The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 12, July 1908 - April, 1909 Page: 149
332 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Notes on Clark's "The Beginnings of Texas."
149
to do, it can not be taken as a safe guide in all matters of detail. It
is only fair to Dr. Clark to state that the map was prepared upon
request after the article was already in type, and under the un-
favorable circumstance of necessary haste. On what authority Dr.
Clark (and others) places Fort St. Louis east of the La Vaca River
does not appear, but it is to be noted that it is shown as on the
west side by the "Carte Nouvelle de la Louisiane, et de la Riviere
de Mississippi," etc., made by Joutel and published in the original
edition of his Journal Historique.x Not only was Joutel in a posi-
tion to know the location of the fort, .since he built it, but the map
and the text of his journal of the expedition are in agreement as
to this point.2 Moreover, this evidence is borne out by the testi-
mony of contemporary Spanish sources. In 1689 De Le6n dis-
covered the French fort, and in the same year Sigiienza, a Mexican
official of the highest scholarship, made a map of the route of the
expedition, certainly in the light of De Le6n's diary, and in all
probability of his map. The Sigiienza map, now resting in the
archives of Seville, shows the French settlement in the same posi-
tion as that which it occupies on the Joutel map.3
Of course it is only the result of a slip that the date of the
founding of the missions of San Francisco de los Tejas (first site)
and Santissimo Nombre de Maria appears as 1689 instead of
1690.4 Again, such evidence as Dr. Clark presents in his text"
indicates that these two missions were only a league and a half
apart, and that the direction from the latter to the former was
southwest. Other items of information agree in a general way
with this statement, indicating that the mission of Santissimo
Nombre de Maria was on the west side of the Neches River, in
the same tribe of Indians as the San Francisco mission, and not
'Paris, 1713.
"The map is reproduced in Stile's edition of the Journal of Joutel,
Albany, 1906.
8The Sigiienza map is reproduced by Miss Elizabeth West in this mag-
azine, Vol. VIII, facing p. 199. It is entitled "Camino que el ailo de 1689
hizo el Governador Alonso de Leon desde Cuahuila hasta hallar cerca del
Lago de Sn. Bernardo el lugar donde havian poblado los Franceses," and
is signed "Siguenza, 1689," with a rubric. The annotation on the margin
of the map, giving distances and directions, is based on De Leon's diary.
'Compare with the text, pp. 23-26.
'See p. 3, note 2.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 12, July 1908 - April, 1909, periodical, 1909; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101048/m1/167/?rotate=270: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.