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Escandon and Settlement of Lower Rio Grande, r738-r779
during the first two or three years had caused great damage and resulted in the moving of the settlement and mission to different places in search of higher ground. Smallpox broke out in 1753 and greatly reduced the number of Indians in attendance, particularly those more recently con- gregated. But the greatest difficulty was the lack of the necessary supplies to feed them regularly. On three different occasions Escandon had given the missionaries corn, beans, and a liberal supply of blankets, hats, clothes, and trinkets. The attempts to build an irrigation ditch had failed and such crops as were planted depended on rain for their harvest. How the zealous missionary had to labor to keep up his mission at Camargo may be inferred from the conditions described. But to these hardships were added those of ministering also to the settlers and Indians of the neighboring town of Mier, located about nine leagues to the west. The fact that there Fray Juan Bautista succeeded in congregating the Malaguecos and had one hundred and thirty-two under instruction, who worked regularly on an irrigation project, is the highest tribute to his industry and missionary zeal. By 1752 he had already built in Camargo a spacious church of stone and mortar and quarters for himself. In the church he had a large wooden chest for the vestments and a good confessional. He had ten yokes of oxen, one hundred head of cattle, two hundred and seventy-five sheep, a drove of mares, and twelve mules. Among the three hundred and fifty- nine Indians of the mission there was a dwarf squaw, one and one-half varas tall (about forty-six inches) named Maria Cayetana, who could spin cotton and wool as fine as a hair and who was skilled in all tasks. The following year the mission roll showed five hundred Indians, who attended the doctrina regularly "a son de campana" (at the ring of the bell). Many of them had learned to plow and plant, and others had learned to tend the cattle and look after the mission property. "If a settlement were placed on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande," said Fray Juan Bautista, "a thing which is highly advisable, the number of unconverted Indians who could be congregated there would be great. ... According to current opinion the land that lies between the Rio Grande and the Nueces is even better [than here]. " 30 HStatement by Father Fray Juan Bautista Garcia Resuarez, Camargo, March 6, 1753. A. G. M., Provincias lntdrnas, vol. 172, pp. 185-187. See also A. G. M., Historia, vol. 29, pt. 2, pp. 391-392, and Provincias /nt,rnas, vol. 179, pt. 2 , pp. 625-657.
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