01'r Catlzolic Heritage ill Texas
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chapel. The nations congregated in Mission Guadalupe were the Cibolos and Pescados. There were fifty-three families of the former nation li\'ing regularly at the mission and a number of the latter had just recently come and were making arrangements to be instructed in the doctriua. On November 29, he took forty men and started out for San Antonio de los Puliques. This mission was three leagues southeast of !\•I ission Guadalupe, on the Texas side of the river. This would place its location about six miles below the point where the Conchos enters the Rio Grande, not far from the actual location of Presidio, Texas. Here he found the Puliques, the Cibolos, and the Pescados living at the mission. The latter nation used to roam over a wide area on both banks of the Rio Grande, but had recently come to live in this mission and Guadalupe for fear of the Apaches. Captain Idoyaga had a long conference with the chief of the Pescados {Fish). He urged him and his people to build an adequate church and good houses near the missions so that they might live more comfortably and securely from their enemies. The Indians told him that their nearest neighbors were the Apaches and that a band under Chief Ligero came frequently to visit them. The Natages came also. They called this nation the friars because they cut their hair similar to the missionaries. There was another Apache band, commanded by a chief called Pascual, who also visited San Antonio de los Puliques. This chief was a former neophyte of the missions at Presidio de Conchos, who had run away. He knew .all the trails leading into Chihuahua. Captain Idoyaga was personally acquainted with him, having known him when he lived in the missions. He now sent a special messenger to invite him to come and make peace. The census taken showed that there were thirty-six families of Puliques, thirty-one of Cibolos, and twenty of Pescados living at the mission. From San Antonio de los Puliques, Captain Idoyaga went on to the south along the river for a distance of about eleven leagues. He was obliged to make many detours on account of the roughness of the country and the fact that the river flowed through a deep canyon. Here they found the ruins of the abandoned Pueblo of the Tapalcomes, where the walls of the old church were still standing. They were of adobe. The Pescados had lived here also and had raised corn and pumpkins in the rrow valley but they had recently been forced to abandon the site na , h • · and to go to San Antonio de los Puliques because of the ostthty of the
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