Our Catl,oli& Heritage in Tezas
Tl,e plan. of Colonel Keene. Formal proposals for the colonization of Texas were made before the end of 1813. Colonel Ricardo Reynal Keene, the persistent American adventurer, who ever since 1810 had importuned Spanish officials with schemes to establish colonies · in Cuba, Florida, and other parts of Spanish America, presented a plan to found a settlement in Texas with Irish Catholics from Spain and the adjacent islands and with Spanish subjects from Louisiana. The Cortes im- mediately approved the plan in principle, but stipulated in the decree of November 29, 1813, that two-thirds of the settlers should be Span- iards, and that the others could be recruited from any other country except France and Louisiana. No Frenchman or French sympathizer was to be admitted because of the continued confinement of the King by Napoleon. The decree further required that all settlers, irrespective of their place of origin, be Catholic. The site for the proposed colony was to be decided with the advice and consent of the provincial dep- utation and the military commandant, who together were to determine the amount of land to be granted each settler and the portion Keene was to receive as a bounty for his services in carrying out the enterprise. Keene's plan is noteworthy in that it embodied all the features of the "empresario system" ultimately adopted for the colonization of Texas. The proponent undertook to recruit the settlers, who were re- quired to be Catholics, persons of good moral character, and of in- dustrious habits. The settlers were to be put in possession of their lands by an authorized agent of the Government under the general provisions of a colonization law: Lastly, the empresario, or contractor, was to receive lands as a reward for his services. It seems to have been the intention of Keene to establish his colony on Matagorda Bay! The s.udden return of Ferdinand VII to Spain upon his release by Napoleon radically changed conditions in Spain and in America. His revocation, shortly after his return, of the Constitution of 1812 and of all the acts of the Cortes and the Regency terminated for the time being the liberal program initiated. Plan of Zambrano. By August of 1815, Arredondo had again be- come apprehensive about the welfare of the province. He requested Colonel Juan Manuel Zambrano, the same veteran Royalist who had successfully planned the overthrow of Casas, to make suggestions for the relief of the poverty-stricken inhabitants. 6Memoria Sobre El Asunto De Fomenlar La Poblacion J Cullivo En Los Terrenos Baldios En Las Provincias lnlernas (Photostat copy, U.T.). See also Kennedy, HistorJ of Texas, II, 3.
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