Our Catl1olic Heritage in T e:xas
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water pot. There was a baptismal font of copper with its silver shell. The friary had been enlarged by the addition of cells on the second story. The granary, too, had been enlarged by adding two more naves. In the workshops there was now, in addition to the carpenter shop, the blacksmith shop, and the forge, a tailor shop, where the Indians made their clothes with the cotton and woolen cloth woven in the mission. There were also a lime and brick kiln. The extensive fields under cultivation covered more than a league, all being fenced and irrigated by a large canal through which so much water flowed that it resembled a small river in which fishing was actually done by the natives. Corn, beans, lentils, vegetables, chile, melons, potatoes, and sugar cane were raised. Besides these, the Indians had an orchard in which they cultivated peaches which weighed as much as a pound apiece. Supplies were furnished by the prosperous mission not only to the Presidio of San Antonio but to those of La Bahia, Orcoquisac, and Los Adaes. Ten or twelve leagues away the mission had a ranch called Atascosito. Here it had ten droves of mares, four droves of asses, fifteen hundred head of cattle, and five thousand sheep. In the ranch, as well as in the mission proper, the Indians did all the work and looked after everything. They wove the cloth, made the dresses, planted and harvested the crops, cared for the stock, managed the carpenter shop, the forge, and the quarry, burned the brick and lime in the kilns, and ran the small sugar mill, first in Texas, that made all the piloncillo (brown sugar) consumed by the mission. No Spanish overseers were needed any longer for the various tasks performed, all being done now by the neophytes, who had become accustomed to continued labor and industry. There were living in the mission three hundred and fifty Indians, young and old, men and women. Since its foundation one thousand and fifty-four baptisms had been performed and recorded, three hundred and fifty-nine had received Christian burial, and two hundred and eighty- seven couples had been married by the church. The natives represented were the Pampopa, Mesquite, Pastia, Canama, Tacame, Cana, Aguasalla and Xaraname. The neophytes lived in stone houses along the walls that surrounded the mission and each family had all the things necessary for the convenient administration of a well regulated household. 8 Let Father Solis describe the appearance and manners of the neophytes on his visit. "All the men and women," he says, "are very polite, they
1 Fray Jose de Solis, Diario y derrotero, A.G. Al., Historia, Vol. 27.
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