Our Catlzolic H e-ritage in Texas
24
exchange of commodities and the fruits of personal industry. The only source of wealth worthy of consideration was the cattle industry. In Texas this had been fostered and successfully developed by the mis- sions, where the Indians, under the wise direction of the missionaries, had multiplied their slender resources into many large herds of horses, mules, asses, and cattle. Rubi, and later Croix, had noted the countless herds that roamed the plains and filled the rich river valleys. Branded and unbranded, the majority of these belonged to the missions scattered throughout Texas from Los Adaes to Laredo and from San Antonio to the establishments in the lower Rio Grande. The extent of the branded herds has been pointed out in the previous volume. The ones at La Bahia alone, when branded and counted in 1778, numbered over fifteen thousand head. 28 Herein, then, is to be found the reason for the increasingly bitter attacks on the mission system in Texas and the growing impatience of officials with a state of affairs which kept out of the reach of the royal treasury the only possible source of revenue. Texas had been a constant drain upon the crown from the time of its first occupation. Not a cent of revenue had ever reached the coffers of His Majesty from this remote province. What mattered, thought Croix, whether the natives were Christianized and civilized with the proceeds of this wealth created at such sacrifices, if the king did not receive a share? The idea grew and became a conviction firmly fixed in the mind of officials that the missions had served their purpose and reached adult- hood. The surplus wealth created under the protection of the crown should now revert to the king. The conclusion was logical, but it ignored a number of fundamental factors that were to result not merely in the suppression of the mission system but in the economic ruin of the weak and insecure civil settlements of the province and in the arrest of its future development until the appearance of the Anglo-American colonists. The civil settlements and the presidios themselves had been maintained and aided constantly by the reserve food supply accumulated by the missions. The affluence that excited the envy of the settlers and the cupidity of the crown officials had made possible the attraction of new converts and the appeasement of many Indian tribes. A modification or reorganization of their economic resources was needed to meet the
21 Fray Jose Francisco Lopez, Razon e Ynforme que el Padre Presidente de las Missiones de la Provincia de Texas, o Nuevas Filipinas, remite ... University of Tt:raJ Archives.
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