Our Catholic Heritage in Texas
132
de los Valles. He presented his plan to the viceroy in 1736 and was supported in his petition by one of the Oidores, Juan Picado Pacheco. It was his intention to recruit settlers from Tampico and Villa de Valles, offering them free lands and part of their expenses for the occupation of this area. Such families as entered the new province should be granted the rights and privileges of first settlers. He pointed out that thirty or forty leagues north of Tampico there were rich salines capable of supplying salt to all New Spain, from the proceeds of which the cost of the undertaking could be defrayed. For the protection of the new territory and the safeguard of the missionaries, he proposed to establish a fort with a garrison of fifty men at a convenient distance from Tampico, which would entail an annual expenditure of fourteen thousand pesos. For himself he asked appropriate military rank with a salary of four thousand ,pesos a year. Almost at the same time Don Joseph Fernandez de Jauregui, Governor of Nuevo Leon, who had just returned from Texas, where he had successfully removed the difficulties which the impetuous and tactless Governor Franquis had created, made a similar proposal to the viceroy. Before the end of 1736 he presented a petition, commenting favorably on the fertility of the region, about which he had learned much not only during his sojourn in Texas but while Governor of Nuevo Leon. He warned the viceroy that failure to occupy this vast area along the coast endangered the welfare of New Spain by leaving it open to foreign aggression. He proposed to enter the land, reduce the Indians to mission life, and establish settlements with families from Nuevo Leon. By this means, he declared, the raids and thefts made by the unconverted and apostate Indians in the region would cease, peace would be restored along the frontier, and the natives would be brought to a knowledge of God. Two years later, in 1738, while the viceroy and his advisers were still considering the plans presented to them for the occupation of the last unsubdued territory, copies of which had been forwarded to the Council of the Indies, a third applicant entered the field. This was Don Antonio Ladron de Guevara, a resident of Nuevo Leon, who had spent many years on the frontier and who claimed that his knowledge and acquaintance with the Indians that lived in the coastal plains qualified him for the undertaking. He noted the value of the rich silver deposits and productive salines known to exist in the area, and he offered to occupy it practically without expense to the royal treasury. His plan was to colonize the northern half of the Seno Mexicano, which as already indicated, was
Powered by FlippingBook