Our Catholic Heritage, Volume III

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Our Catholic Heritage in Texas

114

in the mission. Generally four fanegas of corn were sown annually, which yielded about eight hundred in good years. Only one and a half fanegas of beans were planted each year and these produced about forty, which were sufficient for the needs of the mission. There was also a fine field of melons and watermelons. All the cultivated land was watered by a very good irrigation ditch. To carry on its work, the mission had seventeen yokes of oxen, twenty- five hoes, twenty-two axes, ten carts, eight handbars, and eleven adzes. The establishment had its carpenter and blacksmith shops, and the necessary tools for masonry. There was, however, no loom, but there was provided the usual branding iron for the mission livestock, which consisted of eight hundred and sixty-five head of cattle by actual count,_ although the inventory claimed to have actually nine hundred and thirty; three hundred and four sheep; two hundred and seventy goats, and thirty-six horses. 61 San Francisco de la Espada in 1745. Father Ortiz next visited this mission, where he found that since the time of its removal from East Texas to San Antonio in 1731, three hundred and ninety-three Indians had been baptized, two hundred and thirteen had received the last sacra- ments and had been given Christian burial, and that there were two hundred and four persons of both sexes and all ages living in the mission. Of these one hundred and eighty were baptized Christians and twenty- four were being instructed. Here a new church of stone and mortar had been started; the sacristy had ·already been finished and was being used at this time as the place for divine worship. Above its modest altar was an image of Saint Francis, carved in relief, about one var a high. On either side there were two pic- tures about one vara square of San Bernardino and San Juan Capistrano. There was also a carved image of Our Lady of Sorrows, about three- quarters of a vara in height, and several other pictures of different saints. All the sacred vessels and other ornaments were of silver. Five sets of vestments of different colors and of new material, a baptismal font, a censer, two missals, a ritual, a manual, two rugs, and a crucifix for processions had been provided. The pueblo consisted mainly of jacales, huts made of brush, mud, and straw, grouped about the new church. The missionaries lived in a two- story house of stone and mortar, with two cells on the second floor and

61/bid., Ard,ivo del Colegio de la Santa Cruz, I 729-17 58.

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