The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 36, July 1932 - April, 1933 Page: 16

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Damian Massanet began his activity in Coahuila and entered
Texas, Father Pefiasco established contact with and achieved the
conversion of some Tejas-Indians who were to play so promi-
nent a rl1e fifteen years later in the temporary occupation of
eastern Texas.
The efforts of Brother Manuel and Father Pefiasco were emi-
nently successful. By July, as stated in Pefiasco's letter, more
than three thousand Indians were again assembled on the lands
adjoining the Rio de las Sabinas. Thanks to the zeal of Captain
Francisco Barbarigo and Brother Francisco Basan, the mission-
aries at Santa Rosa had an adobe chapel and sacristy for divine
services and a large hut for their habitation, all sufficiently
equipped to satisfy present needs. Four fanegas of corn were
planted and a supply of vegetables was available. However
promising the outlook, Larios and his fellow missionaries were
not so sanguine as to expect their path of duty would be free
from all difficulties and obstacles. To humor the petulant chil-
dren of the forest and keep them in the settlements, to preserve
peace and harmony among them, to travel on foot from settle-
ment to settlement, to visit the Indians in their hovels and to
witness their depraved ways, to acquire a working knowledge of
their languages, to imbue their carnal minds with Christian
truths and principles, to wean them from their barbarous cus-
toms and habits and win them over to clean and orderly living,
to provide food and clothing for them, to teach them, and espe-
cially to induce them to cultivate the land, to protect their rights
and interests against selfish and unscrupulous whites-these were
tasks that involved many hardships and problems.
Brother Basan offers a vivid description of conditions as they
obtained in the new mission during the spring of 1674. He tells
us how disheartened the friars were when Father Pefiasco re-
turned from the South and reported that those in authority mani-
fested little interest in the Coahuila project. "They felt this
very keenly," he writes, "and it greatly disheartened them, since
they have so many souls to care for and suffer want even unto
hunger and nakedness. Their habits are very ragged from trav-
eling. Since in their poverty they lack the mules to carry suffi-
league distant from the Jalisco Mission de la Caldera, some of whose
Indian converts Massanet took for the new mission.