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Beginning of Sei;ulari:;ation in San Antonio 355 grounds that he should build a decent house. To this he had replied that he had neither the land on which to build it, nor the means with which to do it. He had then asked permission to go to Chiuhauhua, but this, also, was refused, whereupon he had come anyway. He described the deplorable conditions to which the settlers ha<l been reduced by their prolonged suffering. But it seems they were being allowed twenty-five cents a day for food, the first dole in Texas. This amount, CerYantes declared, was inadequate, providing only the means for two meals a day, if the recipient was willing to live on tort.:llas (corn pan- cakes) and chili. Such a diet, he assured Croix, would undermine the health of any individual and end by ruining him. Recently their afliictions had been increased by the demands of Go,·ernor Cabello, who decided to rebuild the Casas Reales ( Royal Headquarters) and put new iron bars in the windows, tile floors in his residence, and construct new stables for the horses of the garrison. In order to carry out this program of improYements he had called upon the citizens living in San Antonio for contributions in accord with their means, assigning to each the minimum sum of fifty cents and a maximum of six pesos. The wretched inhabitants of Los Adaes had been unable to contribute more than fifty cents each, whereupon they had been required to work four days without pay. During this time they had not even been proYided with food, and many of them too poor to furnish their own board had worked the required four days without food. Up to this time they had not been assigned the lands promised them three years before and ordered for their use in June, Iii9• "\Ve have kept alive until the present," he declared, "by the hope that the promise made by your lordship would be fulfilled. But imperative necessity has compelled us to appeal again to your lordship's generous liberality, fearful that the inevitable hardships attendant upon misfortune may end our own lives beforehand." He complained that all appeals to the governor were answered by curses, threats, and ill-treatment. Father Salas of Mission Valero spent most of his time with the governor, and had worn a deep path from the mission to his residence. He had offered to give them the lands between l'vI ission Valero and Concepcion, but they had refused, mindful of the old Spanish proverb that a jar placed between two stones is soon crushed. 16 The bold insinuations of Cervantes have to be taken with some resern!.
16 Representations of Bernardo Cervantes to Croix, January n, 1 iS 1. A. G. I., Audi,mcia de Guadalajara, 103·4·9 (Dunn Transcripts, I777·Ii8o), pp. 1::5-129.
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