Chapter II

SAN ANTONIO.
(1714-1794.)

1. A BOLD RIDER.

In 1714 Juchereau St. Denis rode across Texas, in an oblique line from a trading post in Louisiana to a presidio on the Rio Grande River. This was the same St. Denis who afterward, as already related, rescued his comrade-in-arms Belleisle from captivity. He had secret orders from Cadillac, the governor of Louisiana, and his busy brain was teeming with carefully laid plans of his own. His escort consisted of twelve white men and two or three Indians. He took his bearings as he went, carefully marking the way from river to river, from prairie to forest, from Indian village to buffalo range; thus sketching out that long thoroughfare which afterwards became famous as the “Old San Antonio Road.”

Much of the way lay through the lands of unfriendly Indians; but St. Denis rode as jauntily as if the men at his back were a thousand instead of a dozen.

And when one day he drew rein on the brow of a certain hill, and gazed down into the lovely cup-like valley where a few huts marked the beginnings of San Antonio, he might, for all signs of fatigue upon his handsome young face, have just quitted the governor’s residence.

“A beautiful site for a city,” he said to Jallot, his confidential servant. His pleased eyes roved over the smiling valley, through which the river ran like a silver thread. Graceful trees lined the river banks; the tender grass was studded with a thousand flowers of varied colors; there was a life-giving softness in the wind that came from the low mountains to the northward.

St. Denis journeyed on to St. John the Baptist, carrying this lovely picture in his heart as he went. St. John the Baptist was a presidio on the Rio Grande River. It was built by Captain Alonzo de Leon, after his return from Fort St. Louis in 1689. Its commandant, at the time of the visit of St. Denis, was Don Pedro de Villescas. To Don Pedro St. Denis unfolded his mission—the opening of trade between Louisiana and Mexico. The friendly commandant could do nothing without first consulting his superiors; so he asked St. Denis to wait until a letter could be sent to the governor of the province at Monclova. St. Denis waited, and while he was waiting he fell in love with Donna Maria, the commandant’s daughter.

The young French officer was so dashing, so courtly, and withal so good looking, that it is no wonder Don Pedro’s daughter loved him in return; and there were at least two very happy persons at the Presidio of St. John the Baptist.

But when the courier came back from Monclova, St. Denis was seized by order of the governor, and was carried under guard to that city.

The governor of Coahuila was, as it happened, a rejected suitor of Donna Maria Villescas. Filled with jealous rage, he threw the young Frenchman into prison and threatened him with death unless he would give up all claim to his promised bride.

This St. Denis gallantly refused to do. After some months the governor sent him to the city of Mexico, denouncing him to the viceroy as a spy against the government. He was again placed in prison, where he was treated with great severity.

Donna Maria, however, was not idle all this time. She had sent several spirited letters to the governor at Monclova, and she now wrote to the viceroy himself. Her letter had the effect of loosening the chains of her lover.

Marquis de Linares, the viceroy, when he saw his prisoner, was so charmed that he offered the young Frenchman an important post in the Spanish army. But St. Denis would not consent to abandon his own flag. The viceroy then gave him a handsome horse, and parting from him with regret, sent him back to the presidio, where he married the loyal Donna Maria.

Before leaving the presidio on his return to Louisiana, he made secret arrangements for smuggling goods into Mexico.

The viceroy, having a hint of this, did not trouble St. Denis again; but he decided to establish posts and missions throughout the New Philippines—as Texas was still called—with garrisons armed to prevent contraband trade. Captain Domingo Ramon was appointed to carry on this work. He set out at once from St. John the Baptist for San Antonio, with a company of soldiers and several friars under his command. St. Denis, in high spirits and sure of his own success in spite of Captain Ramon, rode with him, acting as his guide.

2. COWL AND CARBINE.

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.

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.

3. A HURRIED RIDE.

In 1719 St. Denis was at Natchitoches, which was one of the outposts of the French in Louisiana and close to the Texas border. He had traveled back and forth through Texas more than once since his first trip to the presidio on the Rio Grande; and he had spent much of his time in Mexican dungeons. But for that he bore the Spaniards no great ill-will. He had escaped from prison and brought his beautiful Mexican wife away with him; and when he made his flying journeys he turned aside, no doubt, to see his Spanish friend, Captain Domingo Ramon—who, by the way, was his wife’s uncle—and to admire the missions which were going up in every direction under that captain’s vigorous management. But now things were changed. A few months before, France and Spain, never on good terms with each other, had declared open war.

St. Denis, if the truth were told, was glad of a chance to fight somebody besides Indians. He was right weary of the skulking ways of the red warrior with his tomahawk, his paint and feathers, and his savage desire to carry scalps at his belt. He longed for a good honest brush with white men, who fought openly with gun and sword—men, for example, like his good friend Captain Ramon and his troop of jolly soldiers!

He leaped lightly into the saddle one morning and galloped out of Natchitoches at the head of a hundred and fifty men. Bernard de la Harpe, in joint command of the expedition, rode by his side.

They crossed the Sabine River and attacked the garrisons at the Missions of Nacogdoches, Aes, and Orquizacas, all of whom, surprised by the sudden onslaught, retreated before them. It was a lively chase across the vast territory, with a good deal of skirmishing; and it ended only when the Spaniards were safe inside the town of San Antonio.

St. Denis, drawing rein on the brow of the hill and gazing down once more into the lovely valley, saw a sort of orderly confusion on an open plaza in the heart of the town; horsemen were gathering, men were moving hurriedly about, and from the midst of the bustle the clear tones of a bell suddenly fell upon the air. It was the call to arms!

St. Denis smiled and turned to La Harpe: “It is high time we were riding homeward,” he said gaily, with a glance at their small band of wayworn troopers; and turning their horses’ heads they galloped away.

None too soon! For shortly afterwards the Marquis de Aguayo, governor of the province, came out of the town with a fresh troop of five hundred Spaniards, tried soldiers and eager recruits, and galloped in pursuit of the flying Frenchmen. It was another lively chase across the vast territory; but this time it was France who retreated, with Spain at her heels. Captain Ramon, quite as anxious for a tilt with civilized soldiers as his friendly enemy and nephew-in-law St. Denis, left the work of mission-building in the hands of his friars, and, as second in command, joined the governor-general in this pursuit.

Aguayo, following the example of St. Denis, did not pause until the intruders were safe in their own citadel at Natchitoches; then he replaced at the Missions of Orquizacas and Aes the men whom he had brought back with him, and he left for their protection a stout garrison at the Mission of Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Our Lady of the Font), about twenty miles west of Natchitoches.

He was as keenly alive as St. Denis himself to the natural beauty of the valley watered by the San Pedro and San Antonio Rivers; and on his return to San Antonio he set on foot many improvements, including the widening and deepening of the irrigating ditches.

These irrigating ditches were called _acequias_ (a-sā′-kee-a). They are still in use, and many of them are very beautiful. One known as the Acequia Madre, or Mother Ditch, is as deep and wide as a small rivulet; the living waters, pure and cool, rush along a bed lined and parapeted with stone, and overhung with pomegranates and rustling banana leaves.

The water from the ditches is turned, by means of gates, into the fields and gardens which lie along its course. Each landowner is entitled to so much water a day, or at a stated period. This inflow of the crystal flood is called the _saca de agua_ (taking the water), and is hailed with delight as it comes singing its way through corn-row, garden-patch, and rose-bower.

In the early days the completing of a water-ditch was celebrated as a feast. Rows of cactus were planted on its banks to keep off cattle, and shade-trees were set out along its course. A priest, attended by acolytes, blessed the water. The following day a drum was beaten at morning mass, and all those who had contributed in money or labor to the making of the ditch were summoned to the church to take part in the Suerte (soo-air′-ta),—a lottery for the drawing of the land watered by the new sluice. Tickets were placed in an urn and were drawn out by two children. The lucky holders of the highest numbers got the best lands. At night, by way of winding up the feast, there would be a procession and a _fandango_[9] on the plaza.

The good Marquis de Aguayo further recommended to the Spanish government at Madrid to send colonists to the province. “One family,” he said, “is better than a hundred soldiers.”

Then, having done all he could for the New Philippines, he went back to his official residence at Monclova, attended as far as St. John the Baptist by Captain Ramon.

4. INDIOS BRAVOS.

The Spanish government, acting on the governor-general’s advice, ordered four hundred families to be sent out to the New Philippines from the Canary Islands. These islands, situated off the coast of Africa, belonged to Spain by right of conquest, and were settled by Spaniards of pure blood, noted for their honor and chastity, and for their devotion to the Catholic religion. Of the four hundred families only thirteen ever came. They reached San Antonio by way of Mexico in 1729, bringing with them their stores of clothing, silverware, and jewels. They built their dwellings around the present square of the Constitution, which they called _Plaza de las Islas_ (Square of the Islands), in homesick memory of the sea-girt isles they had left behind.

Other colonists from Monterey and from Lake Teztuco, in Mexico, followed; houses sprung up beside the musical water-ways; vines were trained over the yellow adobe walls; semi-tropical vegetation made a paradise of the spreading fields and gardens. Finally, the newcomers, emulous of the growing walls of San José, laid on their plaza the foundation (1731) of San Fernando Church.

Enlarged and rebuilt on the same spot, San Fernando remains to this day the parish church of the Spanish-speaking Catholics of San Antonio.

But the settlers, or townspeople—as they may now be called—were full of anxiety in those troublous times. No more French soldiers, it is true, came riding across the border, chasing the Spanish troops to their very gates. But there were the Apaches and the Comanches. For in spite of the efforts of Spanish friars and Spanish soldiers, but few of the Apaches and Comanches had become _Indios reducidos_ (converted Indians). Thousands of _Indios bravos_ (wild Indians), as savage and cruel as if a mission had never been built, roamed the country, ready to swoop down at any moment upon the ill-guarded little post. A messenger would hurry in, perhaps from the missions below, which kept ever a keen lookout, breathless with the news that the Apaches were creeping stealthily upon the town. Or, suddenly and without warning, a ringing war-whoop would echo in the air, and leaping from cover to cover among the scattered houses, the Comanches, tomahawk in hand, would pursue their hapless victims to some last hiding-place; then, leaving death and desolation behind, they would vanish as suddenly as they had come.

At last the new settlers determined to put an end to this state of affairs. They organized themselves into a small army, and aided by the little garrison of soldiers then stationed there, they marched against their Indian foes, whom they defeated in a pitched battle.

This victory (in 1732) gave some security to the place. The _Indian bravos_ still harried the country, killing those who ventured far from post and mission, and plundering where they could not kill. A number of years later (1752), after a fresh quarrel with the miners at Las Almagras, they fell upon the Mission of San Saba, and butchered every human creature within its walls. But rarely did they again venture near the dwellings of those determined pale-faces who had overcome them on their own hunting-grounds.

5. ALONG THE OLD SAN ANTONIO ROAD.

The years drifted on, peaceful and sluggish, towards the end of the eighteenth century. There were few happenings either in San Antonio itself or in the province, which was at last laid down on the map as Texas. There was no further dispute concerning boundary lines or property. Spain was the lawful owner of everything west of the Mississippi River. For Louis the Fifteenth of France, in 1762, for state reasons, presented to the King of Spain the handsome French province of Louisiana. The people of Louisiana were very angry when they learned—more than a year after the transfer—that they had been handed over without their knowledge or consent to the hated Spaniard. But Louis did not trouble himself in the least about what they thought or felt. Thus, the colonists being all Spanish subjects, were bound to peace among themselves. Even the dashing St. Denis, had he lived so long, could have found nobody to fight except the despised Indian. But that doughty warrior and courtly gentleman had long since fired his last shot on the field, and trod his last measure in the dance. According to the old chroniclers he remained to the end of his life “a devoted friend and a noble fighter.”

In 1729 a widespread plot was formed among the Indians in Texas and Louisiana to massacre all white people within reach, Spanish and French, men, women, and children. A friendly chief warned St. Denis of the plot. He gathered his troopers hastily together and rode out of Natchitoches, where he had continued in command, and in a short time defeated and scattered the tribes. After this they hated and feared him, but they looked upon him with awe, believing him to be protected by their own Manitou.

He was at length killed by the chief of the Natchez Indians. He lies buried near the town of Natchitoches.

In spite of the peace between Spain and France (1762)—or perhaps because of it—there was little progress in Texas. Spain forbade her colonists to trade with other nations; she did not allow them to manufacture anything that could be made in the mother-country, or to plant anything that could with profit be sent over from there. They were even forbidden to trade with their fellow-colonists in Louisiana.[10] Under these hard conditions settlers came in slowly. Texas remained almost neglected, peopled only by fierce savages.

But the little town in the southwest had a life of its own. Nearly everybody who had any business with Texas or Mexico traveled the Old San Antonio Road laid out by St. Denis in 1714; and all travelers halted at this lovely oasis in the wilderness. They were always loth to go away. For there were wonderful _fiestas_ (feasts) in the Churches of the Alamo and San Fernando, and solemn processions to the grand Missions of Concepcion and San José; there were stately gatherings in the houses of the Island Spaniards, and merry boating parties on the blue-green waters of the river San Antonio. There were gay dances on the plaza at night to the music of guitar and castanet, and Mexican jugglers throwing balls and knives by the light of smoking torches. Bands of Mexican muleteers jingled in from the presidio on the Rio Grande, driving before them trains of mules loaded with ingots of silver, on their way to Natchitoches, four hundred miles distant; caravans traveling westward with bales of smuggled goods crawled lazily through the narrow streets. There was a continued coming and going of swarthy soldiers and black-gowned priests, governors, bishops, alcades, and christianized Indians; among them appeared, now and then, the fair face and wiry form of the American, the forerunner of that race which was one day to sweep all the others out of its path and to possess the land.

Once, in 1779, when Spain and England were at war with each other, there was even more than the usual stir on the Military Plaza. Nearly all the inhabitants of the town were gathered about the doors of the Church of the Alamo, where a priest was saying mass. Presently there was a burst of martial music, and a little company of soldiers came out; their heads were lifted proudly and their step was firm and assured. A cheer broke forth from the crowd; the soldiers sent back an answering shout as they mounted their waiting horses and rode away under the gaudy pennon of Leon and Castile.

Spain was at this time at war with England, and this handful of fighting men was the quota of troops furnished by the Spanish province of Texas to Don Galvez, the commander-in-chief of the army at New Orleans. They reached Louisiana in time to take an active part in the war and to rejoice with Galvez over his victories at Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola.

In 1794 all the missions were secularized; that is, the control of them was taken away from the priests and given to the civil authorities. Upon this, the Missions of San José and Concepcion ceased to be the centers of activity they had been for nearly a century. San Antonio was shorn of a part of her glory. The majestic buildings remained, but the pomp and circumstance of fortress and chapel had forever departed.