Our Cat/,olic fl eritagc in T cxas
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brought back, twenty-five died shortly after they arrived in San Antonio as the result of a violent epidemic of smallpox and dysentery which broke out among them. This was occasioned no doubt by ill-treatment and poor food. The survivors, however, were sold into practical slavery, the same as those brought by the Apaches. 36 Such practice was strictly against all the laws of the Indies and the repeated admonitions of the viceroy and his advisers. Thus the campaign failed to chastise the Indians of the north or to impress them with the might of Spanish power, the Apaches still felt no security in the protection offered them by Spanish arms, and the King's treasury paid almost sixty thousand pesos to reduce to slavery a wretched group of unfortunate natives. It was a costly enterprise, authorized by the viceroy as a supreme effort to subdue the ever-threatening northern hordes and to strengthen the frontier of Spanish power by a series of telling blows. It proved a miserable failure through lack of leadership, poor cooperation, and inadequate equipment. No missionaries accompanied the expedition. It was not undertaken to plant new centers of civilization. The two friars who went with Parrilla ministered not to the spiritual and physical needs of the untutored natives, but to the spiritual welfare of the soldiers and the bodily comfort of the sick and wounded. Council held at Sa1t Saba. Immediately upon their arrival, Colonel Parrilla requested the officers to hold a council and determine whether a new campaign should be undertaken at once against the Mayeyes, Tonkawas, Yojuanes, and Hierbipiames, who although not grouped with the northern tribes were known to be enemies. The Junta was to decide the best time for such an undertaking; the force that should be kept at Presidio of San Luis de las Amarillas; and the time when the soldiers recruited for the campaign just concluded should be allowed to return to their respective homes. Manuel Rodriguez, Francisco Espinosa de los Monteros, Joseph Elias de la Garza Falcon, Juan Angel de Oyarzan, Vicente de Alderete, Joseph Clemente de la Garza, Santiago Moneo Carzedo, Ildefonso de la Garza, Domingo Castela, Joseph Alvada, Tomas de Ojueda, Ignacio Enriquez clc Luna, and Agustin Antonio de Luna, all officers of the expedition, met on October 27. They declared that the time was inappropriate for a new campaign against any Indians. Winter had set in and the cold 36 Testimonio de los auttos formados sobre la cuentta de Cargo, Datta, qe. da el Coronel Don Diego Ortiz Parrilla de los gastado en la Campana ... A. G. I., A11die11cia de Mexico, 92•6•22 (Cunningham Transcripts, 1763), pt. 5.
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