Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
Although ultimately under the authority of the Crown, the early
entradas
and conquests wreaked enormous havoc among the hapless Indian civilizations. The mass cruelties of the conquistadores in Mexico and Panama had never had the sanction of the Church, and over the centuries the Spanish Church worked assiduously to prevent the wholesale extermination of new Christians by exploiting
encomenderos
. The Church did not question the conquest; this would have been foreign to its value system, and it did not dispute the undeniable fact that incorporation of Indians at best permitted them only third-class citizenship within the Spanish state. Hispanic civilization was rigidly class-structured, hierarchically centralized; ethnocentrism—the notion that one's own culture is immensely superior to all others—neither began nor ceased with imperial Spain. Spanish clergy did not and could not represent values foreign to Spain; at all times and in all places it is not possible for a clergy to be really different from the society from which it springs.
The form of incorporation in Mexico, the
encomienda
(later,
hacienda
), worked brilliantly for the Spanish in south-central Mexico on the wet, fertile plateaus of the older Indian civilizations. By 1575, there were more than 500
encomiendas
, producing 400,000 silver pesos per year in revenues, and another 320 estates yielding 50,000 pesos directly to the Crown. But as Spanish power worked north, beyond the limits of the older Aztec sphere of influence, the
encomienda
became only marginally successful. Although it was adapted to include the
estancia de ganado
, or cattle ranch, the great problem was that the system was running out of amenable Indians.
In 1720, the
encomienda
was officially abolished, although the great estates it had created remained, then and later, as an enormous social problem for Mexico, not so much because of their size but because of their peculiar, two-class human structure. The new colonial system was essentially an adaptation of the old—cross and sword, but without the slave-herder.
Since settled, agricultural Indian societies capable of Hispanicization and incorporation did not exist on the northern frontier of Mexico, the aim of Church and State, synonymous now in Spain, was to create them. Presidio-missions were to be erected beyond the frontier of settlement. The mission, conducted by members of a religious order, had several tasks: to get the Indians to congregate around it, to Christianize them, and to teach them a new, settled, agricultural way of life. The presidio, or garrison-fort, accompanied the mission to afford the religious and new Christians protection from the as-yet-untamed, and also to help keep the mission Indians in hand. This system was called, in Spanish, "reducing," and Indians civilized through it
reducidos
, or the "reduced." When a tribe was sufficiently reduced to become useful subjects of Spain, then other Spaniards could be sent among them to perform the functions of the middle classes and the elite; a town could be built, and a potentially wealthy new province arise. It was considered that the initial process would require about ten years.
Just as the early incorporation of New Spain was based entirely upon the Indian at the bottom, the incorporation of Texas into New Spain was completely dependent upon finding available savages to reduce.
The mission was thus not a private organization, but fully an agency of the State, and the missionary priests were agents of the Crown. The Crown in fact completely subsidized them, as well as sending and paying the essential soldiery. The Crown would receive its own reward when the reduced were hard-working, tax-paying citizens, subject to military service and other duties, with about the same privileges and status as the peasants of Old Spain.
The various ecclesiastical councils of Spain and Mexico were enormously proud and hopeful of this system, which was certainly a humanitarian improvement over the former creation of
tierra paz
in the New World. It should be noted that even in the late 17th century the Spanish military, particularly those who had seen service on the northern frontier, were not sanguine about making peaceful shepherds out of Apaches. But the ecclesiastics argued forcefully that soldiers always took this attitude, and their counsels carried.
The Spanish colonial system of the 18th century has always won a certain admiration, and it has been regarded sentimentally because it was the only system that ever envisioned any place for the Indian. It was carefully thought out; the Spanish put more attention, money, and effort into it than any contemporary European power gave its own system. But at its inception it was a triumph of ideology over reality. The Spanish ecclesiastics made assumptions that were false. It was a beautiful, humanitarian idea, designed to create a lovely, paternalistic Spanish-Indian culture, and it was an idea that never really died in Spanish-Catholic hearts. But, whatever its eventual social faults, there was one thing wrong with it. In Texas, the Spanish would come in contact with types of Amerinds they had never had to face before, and all their dreams and illusions about savage mankind—and the nature of civilizing European man—would fall to crashing ruin.
Enormous responsibility rested upon the Spanish missionary priests and friars. They were not only expected to be men of God, but persuaders, teachers, civilizers, and law-givers. Theirs was the burden of not only carrying the Cross into heathen lands, but also the whole fabric of Western civilization. They, not the soldiery, held ultimate responsibility for planting the lions-and-castles, the red-gold banner of Leon and Castile, over a vast new empire. For generations they had argued and pleaded for the chance. Now, at the dawn of the 18th century, with secular Iberia in steep decline, they represented the last, best push and promise of Hispanic civilization; they certainly possessed more vigor and determination than any other Spanish class. Probably they deserved a better fate.
The first missionary effort in Texas came in 1690, following the furor caused by La Salle's landing at Matagorda Bay. It was abortive. But its results were studiously ignored in later years in the ecclesiastical councils where concepts, not experience, remained dominant. But in its appalling prophecy for later years, it is worth exploring.
De León returned to East Texas in 1690 with a large body of soldiers and priests, determined to found a permanent colony to halt further French exploration. He constructed a log mission, San Francisco de los Tejas (from the name by which the Spaniard mistakenly called the confederacy of the Caddoan Hasinai), in just three days. This structure was raised on the Trinity River, about fifty miles south of Nacogdoches, deep in the pine forests.
The Hasinai had many villages in the vicinity, where they lived in relative comfort, planting corn and vegetables in spring, hunting and fishing in the rich region in other seasons. The Hasinai lived a secure, basically lazy life. They did not often venture out on the dangerous plains to the west, and they were the most numerous tribe in Texas. They were raided now and then, but their existence was hardly in question. Horsemen did not care to plunge into the dense, dank forests; Hasinai and the Plains tribes lived in utterly different worlds, which hardly impinged.
Secure and basically unwarlike, the Hasinai welcomed the Spaniards into their country. Hundreds came to watch the priests dedicate the mission, and to celebrate the colorful Mass. A people with a strong, but rudimentary, sense of pageantry, they were impressed. They listened gravely to the priests, presented the soldiers with corn and other foods, and promised to give thought to the matter of becoming mission Indians.
But they gave it interminable thought, which made the dedicated religious orders restive. Hasinai seemed more amused than frightened at the idea of year-round work in the fields, and at the argument that they should cease being warriors altogether, now that the soldiers were on hand to protect them. They lived in an essentially timeless world, and while they agreed the Spanish arguments had merit, they appeared in no haste to begin making changes.
Now, a difficult kind of problem arose, complicating relations. The Spanish soldiery, many months on the march and away from the comforts of New Spain, began instructing the Caddoan girls in things other than the Christian faith. This put the garrison in bad odor not only with the Indians but with the friars, and there were many bitter recriminations.
Then, the Spanish unintentionally transmitted a lethal epidemic to the neighboring villages. What the Europeans called normal childhood diseases, such as measles, were fatal pestilences to all Texas Indians. The nearby Hasinai were decimated. The survivors simply avoided the mission, and those who had congregated melted back into the forests.
The priests requested the soldiery to bring them back, but now the soldiers did some procrastinating of their own. The Caddoans were getting restive, and they began to steal horses and cattle from the garrison.
The departure of the friendly Indians precipitated crisis. Not only was the purpose of the mission failing, but the mission was dependent upon the natives for its food. The supply bases in New Spain were many hundreds of miles to the south. The priests' job did not include farming for the garrison, and most of the soldiers had entered the King's service precisely to avoid that kind of labor. The military grew increasingly unruly and angry, and as the religious reported, "arrogant and intractable." They wanted to go out and skewer a few of the Hasinai to teach the rest hospitality.
While the two groups of Spanish elite argued bitterly over ways and means, the Caddoans died of disease or disappeared. The French menace, meanwhile, seemed to have evaporated. In 1692, by full agreement between the religious orders and the military, the mission of San Francisco de los Tejas was abandoned, and the Spanish marched back to Mexico. Both parties forgot about Texas for more than twenty years.
Again, it was the French who incited action. St. Denis's appearance in New Spain may have interested his father-in-law, Captain Ramón, in potential smuggling profits, but it stirred the Marqués de Valero, the Viceroy, into calling again upon the orders to reenter Texas. Again, the Crown raised soldiers, put up money, and authorized an extensive colonization project.
This time the Spanish presence was to be permanent. A great semicircle of presidio-missions was planned to stretch up from northern Mexico, generally reaching across the middle area of Texas on a line from Laredo to the Sabine River. Both the Great Plains and the fever coast were avoided by the Spanish; both were unhealthy. At this time, the Gulf Coast of northern Mexico was not settled by the Spanish, for climatic reasons, and the impetus of Spanish colonization came up through central Mexico to skirt the central plateau of Texas along the Balcones Escarpment.
One mission was planned and planted on the north Texas coast, at the mouth of the Lavaca, with two purposes, to reduce the Karankawas, and to provide the Spanish with a settlement near the sea. This site, however, was quickly moved inland, though still in Karankawa country.
Three missions were organized for the Hasinai area. The Caddoans were the most civilized of Texas Indians, and therefore held the most promise for quick reduction; also, their territory overlapped that of the French in Louisiana. East Texas required greater attention.
A mission was sited in the Tonkawa territory, midway between the East Texas presidios and the way-station mission of San Antonio de Valero, built in 1718 near the headwaters of the San Antonio River, some 150 miles northeast of the borders of Coahuila. The San Antonio mission was not at first considered important, except as a feeder-station and backup for the main effort further east.
Two more missions, Rosario and Refugio, were planted in south Texas, along the crescent coastal bend.
The planning showed that each known Texas tribe (Caddoans, Tonkawas, Karankawas, and Coahuiltecans) was considered in the scheme of things. At this time, in the first years of the 18th century, there was no real contact between the Spanish and the Apaches of the higher plains in Texas.
Although many of them were pushed with great persistence, backbreaking labor, and heartbreak, all but one of these missions failed utterly. Each had a detailed and sometimes romantic history. But in the sweep of important events, they can be bypassed briefly: none achieved its primary mission of reducing any important Indian tribe, or increasing Spanish power.
The three missions among the Hasinai were balked by two problems. The Caddoans refused to adopt Christianity and Spanish serfdom of their own will, and the French, with considerable cleverness, gave them both arguments and the power to resist. French traders freely sold the Hasinai firearms, and the Spanish military always decided against trying to congregate the confederacies by force. This trade greatly embittered the Spanish, whose policy was always to deny Indians firearms, even their allies. But there was nothing they could do about it.
So long as St. Denis lived, he exercised great influence over the Hasinai, and kept them from adopting Spanish ways. Afterward, other Frenchmen took up the task. But meanwhile, ominously for the Caddoans, both French and Spanish diseases were debilitating the sedentary tribes. There was no stopping the spread of measles, smallpox, and other European maladies so long as foreigners moved among the Indians. By the middle of the 18th century, the Caddoans were in rapid decline, and by the end of the century they had almost disappeared. Unwittingly, and certainly unwillingly, the good friars helped exterminate the people they had come to save.
The Tonkawa mission never attracted any Indians at all. The nomadic Tonkawas ignored it, and the soldiers with the mission avoided locating Tonkawas for the padres to proselyte.