Our Catlzolic Heritage in Texas
of the irregular and little known terrain, was added the more formidable obstacle of the hostility of the powerful Comanches, who, in pursuit of their traditional Apache enemies, had penetrated and occupied a great portion of the intervening country. Effect of tlze westward advance of tlie Frendi and tlie Englisli. The importance of establishing the desired communication, formally urged by Altamira in 1751, became daily more apparent as a result of the relentless advance westward of the French and the English. That this fear was not a figment of the imagination was amply proved by the destruction of the San Saba Mission in 1758 by allied northern tribes armed with English rifles, and possibly instigated by French traders and leaders. When Colonel Ortiz Parrilla undertook his unsuccessful expedition against these tribes, he captured three Frenchmen at a Tawakoni village, who admitted before witnesses that they had been instructed to accompany the Indians in their attack on San Saba. Governor Tomas Velez Cachupin of New Mexico arrested at almost the same time a group of French traders who had penetrated almost to Santa Fe. Indian captives from the Taovayas told how strange white men who were neither French nor Spanish came frequently to their village, modern Spanish Fort, and traded guns and ammunition for horses, mules, and hides. Father Jose de Calahorra warned at this same time that Quebec had recently been taken by the English, who, it was said, had set out for the country of the Illinois with a force of five thousand men. Calahorra was a missionary at Nacogdoches. He wisely pointed out that the Illinois flowed into the Mississippi which led directly to New Orleans. 1 It was this same Father Calahorra who, while among the Tawakoni and the Taovayas on Red River, learned from them that New Mexico was only a fifteen days' journey from their villages. They offered to escort him, if he wanted to go to see the other Spaniards, thereby revealing that these natives were accustomed to visit the remote province. North of the Taovayas, they explained, lived the Seautos (Sioux), known also as Apache Pelones (Short-haired Apaches) because of the manner in which they wore their hair. French traders from a fort on lJose Calahorra to Angel Martos y Navarrete, May 27, 1760. A. G. /., Audiencia de Afexico, 92-6-22; Diego Ortiz Parrilla to the Viceroy, November 8, 1760. A. G. M., HistOf'ia, Vol. 84, pt. 1, pp. 100-117; Consulta de Diego Ortiz Parrilla, Novem· ber 18, 1760. A.G. I., Audiencia de Mexico, 92-6-22.
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