The Province of Texas in 1762
43
establishment, were still filled with the highest hopes. They believed that three more missions could be established in this region for the Lipan Apaches, whose total number they estimated to be about four thousand. The failure of the officials in Mexico to approve the new missions had been a great handicap and the Padres had often been reduced to the direst need. But privations, hardships, and suffering had neither dampened their enthusiasm nor weakened their faith in the ultimate reduction of the faithless and treacherous Apaches, of whom it has been said they had no friends among men or beasts because of their cruelty. 42 Smmnary of ,progress to 1763. The rapid survey of cor;iditions just given shows clearly the incredible progress made in the spread of mis- sionary endeavors and the actual occupation of widely separated and distant areas in the vast Province of Texas on the eve of the French cession of Louisiana. There were at this time five formal presidios: San Antonio de Bejar, Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la Bahia, San Agustin de Ahumada de los Orcoquisacs, Nuestra Senora de Pilar de los Adaes, and San Luis de las Amarillas de San Saba. In addition to these presidios there was a detachment of twenty soldiers kept at El Cafi6n or Valle de San Jose, to protect the two Apache missions there. More remarkable still was the increase in the number of missions actually in operation at this time. In San Antonio there were four Queretaran Missions and one Zacatecan mission, which after years of trials and tribulations had attained a truly flourishing state. to such an extent had the pioneer days passed that Fray Bartholome Garcia had been able to compile in Mission Espada the first and only Manual of the most commonly used dialect of Texas, to be employed by the mis- sionaries in the administration of the sacraments. This alone is indicative of the calm, security, and leisure atttained as a result of the advance made by the missions in this area. Scholarly works cannot be produced in the attendant hardships of a pioneer community. Southeast from San Antonio, at the mouth of the San Antonio River, in La Bahia, present Goliad, there were now two missions that had at last succeeded in bringing into their fold the untractable tribes of the coast area, among them the fierce Karankawa. East of La Bahia, on the mouth of the Trinity, a new mission, aptly called Nuestra Senora de la Luz, shed its pristine light amidst the encircling gloom of the hitherto untrodden land of the Orcoquisacs and the Bidais. North of Nuestra Senora de l~. Luz, on the site of present Nacogdoches, still stood the old Mission of
42 Relaci6n de las misiones de la Presidencia del Rio Grande del Norte ... A.G. M., Hisloria, Vol. 29, pt. I, pp. 180-185,
Powered by FlippingBook