The Field and Its Workers
Fernando de Mexico, thus formally inaugurating the new institute of the faithful sons of Saint Francis.'" Although the College of San Fernando de Mexico was the last to be established, it was destined to furnish Texas two of its martyrs. Fray Alonso Giraldo de Terreros and Fray Jose de Santiesteban, who were ruthlessly killed by the infuriated assailants of the Mission of San Saba in 1758, were from this college. And it was the glory of the sons of San Fernando de Mexico, who labored so faithfully and so successfully in distant California for almost a century, to bequeath to that state the incomparable heritage of its storied missions. Clzaracter of the missions. There exists some confusion m the mind of many as to just what was a mission. The term as used throughout this history does not refer simply to the church or the friary which formed the nucleus of a Spanish mission. A mission on the Spanish frontier included much more than the church and the house of the mis- sionaries. It embraced ordinarily a group of small houses, arranged usually about a square, in which the mission Indians lived; the work shops, such as the carpenter shop, the blacksmith shop, the tailor shop, the looms, the granary, and the kilns; the houses for the soldiers assigned to the mission for its protection and for the assistance of the missionaries; and the cemetery, garden, and orchard. These various units were generally enclosed within a quadrangle, around which a protecting wall was built, with fortified gates or entrances. Beyond the enclosed pueblo or Indian village, for that is precisely what a mission was, were the fields cultivated by the Indians. These were generally irrigated by ditches made also by the neophytes. Beyond the cultivated fields, sometimes several miles or leagues away, the mission had its ranch, where the stock, the sheep and goats, the asses and mules, and the oxen were cared for in suitable pastures. The purpose of the mission was twofold; first and foremost it was to convert and Christianize the Indian; and secondly, to teach him the habits and customs of civilized life. The mission was primarily a frontier institution, designed to supplement the military outpost or presidio in holding and extending the Spanish dominion. The Church expected the missionary to spread the faith and to win converts. But since the missions "Espinosa, Chronica, 508-5:.n; Fray Juan Buenaventura Bestard, "Memorias historicas del Apost6lico Colegio de Propaganda Fid4 de San Fernando de Mexico y de sus Misiones Recogidas y Coordinadas en forma de Cr6nka por el P. Fr. Juan Buenava. Bestard, hijo de la Sa. Prova. de Mallorca aora Predicador Apco. y Escritor del mismo Colegio," MS. Garcia Library, University of Texas.
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