Rivert¥s Inspection and Removal of Missions to San Antonio 245
the temporal welfare of the mission all cause for complaint would be removed. 42 Regulations concerning escort for travelers and train supplies. The new regulations adopted with regard to the escort for travelers and supply trains, providing for four periodic journeys at specified times of the year, had likewise proved a great handicap to the missionaries. With the changed conditions brought about by the removal of the three Quere- taran missions to the San Antonio River, the Padres had been obliged to make frequent trips to the Rio Grande. On January 9, 1731, two mis- sionaries, with a special but insufficient escort of five men, furnished by the Presidio of San Antonio, were attacked by a party of Apaches on the Medina River, while on the way to San Juan Bautista. At the time of the assault, one of the soldiers was away, and, of the remaining four, one fled as soon as he saw the Indians. In the skirmish that followed, a woman was killed and a young child was taken captive, but the Padres managed to escape with their lives, losing, however, all their baggage and belongings. For some unexplainable reason, the captain at San Antonio, who was notified of the outrage, had made no efforts to pursue or chastise the Indians. Since that time, the Apaches had, on one occa- sion, caused the neophytes recently congregated in one of the new mis- sions to run away while the missionary had gone to San Antonio de Valero. A few days before April 17, a party of eighty hostile Indians surprised a group of soldiers conducting a drove of horses to the Rio Grande, at the same place where the missionaries had been previously attacked. The soldiers escaped but they lost all the horses.•s As no reprisals from the garrison at San Antonio followed, the Apaches seemed to have become bolder. Shortly afterwards, they entered the Mission of San Antonio de Valero, the nearest to the presidio, and carried away a drove of fifty burros, which belonged to the neophytes and were used on the farm to haul provisions to the Indian pueblo. On June 25, Father Fray Benito de Santa Anna and Brother Esteban Zaes set out from San Antonio de Valero for the Rio Grande, but before they traveled very far, they were attacked by a band of Apaches, who, in spite of the five soldiers that were escorting the missionaries, took away 42Dccreto del Virey, February 23, 1730. Arcl,ivo del Colegio de la Sa,r/a Crus, I 7 I 6-I 7 49, •sFather Perez de Mezquia to the Viceroy, May 4, 1731. A. G. N., Provi,rcias /nternas, Vol. 236.
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