Mission and presidio, as already stated, meant church and fortress. The
places chosen for these buildings were generally in the very midst of
populous and fierce Indian tribes. For the object of the builders was
not only to hold the country against France, but also to reduce the
savages and convert them to the Catholic religion.
The Red Man had already his own rude belief in the Great Spirit who sat
behind the clouds and watched over the flight of his arrows and the
tasseling of his corn. He loved to tell about the Happy Hunting-grounds
to which he would travel after death, attended by his horse and his dog.
It required a great deal of patience and perseverance on the part of the
missionaries to make these wild creatures understand the meaning of the
strange things they saw and heard: the hymns and prayers which broke the
stillness at morning and at eventide, the candles blazing on the altar,
the tinkling of bells, the movements of the priests, the humble attitude
of the proud Spanish soldiers at mass. They crowded about the chapels,
now accepting the new faith with childlike confidence, at other times
seeking a chance to massacre priest and soldier in cold blood.
But these missionaries belonged to an order whose business it was to be
patient. They were Franciscans from the monastery of St. Francis at
Zacatecas in Mexico, and they were pledged to poverty and self-denial.
Gentle, but sturdy, these barefooted friars, in their coarse woolen
frocks and rope girdles, exercised a strange fascination over the
Indians who fell under their influence.
[Illustration: A Franciscan Father.]
Captain Domingo Ramon went bravely to work with his soldiers and
Franciscans. He was very much loved by the Indians. They adopted him
into their tribes and cheerfully aided him in the hard labor of clearing
and building. Within a few years the country was dotted with missions.
Some of these were temporary structures, rude and frail; others were
built of stone. The noble and majestic ruins of the latter fill the
beholder to-day with wonder and delight. If the mission served also as a
presidio, it was entitled to a garrison of two hundred and fifty
soldiers; where there was no fortress, the church itself served as a
stronghold. Among the earliest of the missions thus built were Our Lady
of Guadalupe (Gwah-dah-loop′ā), at Victoria (1714); Mission Orquizacas
(Or-kee-sa′-kass), on the San Jacinto River (1715); Mission Dolores near
San Augustine (1716); Adaes, east of the Sabine River (1718);
Nacogdoches (1715); and Espiritu Santo, at Goliad (La Bahia) (1718).
The Mission Alamo,[7] which was to play so prominent a part in the later
history of Texas, was begun under another name, in 1703, on the Rio
Grande River. It was removed to the San Pedro River at San Antonio in
1718. In 1744 it was finally built where its ruins now stand, on the
Alamo Plaza in San Antonio, and was called the Church of the Alamo.
Early in 1718 the foundation of San José (Ho-sā′) de Aguayo, the largest
and finest of all the missions, was laid near San Antonio. The little
settlement which had so pleased the eye of St. Denis four years before
had grown to a village. It had been laid off and named for the Duke de
Bexar (Bair), a viceroy of Mexico; and St. Denis’ road, which linked it
on the southwest with St. John the Baptist and on the northeast with
Natchitoches in Louisiana, had already become a traveled highway. The
Mission and Presidio of San José were therefore of the first importance.
Captain Ramon himself may have selected the site. It was a few miles
below the town, on the limpid and swift-flowing river San Antonio. A day
or two after the site was decided upon, a long procession wound across
the beautiful open prairie from the village. It was headed by a
venerable barefoot Franciscan father, who carried aloft a large wooden
cross; on either side of him walked a friar of the same order, and
behind them came acolytes and altar-boys bearing censer, bell, and
vessels of holy water. Captain Ramon and his soldiers on horseback, and
stiff and erect in their holiday uniforms, followed with the Spanish
flag in their midst; the Mexicans who composed the slim population of
San Antonio came next; then, grave and stately in their blankets and
feathered headdresses and as proud as the Spaniards themselves, stalked
a hundred or more converted Apache and Comanche warriors. A rabble of
Indian squaws and papooses brought up the rear.
This procession went slowly along under the morning sun, now over the
flower-set prairie, now through a strip of woodland. The river,
breast-high to the women and boys, was forded, and as the foremost group
reached the farther shore, the old Franciscan lifted his hand; a church
hymn, sweet, powerful, resonant, arose from five hundred throats. Thus
they came, singing, to the place where San José was to stand.
A large space was marked off; the ground plan of the great church was
sketched on the turf,—perhaps with the point of Captain Domingo Ramon’s
sword; the church prayers were said, and the corner-stone, already hewn
and shaped, was sprinkled with holy water.
The scene on the spot daily thereafter for many years was a busy and
picturesque one. Everybody worked with a will,—soldiers, priests, and
Indians, all filled with a holy zeal. Even the Indian women fetched sand
in their aprons, and the Indian children set their small brown bodies
against the stones and helped push them into place. Tradition says that
the people brought milk from their goats and cows to mix the mortar,
thereby making it firmer and more lasting.
The beautiful twin towers went slowly up; the great dome was rounded
over the main chapel; the double row of arched cloisters stretched their
lovely length along the wall; the artist, Juan Huicar (wee′-car), sent
out by the king of Spain, set his fine carvings above the wide doors.
At the same time the enclosing wall was raised; the fort with its flying
buttresses, the guardhouse, the huts into which the Indian converts were
locked at night—all these were completed. Orchards and gardens were
planted, and irrigating ditches were dug. Again and again the work was
interrupted by attacks from Indians; but when the fight was over the
dead were buried, the wounded were cared for, and the building and
planting went on as before.[8]
Such was the manner of the building of the Texas missions. It took sixty
years to complete San José. In the meantime the handsome Mission of La
Purissima Concepcion (Immaculate Conception) and San Francisco de la
Espada (St. Francis of the Sword) were erected, both also on the San
Antonio River.
The Mission of San Saba was built in 1734, on the San Saba River in what
is now Menard County. The good fathers were at first very successful in
converting the Apaches and the Comanches, who flocked to them in great
numbers. But the reopening of _Las Almagras_ (red ores), an old silver
mine near the mission, brought into the neighborhood many reckless men;
and quarrels soon arose between them and the Indians—quarrels which were
one day to bear bitter fruit.