01,r Catl,olic Heritage in Texas
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sensitive monarch who, instead of thanking his well-meaning advisers, made the following annotation on the margin of the report: This notice is incomplete. Since the papers, which the Junta says have not arrived, are lacking, this representation is premature, and it is couched in such ill-advised terms that it has displeased me exceedingly, and caused me great surprise that ministers of such experience and high rank should have allowed it to reach my hands. 36 In the meantime the French continued to establish themselves firmly along the Gulf coast from Mobile Bay to the mouth of the Mississippi and to strengthen their communications along the river as far north as Canada, drawing closerall the time to the Red River and the outskirts of NewSpain. It has been thought erroneously that during the period from the aban- donment of the missions in 1693 until the appearance of St. Denis at the Presidio of San Juan Bautista on the Rio Grande in 1714, there was little or no interest in Texas either on the part of the French ·or the Spanish and that the entire province was relegated to the savages. "For more than twenty years its history is almost a blank. The Spaniards in Mexico forgot it in the press of more urgent matters ... The fear of a French intrusion into Spanish territory, which in the years 1689, 1690, and 1691 had been strong enough to induce the viceroy to send a company of priests and soldiers exploring far into the interior of Texas, grew less and less as the years passed, and no further attempt was made by the French to claim or possess the territory between the Red River and the Rio Grande. The rulers of New Spain, satisfied with a potential ownership, fell into a state of indifference toward the northeastern lands," declares Clark. 37 But since the time this statement was made, many new .sources have been made available and this period, considered generally a "blank" in our history, has been gradually revealed as one during which activity went on, interest continued, and the determining forces that resulted in the final and per- manent occupation of Texas developed. It has been shown how in an effort to forestall the French on the Gulf coast, Santa Maria de Galve was established, how the French surreptitiously made a permanent settlement at Biloxi, how they had recourse to a subterfuge to keep the Spaniards at Pensacola from discovering their infant colony, and how both the officials in New Spain and in Madrid tried to prevent this intrusion but lacked the means and the moral support of the king to carry out their purpose and safeguard the integrity of the Spanish dominions.
3 6 Dunn, op. cit., 215. 57 R. C. Clark, op. cit., VI, 3.
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