Texas Almanac, 1954-1955 Page: 50
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50 TEXAS ALMANAC-1954-1955
succession came the founding of the mis-
sions La Purisima Concepcion de Acuna,
San Juan Capistrano and San Francisco
de I'Espada. Three of these missions at
San Antonio were really re-establish-
ments of the older East Texas missions
which had been abandoned. They were
San Francisco, Concepcion and San Juan
Capistrano, the latter succeeding San Jose
of the Neches, the name being changed
because of the prior founding at San An-
tonio of San Jose de Aguayo.
Los Adaes, Early Texas Capital.
This era of mission building, which had
been brought about because of the ac-
tivity of the French on the uRiviere
Rouge (Red River) and the journey of
Saint Denis, marks also the beginning of
Texas statehood. It had been officially
declared a Spanish dominion and Do-
mingo Teran de los Rios had been named
Governor in 1691. However, after an ex-
pedition across Texas by De Los Rios, po-
litical authority was relaxed and little at-
tention was given Texas until the ad-
ministration of Martin de Alarcon, Gov-
ernor of Coahuila-Texas, who founded
the mission of San Antonio de Valero and
the presidio of San Antonio de Bexar in
1718.
In 1721-22 the dominion of Spain was
definitely established between the Rio
Grande and the Red River by the expedi-
tion of Marquis de Aguayo, who estab-
lished new missions and presidios and
strengthened old ones. At the site of the
Mission San Miguel de Linares, estab-
lished a few years earlier, he established
the presidio of Los Adaes as his headquar-
ters. This place, where the present-day
town of Robeline, La., stands, was the
Spanish capital of Texas until the seat of
government was removed to San Antonio
in 1772.
To further strengthen Spanish author-
ity a scheme of colonizing Texas with
Spaniards was hit upon. One result of
the project was the establishment of fif-
teen families from the Canary Islands at
San Antonio. From the standpoint of
immediate results the project was not
very successful, but the Canary Island
families and their descendants played a
large part in subsequent Texas history.
Later Missions.
Three missions were established about
1746 on the San Xavier River, a stream
which for many years of modern research
defied identity, but is now assumed to be
the San Gabriel of Central Texas. They
were the San Francisco Xavier, San Ilde-
fonso and the Candelaria. They soon
were abandoned. Site of these missions
is in present-day Milam or Williamson
County. The San Xavier Missions were
later removed to locations in present
Hays County.
Misson La Bahia del Espiritu Santo
was established at the present site of its
ruins at Goliad in 1749. It had earlier
*The Red River carried the French name on
some maps as late as the middle of last century.
Nearly all of the rivers of Central. Southern and
Southwestern, Texas have retaihed their Spanish
names as monuments of early Spanish explora-
tion. Anglicizing of the name of the Red River
has erased a corresponding reminder of the early
French activities in that region.been established near the site of old Fort
Saint Louis on Espiritu Santo Bay and
was removed once or twice before being
permanently located at Goliad.
At the request of the Lipan Apaches,
just then sorely pressed by the Coman-
ches, a mission and a presidio were es-
tablished on the San Saba River in 1756,
near the present site of the town of
Menard. The San Saba Mission was at-
tacked by the Comanches and destroyed.
Missions were established also on the
Nueces, but proved failures.
The last mission, Our Lady of Refuge,
was established on Mission Bay in Cal-
houn County in 1791 but, with one inter-
mediate relocation, moved to Refugio in
1795.
Nacogdoches Founded.
When the East Texas missions were
abandoned the second time, in 1776, the
white population was removed to San
Antonio. In 1779, however, a number of
these settlers returned under the leader-
ship of Antonio Gil Ybarbo and settled
around old Mission Guadalupe, perma-
nently establishingwhat is today the city
of Nacogdoches, though Nacogdoches also
has some claim to having been founded
in 1716, year of the building of the old
Guadalupe Mission.
Results of Mission Effort.
The purpose of the missions was two-
fold: (1) To Christianize the Indian, and
(2) to extend the frontier of Spanish
dominion and aid temporal authorities in
establishing civil law. The missionaries
in Texas were faced with a peculiarly
difficult problem because the Indians, ex-
cepting the Caddoes of East Texas, were
characteristically nomadic. The padres
had found an environment suitable to
their missionary effort in the character-
istic Indian villages and pueblos in Mex-
ico and in the Upper Rio Grande Valley
of New Mexico, but it was necessary to
establish a new way of life for the largely
nomadic tribes of Texas before the proc-
ess of Christianization could begin.
Nevertheless, appreciable progress was
made. A report on Queretaran missions
of San Antonio in 1745, acording to Dr.
Carlos E. Castaneda, showed a total of
2,282 Indians had been baptized. There
were living at the four missions 885 In-
dians at the time of the report. There
were 5,115 head of cattle, 2,662 sheep, 664
goats and 257 horses. There was pro-
duced annually about 8,000 bushels of
corn, 2,000 pounds of cotton and a quan-
tity of beans, melons, pumpkins and other
crops. The missions were well supplied
with agricultural implements, and Indian
women had been taught to spin and
weave. This report did not include the
mission of San Jose, which belonged to
the Zacatecan group, but a report of a
little later date showed that it had over
200 neophytes in its pueblo and that there
were over 2,000 head of cattle, 1,000 sheep
and a considerable annual harvest of
corn and other crops.
The effect of the missions on the sub-
sequent history of Texas is incalculable.
They planted the first seeds of cultural
progress in the soil of Texas. Undoubt-
edly there would have been military ex-
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Texas Almanac, 1954-1955, book, 1953; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117168/m1/52/?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.