Our Catliolic f/e,-itage in Texas
friend of the Spaniards, Juan Sabeata. He assured the captain that he was glad to see him and inquired the cause for the formal expedition. Upon being informed that they were going to find and expel the strangers who were living near the Tejas, Sabeata told Captain Retana that there was nothing to fear now because the intruders had all been killed by the Indians who had destroyed the settlement. To prove his statement, he gave the astonished captain several sheets of paper which contained French writing and a piece of parchment with the picture of a ship, on whose sail was inscribed a French verse. He explained that he had obtained the documents from some of the Indians who had taken part in the massacre of the French. 41 In view of the information obtained, Captain Retana decided to suspend his march eastward until further orders. On March 3, he wrote Governor Pardinas at Parral, and sent Sabeata and the other chiefs in his com- pany to make a personal report. Upon their arrival in Parral, the Indians were carefully examined and in their interrogations they gave much interesting information concerning the country of the Tejas and the sur- rounding regions. They also furnished many important and valuable details about the vicissitudes of La Salle's colony. Their declarations, made in Parral two weeks before Alonso de Leon found the ruins of Fort St. Louis, left no room for doubt concerning the total destruction of the French settlement by the hostile coast Indians. Governor Pardinas con- sequently ordered Retana on April 12, 1689, to return to Presidio de Conchos. 42 Thus this expedition which might have opened to the Spaniards the well established route to the Tejas by way of the west was recalled before it had gone more than four days' journey beyond La Junta de los Rios. Governor Pardinas was influenced in his decision by his knowledge of Alonso de Leon's expedition, to which he had furnished fifty men in accordance with the orders sent by the viceroy. Fiftli maritime expeditio1t, tlze Rivas-Pez exploratio1t, I688. In the meantime, after the viceroy completed the examination of Jean Gery in Mexico on July 16, 1688, he concluded that perhaps there was a French 41 Autos proveidos por el gouor con las primas noticias, November 2, 1688; Horden para que se vaya a reconocer el Rio de! Norte, November 2, 1688, Ibid, 13-19. These documents which were sent to Spain by the viceroy were discovered and identified by W. E. Dunn. The manuscript pages are a fragment of the original journal of La Salle's voyage from Santo Domingo to the Texas coast; while the drawing seems to have been made by L' Archeveque. The two are reproduced in Hackett, Historical Documents Relative to New Mexico, I, 257, 476. 42Declarations of the Indians at Parral, in / bid., pp. 22-41.
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