The History of Texas. Robert A. Calvert
there. The towns did not thrive, but the presidio‐mission‐settlement complex of La Bahía remained.
Despite the entrenchment, the French chased the Spaniards out of East Texas in 1719, when war broke out in Europe between Spain and France. In a countermove, the Spanish Crown dispatched the governor of the province of Coahuila and Tejas, the Marqués de Aguayo, to regain the lost East Texas lands. The governor discharged his assignment by restoring the old missions among the Tejas and establishing a new presidio in July 1721 named Nuestra Señora del Pilar de los Adaes, just fifteen miles west of Natchitoches, near the present‐day town of Robeline, Louisiana. Los Adaes, as the site came to be known, did well, as its friars, soldiers, and civilian residents of necessity adapted to Caddo patterns of village living and rules of comportment, and in the process became more accepting of the Caddos, upon whom they depended for survival. Returning to San Antonio in early 1722, Governor Aguayo issued directions for finishing the San Antonio de Béxar presidio started in 1718, then headed for La Bahía, where he established a mission to protect and Christianize the Karankawas and other coastal tribes. By the time Aguayo returned to his home in Coahuila in May 1722, he had increased the number of military posts and missions in Texas, repopulated the region with civilians, and established a much stronger Spanish hold on the entire province.
A new reconnoitering expedition in 1728 partly undermined Aguayo’s work when it ascertained that the French were no longer the threat they had been once and concluded that a reduction in the number of Texas presidios, missions, and civilian settlements would make sense financially. But the friars remained committed to working among the Indians; hence some of the missions continued functioning as before. Moreover, the imperial government still desired to reinforce the halfway station at San Antonio. A villa, or civilian settlement, called San Fernando de Béxar, was built there in 1731, when sixteen families (between fifty‐five and fifty‐nine individuals) arrived from the Canary Islands. In that same year, the friars from East Texas relocated to San Antonio. Therefore, before the end of the 1730s, a presidio, a municipality, and five missions constituted the San Antonio (or Béxar) complex. Additionally, small Indian communities sprang up in the vicinity of San Antonio as Indian families gathered there, relying on Béxar for protection and material help.
The Spaniards also pushed to settle the country along the Rio Grande. Don José de Escandón took charge of this expedition, and by the early 1750s he had colonized the south bank of the river and also planted the seeds of modern‐day Laredo, Texas. The lands of the lower Rio Grande Valley proved conducive to farming and ranching, and the region up to the Nueces River became pastureland for feral cattle and horses. The settling of this territory on both sides of the Rio Grande proved to be one of Spain’s most successful ventures in the Far North.
Church efforts to win converts also begot expansion, although attempts to broaden the mission system proved disappointing. In 1746, the Church established a mission (and the viceroy authorized the construction of a presidio in 1747) on the San Gabriel River (near present‐day Rockdale, Texas) to assist the Tonkawas, who were then being victimized by the Apaches and Comanches, and it added two more missions in the vicinity in 1749. But the Crown never fully attended to these assignments. Demoralization among the presidial soldiers and even the missionaries set in, and the Indians became dissatisfied due to what they felt was a lack of proper attention. The project on the San Gabriel thus died in 1755.
An attempt to convert the dreaded Apaches also failed. Since the establishment of the San Antonio complex, these Indians had made periodic attacks on the settlements there, but by the 1740s their own hostilities with the Comanches had made the Apaches receptive to an alliance with the Spaniards. In turn, attacks by the Comanches and their allies upon Spanish settlements prompted the Spanish to make appeals to the Apaches for mutual defense plans. Given this opportunity to Christianize the Apaches, the Spaniards in 1757 established a mission and fort along the San Sabá River (near modern‐day Menard, Texas); prospects of finding silver deposits also encouraged the enterprise. It did not last long. In March of 1758, a broad group of tribes allied against the Apaches (led by the Comanches) attacked the new mission and destroyed it completely. In addition, the Apaches showed indifference to the Spaniards’ proselytizing overtures. Following a series of futile attempts to carry out imperial and missionary objectives there, the viceroy abandoned the San Sabá enterprise in 1769.
Incorporation
What Spain sought by its efforts at settlement and missionization in Texas was the annexation of its far northern territory into the national core. Incorporation would involve transplanting the attributes of Spanish civilization to the frontier and ensuring the defense of the region from foreign threats by linking it to social and political systems in the interior of New Spain. Ideally, such a move would establish ties to the center of Spain’s New World empire, which would be maintained through the presidio, the mission, the rancho, and the villa, institutions that had been successful in the process of incorporating former frontier regions throughout New Spain. But, as in all such efforts, settling the periphery of the empire entailed dealing with the indigenous peoples, who by their numbers, military prowess, and economic and political support systems controlled all of Texas except for the San Antonio to La Bahía wedge.
Readings
Books
1 Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
2 Bannon, John Francis. The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.
3 Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
4 Carlson, Paul. The Plains Indians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.
5 Chipman, Donald E., and Harriett Denise Joseph. Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
6 ——— . Spanish Texas, 1519–1821, rev. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
7 Cruz, Gilbert R. Let There Be Towns: Spanish Municipal Origins in the American Southwest, 1610–1810. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988.
8 Driver, Harold E. Indians of North America, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
9 Hickerson, Nancy Parrott. The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
10 Jennings, Jesse. Prehistory of North America, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1974.
11 John, Elizabeth. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975.
12 La Vere, David. The Caddo Chiefdoms: Caddo Economics and Politics, 700–1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
13 ———. The Texas Indians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
14 Moorhead, Max L. The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.
15 Newcomb, William W., Jr. The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.
16 O’Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975.
17 Ricklis, Robert A. The Karankawa Indians of Texas: An Ecological Study of Cultural Tradition and Change. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
18 Smith, F. Todd. The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542–1854. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995.
19 Spencer, Robert E. et al. The Native Americans: Ethnology and Background of the North American Indians, 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
20 Wade, Maria F. The Native Americans of the Texas Edwards Plateau, 1582–1799. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
21 Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: