,■ I
l 1
Our Catholic Heritage in Texas
44
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, and to the east and northeast still per- sisted the missions of Dolores and San Miguel. In north central Texas frantic efforts were being made to revive the charred remains of Mission San Saba, from whose cinders rose the two new missions recently founded on the upper Nueces: San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz and Nuestra Senora de la Candelaria in El Cafi6n. There were in all thirteen missions in operation in Texas in 1763, where in 1716 there had been only six, and in 1722 only nine. This does not take into account the four or five missions founded on the Texas side at La Junta de los Rios, present Presidio, which were still in operation, nor the much more active missions in the El Paso area: Isleta, Senecu, San Lorenzo, and Socorro, nor the visitas along the lower Rio Grande from Laredo to present Rio Grande City. If these regions are included in the present survey, as they should, it can justly be said that in the area comprising the present State of Texas there were in 1763 seven formal presidios, one military outpost, twenty-one missions, and four visitas. It is interest~ng to note that at this time there were no missions as yet in California and that the number in later years exceeded those in Texas at this time by only two. It should also be kept in mind that in addition to the civil settlement in San Antonio, there were many stray settlers at La Bahia, Los Adaes, and San Saba, as well as in numerous ranches scattered from Laredo to Los Adaes. It cost the king of Spain over one hundred thousand pesos a year to support the presidios and missions in this province. Not one cent did he receive in return. Fear of French aggression and foreign intruders may account in part for the maintenance of this vast and costly enterprise, but it is nevertheless a tribute to the burning zeal of the missionaries, their perseverance, and their boundless faith in the conversion of the natives that they induced the officials to make such an investment. Without the determination of the missionaries to spread the faith, the French and English would have carried their activities to the Rio Grande and New Mexico unimpeded and undiscovered, and thousands of natives would have never known the comforts of religion nor would they have experi- enced the sublime charity of the devoted missionaries, the redeeming grace of Christianity. The extent of missionary activity in Texas has never been realized. Historians are just becoming aware of how widely and how deeply the foundations of Christianity were laid by the devoted friars. The archae- ologist, the anthropologist, and the serious investigator into the origins
I 1,
Powered by FlippingBook