Tlee Province of Texas in 1762
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capable of bearing arms, fifty women, and seventy-nine boys and girls, making a total of one hundred and seventy-eight natives. Up to this time baptism had been administered to four hundred and ninety-nine Indians according to the mission records. With characteristic industry the friars of the College of Zacatecas had, succeeded in building a respectable church of stone and mortar and a friary ample enough for their needs, with the customary offices, refectory, kitchen, and cells. The mission Indians were still living in jacales (huts) thatched with grass or hay. The mission was well provided with the tools and implements necessary for the cultivation of the fields, but these were not yet irrigated. Father Salazar declared, however, that he had the tools and the means to begin the digging of the contemplated irrigation ditch that would obviate the risks and the eventualities of dry farming to which they had been subjected up to the present time. The Indians in the mission were, nevertheless, well fed and provided with all the things needed. As a result of the formal establishment of the new Mission of Nuestra Senora del Rosario in 1758, which was under the care of Father Fray Juan de Dios Maria Camberos of the same College, interest in the development of a civil settlement, similar to that founded in San Antonio, had been aroused. Father Salazar states with much optimism and enthusiasm that fifty families were expected to come from New Spain. Unfortunately the plans for the settlement of these families, one of the ardent schemes of the enterprising colonizer of Colonia del Nuevo Santander, Don Jose de Escandon, never materialized due to the opposition encountered with some of the officials in Mexico who objected to the additional expense. 1 ' Father Salazar explained that the Mission of Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo had been much more successful in its new location in raising cattle and sheep. By 1758 it owned thirty-two hundred and twenty head of cattle and sixteen hundred sheep. To care for its stock it had about one hundred and twenty saddle horses. 17 By 1762, when Governor Martos y Navarrete visited La Bahia in his tour of inspection, considerable progress had been made in the construction of a formar presidia. In his report to the viceroy he says that the Presidio of Nuestra Senora de Loreto had been laid out on a square seventy-six varas on each side. The northern stockade had been completed and on this side were also the guardhouse, the presidio chapel, and several houses. 16 For a more detailed discussion of the plans for the establishment of a civil settle- ment at La Bahia see Volume III of this work, Chapter IV. 17 Report of Fray Francisco Xavier de Salazar to the Governor, May 28, J 7 58. San Francisco el Grande Archive, Vol. 12, pp. 62-64.
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