Reiistablislmient of Missions, I72I-I722
Rodriguez from 1720 to 1722 and of the Marquis of Aguayo and the missionaries of the College of Queretaro, manifested in the several earnest attempts of Father Miguel Sevillano de Paredes to carry out the vice- regal decree for its establishment. Fo,mding of Nttestra Seiiora del Espiritu Santo. But let us now turn to the founding of the Mission of Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo. It is necessary to go back in our narrative to the beginning of the Aguayo expedition. While he was still on the Rio Grande, early in 1721, the Marquis sent a detachment of forty men under command of Captain Jose Domingo Ramon, to occupy the Bay of Espiritu Santo which was being threatened by the French. This detachment traveled with another group of one hundred soldiers sent to San Antonio under the command of Lieu- tenant General Almazan. 25 On March IO, Ramon and his detachment continued their march to Espiritu Santo, accompanied by the enthusiastic missionary Agustin Patron, who had originally entered Texas in 1716 and had been forced to retreat to San Antonio in 1719. The party arrived on April 4, 1721, and after taking formal possession of the bay in the name of His Majesty, reported the occupation of this important post to Aguayo, who had arrived in San Antonio on the same day. Father Patron, who had been instructed to found a mission for the coast Indians in the most suitable location near the proposed presidio, lost no time in sending word to the Indians to come to see him. A month after his arrival a number of Indians of the Coco nation visited him and the Spaniards. To this tribe the good friar explained the desire of His Majesty the King to congregate them in a mission, where they could be instructed in the word of God and where they could be taught to live as civilized men. Through an interpreter, Francisco El Sixame, an Indian from the Mission of Dulcisimo Nombre de Jesus, of Coahuila, who knew the language of the coast tribes well, he pointed out the advantages of mission life as compared with their wandering ways. They listened with interest and replied that they would go back and tell their friends all they had heard and that they would try to bring many others to form a pueblo around the mission the Padre was going to found for them. By the next moon, they came back, led by all the chiefs of the Coco and the Cujame nations, fol- lowed by all their women and children. Father Patron had succeeded too well. Here were two populous nations ready to be congregated, but there were not enough supplies to feed the Indians of the mission until they
25 Pefia, Derrotero, 6.
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