent a large part of their
time in this pursuit. As the French who traded among the In-
dians in the vicinity were interested in fur dealing as well as in
'RipperdA to the viceroy, January 25, 1776, in Quaderno. que Corre-
sponde, 69-71 ;Botello to Cabello, December 23, 1778, in Expediente sobre
el abandono, 2; Mezieres to Croix, March 18, 1778, in Expediente sobre
el abandono . . . y establacer Comercio, 2.
2Expediente sobre el abandono, 2, 8; Representacion del Justicia, 7, 9;
Quaderno que Corresponde, 67-70.
They depended for supplies in part on the Tawakana Indians who lived
on the Brazos near Waco (Mezieres to Croix, April 5, 1778, in Documentos'
para la Historia . . . de Texas, XXVIII, 274).
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 9, July 1905 - April, 1906, periodical, 1906; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101036/m1/115/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.