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Our Catlwlic Heritage in Texas
rooms and the other three. He also bought one other house from the Manso Indians which is to one side of the Casas Reales and has three small rooms. The wars and the many expeditions in which the said governor has had to engage have not permitted him to finish building the whole." Such was the progress made by 1685 in the construction of the permanent presidio, which, as stated by the Cabildo, was in the pueblo of the Manso Indians near the Mission of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe and which was officially called Presidio de Nuestra Senora del Pilar y Glorioso Senor San J ose. 40 Removal of t/1e Spa11isl,, settlement to El Paso. While making arrangements for the permanent establishment of the presidio, Governor Cruzate tried to persuade the Spanish settlers at Real de San Lorenzo, twelve miles south of El Paso, to move to a more convenient place a shorter distance from the site of the presidio at La Toma. He offered to widen the canal and went so far as to have some timber cut for the construction of their houses. But the Cabildo refused to move at first, claiming that there was not sufficient wood and pasture in the new locality. Later, however, as the result of the attempted revolt of the Manso and Zuma Indians in March, 1684, and the removal of the presidio from the site first chosen, half way between El Paso and San Lorenzo, the Spaniards were ordered to move to El Paso. Contrary to the statement that Cruzate did not remove the Real de San Lorenzo and that the Spanish settlements were not re-organized until 1685, when Father Posadas undertook to bring them closer to the presidio, we find that it was the governor who was responsible for their removal early in 1684, shortly after the attempted revolt of the Indians. 41 The circumstances of the removal were described in an open or public meeting of the Cabildo, held on October 27, 1684, at El Paso, at which time it was declared that the residents of the Real de San Lorenzo, realizing the danger to which they were obviously exposed as a result of the unrest that prevailed among the Indians and the removal of the presidio, had been ordered by the governor to abandon their settlement and come to live in the site located a league and a half from the Pueblo of El Paso. It was further declared that, as a result of this measure, ,osworn statement of the Cabildo at El Paso, August 26, 1685, Autos sobre los Socorros, A. G. M., PrO'Vincias /11ter11as, Vol. 37, f. 128. 41Hughes, op. cit., 328-329.
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