Texas Almanac, 1954-1955 Page: 47
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BRIEF HISTORY OF TEXAS 47
then in several improvised barges took
to sea again and sailed westward, and
was finally tossed by a gale on the Texas
coast. It is probable that the boat carry-
ing Cabeza de Vaca landed on Galveston
Island in November, 1528.
All members of the expedition finally
perished except Cabeza de Vaca and three
companions. For six years they lived
among the Indians, as slaves at first.
Later, the intelligent and resourceful
Cabeza de Vaca established a reputation
as a medicine man and wandered with his
three companions from tribe to tribe with
his fame going before him. They finally
found their way to the Spanish settle-
ment of Culiacan, Sinaloa, near the Pa-
cific Coast, after one of the most amaz-
ing peregrinations in the annals of man.
Cabeza de Vaca brought back stories of
cities of great wealth reputed to lie north
of his route. This and other reports from
the north spread among the adventurers
of Mexico City tales of the Seven Cities
of Cibola, also referred to as the land of
Gran Quivira.
Conquistadores in Texas.
A number of expeditions were made in
search of the Seven Cities of Cibola. The
most noteworthy was that of Capt. Fran-
cisco Vasquez de Coronado, who in 1540
marched northward into what is now
New Mexico by way of El Paso del Norte,
the pass at present-day El Paso-Juarez.
From a base in present New Mexico,
Coronado made a wide detour to the east,
led by an Indian guide who intrigued the
avaricious Spaniards with stories of Gran
Quivira, land of gold and silver. Coronado
found no Seven Cities of Cibola or Gran
Quivira, other than the grass-house vil-
lages of the seminomadic tribes of the
prairie plains and the dwellings of the
Pueblos.
Other conquistadores were encouraged
to try their luck in search of the Seven
Cities. Out of these expeditions came the
eventual establishment in the Rio Grande
Valley in New Mexico, in 1605, of the
second oldest permanent European com-
munity in the United States, Santa Fe.
Among those who headed expeditions
into this territory was Antonio de Espejo,
who explored the Pecos Valley and Big
Bend country in 1582 while on a relief
expedition to some of the missions in
Northern Mexico.
Out of the Coronado expedition, too,
came the first outright attempt at mis-
sionary work among the Indians in the
present confines of the United States.
Cabeza de Vaca, a pious man, had
preached to the Indians, and there had
been some priests among those who land-
ed on the Texas coast with Narvaez, but
the first priest to attempt to Christianize
Indians north of the Rio Grande was Fra
Juan de Padilla, who accompanied Coro-
nado and stayed behind among the In-
dians of the Texas plains, where he suf-
fered martyrdom.
The expedition of Hernando de Soto,
after his death, entered Northeast Texas
about 1542 and penetrated an unknowndistance westward, possibly as far as East
Central Texas. Because of the rumors
about cities of gold, most of the early
exploration was in Western Texas, and
New Mexico.
Texas' Oldest Communities.
There were no permanent settlements
in Texas resulting immediately from
these expeditions, though there was a set-
tlement at El Paso del Norte, now Juarez,
opposite present El Paso, and one at the
present community of Ojinaga, opposite
Presidio-or rather it might be more ac-
curate to state that the transmutation of
long-established Indian villages at these
points into Spanish communes Yities had
begun.
The *oldest present-day Texas commu-
nity came later from these early activi-
ties, however. In 1682, the Pueblo revolt
in New Mexico drove out the Spanish and
the Indians who remained loyal to the
Spanish. The refugees from two Upper
Rio Grande communities, Ysleta and So-
corro, sought safety at the mission at El
Paso del Norte (now Juarez) and settled
on the river below, naming their new
communities Ysleta del Sur (south) and
Socorro del Sur. These places, as estab-
lished in 1682, were on the right (present
Mexican) bank of the river, but a change
in the channel in later years left them on
the Texas side. Ysleta was settled a little
earlier than Socorro and San Elizario.
La Salle and the French.
The second of the six flags to fly over
Texas, that of France, came with the
landing of Rc: Rcbert Cavalier, Sieur de
la Salle, in 1685. According to the an-
nounced purpose of La Salle s expedition,
it was to have established a French set-
tlement at the mouth of the Mississippi.
Possibly La Salle was driven on the Texas
coast by storms. There is also evidence
that he sailed past the mouth of the Mis-
sissippi for the deliberate purpose of es-
tablishing a French post within striking
distance of Spanish operations in north-
ern Mexico. He, too, had heard of the
Seven Cities of Cibola.
Landing at the head of Lavaca Bay, La
Salle established Fort Saint Louis from
which he made a number of expeditions,
some to the westward apparently in
search of the gold and silver mines of the
Spaniards, and later to the eastward in
search of the Mississippi. La Sall was
killed by one of his own men during an
expedition in 1687. The place of the ex-
plorer's death is usually fixed at a site
near present Navasota. After the leader's
death the colony at Fort Saint Louis was
soon destroyed by disease and Indians.
Its establishment in Texas had little
direct results. Indirectly it had a perma-
nent influence on the chain of historic
cause-and-effect, because it alarmed the
Spaniards in Mexico and made them give
serious thought to the matter of estab-
lishing settlements in the great region
north of the Rio Grande.
*The claim of "oldest community" is also made
for the little village of Penitas on the Rio Grande
in Hidalgo County, settled in the period of the
earliest Spanish land grants.
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Texas Almanac, 1954-1955, book, 1953; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117168/m1/49/?q=waco+tornado: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.