Oter Catleolic Heritage in Texas
ship anchored in mid-Atlantic would afford in preventing foreign trade with America."s Effect of tl1e cession of Louisiana. The inspection of the frontier presidios by the Marques de Rubi in 1766-1767 was only one of the consequences of the unsolicited and unexpected cession of Louisiana to Spain in a grand gesture of feigned generosity by the king of France. The excitable French neighbors along the easter11 frontiers of Texas and New Mexico were now replaced by the implacable, grasping, and unscrupu- lous English. Texas and New Mexico ceased to be frontiers and became interior provinces. Heretofore, the chief justification for their military occupation, their settlement, and the conversion of the Indians had been the defence and protection of Spain's colonial empire against the French. A complete reorganization of the Provjnce of Texas in particular was a logical and inevitable sequence to the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Equally important and essential to the safeguard of Spain's interests was the control of the Indian nations that roamed the trackless expanse bounded by a line drawn from Santa Fe to St. Louis, hence to Natchitoches, Nacogdoches, San Antonio, and back to the starting point. This control implied the inevitable establishment of routes of 'communication between these points to maintain closer relations between them and the natives. Prior to the cession of Louisiana, foreign fur traders had been the greatest menace to Spanish interests in the northern provinces. French traders had very early acquired practical control over the Indian tribes along the Mississippi and its western tributaries. It was the fear of the extension of their influence that had caused Spanish authorities to maintain the costly but ineffective line of presidios and missions along the entire northeastern frontier. Unlike the English, the French traders, advancing no political claims, had been satisfied with the right to carry on their business undisturbed. But Spain was fully aware that the English pioneer, once he penetrated a new area in the pursuit of trade with the natives, was not satisfied until political sovereignty was established over the new territory. If Spain had feared the French, she had much more reason to fear the English who would influence to a far greater extent t.he tr.ibes ranged along the Mississippi and. the easily accessible Missouri. 6 Thus the friendship and good will of the Indian nations became the paramount objective in the struggle for supremacy over the extensive s1nspection of Presidio de San Saba by the Marques de Rubi, July 27-August 4, 1767. A.G. I., A11diencia de Guadalajara, 104-6-13 (1767), pp. 197-203. 6 Bolton, A tl,anase de Mezieres, I, 19.
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