Tlee Province of Texas in I762
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well dressed, had an ample supply of food, and each performed his assigned task willingly. In the granary there were twenty-five hundred bushels of corn and beans. They had thirty yokes of oxen and a11 the necessary implements and tools for the cultivation of the fields. These were all irrigated. It is of interest to note that sugar cane was being cultivated and that here was the first place in Texas where it was made into sugar by the Indians. The mission owned fifteen hundred head of cattle, all branded, after having lost in recent years over two thousand killed or stolen by the Apaches. It had thirty-two hundred sheep, eighty mares, and almost a hundred saddle horses. Six bulls were killed weekly at the mission for consumption by the neophytes, who when sick were fed chicken broth and lamb chops. The heart and soul of the mission was Father Fray Ildefonso Jose Marmolejo, to whom much of the progress was due. 6 Unfortunately the report made in 1762 in response to the order of the Commissary General of Missions is rather meager and too general to compare the progress of San Jose with the missions of the Co1lege of Queretaro already described. 7 But by 1768, the inspector of missions for the College of Zacatecas, Fray Jose de Solis, was so impressed with the progress made that he exclaims, "This mission is in such a flourishing condition, both spiritually and materially, and so beautiful that I cannot find words or figures of speech with which to express its beauty." Behind a square wall, six hundred and sixty feet on each side, rose the monastery and buildings of the mission, guarded by two turrets placed on diagonal corners of the square to protect the gates and two adjacent wings respec- tively. The former church had been pulled down to construct a new and better one, whose corner stone was laid this year. This is the building that is standing to this day, a peerless example of mission architecture at its best, proclaimed the finest in New Spain ten years later in the pristine beauty of its inauguration. An arched hall that led from the former church to the friary had been walled in order to use it as a church. This was large enough for the purpose. Here there were several chalices, a ciborium, and a monstrance of wrought silver, besides many vestments of exce1lent material and fine workmanship. It had its silver oil stocks, silver sprinkler, and a holy 6 Informe de! Gobernador Barrios y Jauregui sobre la Mi:-ion de San Jose. May :.z3, 1758. San Francisco el Grande Arc/,ive, Vol. 12, pp. 59-61. 7 For the description made in 1762 by Fray Simon Hierro, Guardian of the College of Zacatecas, which the writer has been unable to find, see Bolton, op. cu., 99-100.
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