Escandon and Settlement of L<rdler Rio Grande, 1738-1779
151
twenty-four leagues from the recently explored site on the San Antonio, which Orobio y Basterra named Santa Dorotea. Escandon explained that the land along the Nueces was fertile, and that there was an abundance of grass, water for irrigation, salt, fish, timber, and stone. Nevertheless he anticipated this settlement would prove the most difficult because of the long distance to Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. Here he intended to settle fifty families and to congregate the numerous Indians of the neighborhood. If the Bay of San Miguel Arcangel (Corpus Christi today) was found practical, a profitable and advantageous trade might be developed which would greatly aid the new establishment. Each one of the families should be allowed two hundred pesos for the initial expense of moving and settling and the captain of the colony should be allowed five hundred. The third settlement was to be at Santa Dorotea, which was on the banks of the San Antonio, six leagues from the head of San Antonio Bay. To this site the Presidio and Mission of La Bahia de! Espiritu Santo were to be moved. Their present location had proved unsuitable because of its unhealthiness and the hostility of many Indian tribes who had refused to live in the mission. This plan involved no extra expense to the royal treasury, since the distance from the former site was short and the buildings used were still of a temporary nature. In the new locality the two nations of the Cujanes and the Carancaguaces (Karankawas) might be congregated in the new mission. After the first crop of corn, beans, and chile was harvested, civil settlers could be induced to come to settle either in the immediate vicinity of the presidio and mission, or in the intervening twenty-five leagues between Santa Dorotea and the post on the Nueces, near the Bay of San Miguel Arcangel. In order to induce the soldiers to take a greater interest, lands should be granted to them, which they could cultivate in spare time. This would be an incentive for them to bring their families to live with them in the new settlement. If cattle and implements were provided for the soldiers, the garrison for the safety of the inhabitants could in the course of a few years be suppressed, as a presidio would be no longer necessary. 19 The missionaries for the new area, he suggested, would be secured from the Colleges of San Fernando and Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. To those from the first institution should be assigned the missions in
1 9Escand6n to the Viceroy, October 26, 1747. A. G. M., P,-O'tli~ias /nt,,-,ras, vol. I 79, pt. I, pp. 262-266, 274-277.
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