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Beginning of Secularization in San Antonio
349
Guadalupe. He opposed the establishment on either of these streams because of the need of a new garrison. 6 The recommendations reached Croix in due time, but more pressing matters occupied his attention and no immediate action was taken to rdie\'e the suffering remnants of the former settlers of Los Adaes. In the meantime their situation grew worse and they became more insistent. In March, Ii78, Croix, unwilling to adopt hasty measures but conscious of the extremes to which the A dacsa11os had been reduced, instructed Governor Cabello to request the Father President of the missions in San Antonio to cooperate by giving them temporary relief in some form. The governor wrote Father Ramirez de Arellano and asked him to give the former citizens of Los Adaes temporary employment in the mission farms, paying them wages that would enable them to live, or to allow them to cultivate some of the fields that now lay fallow for lack of neophytes to plant them. He made it clear that in either case he was anxious that the mission Indians should suffer no injury or damage in their interests. 7 Here we have a case of unemployment put up to the president of the missions for solution by the institution of a program of public works for the relief of the victims. Liberal respo11se of Fat/1er Ramirec de A rcllano. With characteristic Christian charity, Father Ramirez de Arellano replied the following day that he was ready and willing to help the unfortunate settlers by ceding to them for a period of two, four, or more years the use of the two large farms formerly cultivated by Indians of l\'Iission Valero, which had irrigation and could be easily planted, waiving the payment of any rent to the mission in the form of shares in the crops raised in order that the Adaesanos might enjoy to the fullest the fruit of their labor. He went further and assured Governor Cabello he was anxious to cooperate and to comply with the praiseworthy request of the Coma11da11te Gt:neral. If the cultivation of the two farms ceded was unacceptable to the settlers under the terms proposed because of the lack of means to put it into effect and the long wait before a crop was raised, Father Ramirez de Arellano agreed to give them employment in the mission farms, paying them monthly wages and gi\°ing them weekly rations. He assured the gO\-crnor that the rate of pay would be in accord with the highest schedule of wages in vogue in the vicinity, and he would furnish them oxen, thl! necessary 6 Luis Cazorla to Croix, in Ibid., Vol. 51, pp. -!Oi•-108. 7 Governor Cabello to Fray Pedro Ramirez de Arellano, :\larch :n, 1 i ;S. • -t. G. ,11. H islori,i, Vol. 5 I, pp. 308-409.
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