---------------------------------------~
01'r Catholic Heritage in Texas
86
San Antonio, sixty leagues distant. The perilous extremity to which they were often reduced can well be imagined. In the mission two tribes had been congregated, the Tamiques and the Xaranames. The small garrison of the presidio had to furnish guards not only to the Mission of Espiritu Santo, but to three of the Queretaran missions in San Antonio. They also had to escort supply trains from San Antonio and the Rio Grande, and such men as were left at the presidio busied themselves in the construction of the dam. Under such conditions the raising of a crop was impossible. The devoted Zacatecan missionaries had to use their royal allowance to purchase corn, beans, and cattle from the more prosperous missions on the Rio Grande and the San Antonio. But since there were only two missionaries and their joint allowance was only nine hundred ,pesos, the amount of supplies that could be bought was inadequate for the maintenance of Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo. It was not infrequent that the neophytes had to abandon the mission, with the consent of the Padres, to go to the woods to hunt game or gather wild fruits to subsist. Such a practice, dictated by necessity, was not conducive to the best results in the work of conversion.u The condition of the mission was reflected in the destitution to which the presidia was reduced, but with a less justifiable reason. In the case of the mission, it had no other means of maintaining the Indians con- gregated than such aid as the two missionaries could secure through their personal efforts, but in that of the presidio, the king allowed four hundred fifty ,pesos for each man, and with such means, the soldiers should have been better provided for. It seems, however, that the captains, whose duty it was to secure all supplies and furnish them at reasonable prices to the men, exploited this privilege to such an extent that the soldiers were much like those in Los Adaes, without clothes, without horses, without adequate arms or munitions, and with scarcely enough food to keep body and soul together. La Bahia did not have in its vicinity a prosperous French settlement on which to call in its hour of need. In 1737, Governor Franquis wrote a severe reprimand to Captain Costales, accusing him in the harshest terms of not having paid his men for two years and of having failed to keep them supplied with the essentials of life. He said that the soldiers from La Bahia, who had come to San Antonio were practically naked, their arms out of order, and their horses
2lfray Ignacio Antonio Ciprian to Commissary General, October 27, 1749. San Fra11&isco el Gra11de ArcMves, vol. S, pp. 41-46.
Powered by FlippingBook