Why missions were built

The missions were partially abandoned during periods of Indian hostilities and then re-established. These two missions are mentioned in a state historical marker at the site of Fort Leaton, one mile southeast of Presidio. Whether these missions were east or west of the Rio Grande is not known for sure. In any case, all the missions on the Texas side had ceased to function by Nuestro Padre San Francisco de los Tejas was re-established on the west bank of the Neches River in as the successor to the Mission Tejas, the mission that had been abandoned in In , the mission was moved to the east bank of the river in what is now Cherokee County and renamed San Francisco de los Neches.

The site was about seven miles west of the present-day town of Alto. There is a state historical marker on Texas The Texas Department of Transportation has placed a marker about two miles north of the town of Cushing. In , French incursions from Louisiana caused all the East Texas missions to be temporarily vacated, but they were restored in Today, there are state historical markers in Nacogdoches and San Augustine commemorating the two missions.

The community was to be a way-station on the journey from the Rio Grande to the East Texas missions. After three moves from its original location west of San Pedro Creek, the San Antonio mission was placed at its present site in The earliest buildings do not survive.

The parts that exist today were begun in when the stone convento was built. The existing chapel, the Alamo Shrine, was begun during the s. Protecting walls were constructed around the mission because it had to provide for its own defense, since the Spanish administration never completed the presidio.

The friary was begun in the s. Construction on the present church structure began in , about the same time that the mission was enclosed in protective walls because of hostile Apaches. The mission was secularized in and placed under the care of San Fernando Church.

Through the following years, the mission buildings deteriorated, including the collapse of the roof, dome and bell tower. In , major restoration began as a collaboration between local church and civic preservationists and the federal Work Projects Administration WPA and Civil Works Administration click for photo.

This mission lasted only four years before it was merged with San Antonio de Valero. Deterioration of the physical building occurred over time, until restoration began in the s with Civilian Conservation Corps labor. More reconstruction occurred in the s, so that today the replica mission looks much as it did in click for photo.

The presidio chapel has been virtually intact since click for photo. Also, some 10 miles north of Victoria off Lower Mission Valley Road is a marker for the second location of the mission. The presidio near present-day Douglass was unnecessary, the government said, because of the peaceful demeanor of the Indians.

Also influencing the decision was the need for the royal administration to cut expenses. This site had been suggested by viceregal authorities, but the friars found it undesirable, and within months they petitioned to remove the three missions once again, this time to the San Antonio River. In the s, the Marianist religious order acquired title to the mission, and after repairs, the church was reopened for services in The Marianists deeded the mission back to the bishop of San Antonio in Today, the virtually unrestored church survives, along with some other buildings.

Although officially secularized in , the Franciscans did not give up the mission until Beginning in , the chapel was rebuilt by the pastor, Francis Bouchu, a diocesan priest who had been a bricklayer and stonemason.

He also restored the convent, which served as his residence click for photo. The Indian quarters and granary remain as they were built in San Juan Capistrano was the least developed of the missions in San Antonio and the large church was never completed.

The mission was secularized in What survives today are buildings, which were also restored by Father Bouchu, including the chapel click for photo , friary and granary. In the s and s, further repairs were conducted. Operation of the park began after a legal opinion by the U. Department of Justice that allows the National Park Service to manage the park, while the Archdiocese of San Antonio continues to use the missions as churches.

In addition to the buildings, the elaborate system of dams and acequias irrigation ditches built by the Spanish missionaries in the s are preserved and still provide irrigation to farmlands in the area. The system includes an aqueduct over Piedras Creek. In , a ranch outpost of Mission Espada, called Rancho de las Cabras, was added to the national historical park. It is in Wilson County off Texas 97 near Floresville. Milam County was the site of three missions along the San Gabriel River.

The river originally had been named the San Xavier in One source says that on his map, Stephen F. In , a group of Indians approached the missionaries in San Antonio to ask that missions be established in their area. In February , it was succeeded by the first official mission, San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas, located on the south bank of the river.

All three were clustered near a presidio, San Francisco Xavier de Gigedo. The continual harassment of the Indians caused the atmosphere to become hostile, such that in , one missionary and a civilian were killed by unknown assailants.

Finally, in , the three missions were removed to the San Marcos River. Various ceramics and glass objects, as well as indications of adobe walls have been discovered in the San Xavier Mission Complex Archeological District. In the year spent there, some 1, Apaches joined the missions. However, by , plans were made to establish a mission farther west in Central Texas to reach more of the Apaches. One tribe of Indians, the Mayeyes, persuaded the Franciscans to keep a mission in the New Braunfels area.

This and a strong nativist indigenous leader led to Rosario's temporary abandonment in When the mission was reactivated in late , the Franciscan missionary effort was encountering weakened state support. Acknowledging this fact and by now quite familiar with the Karankawas' independent ways, the experienced friars accepted from the beginning a much looser social organization adapted to the Karankawas' seminomadic customs.

These provided the two important things the mission could no longer guarantee: adequate food and defense through mobility in the face of hostile raids. Refugio Mission employed the same flexible approach. In Rosario was closed, although not officially secularized, when the few remaining Karankawas associated with it were transferred to Refugio Mission as their base.

This alternative missionary approach was credited with converting certain of the Karankawas to at least some Christian ways. In other areas of what is now Texas the Franciscans were forced to accept even greater adaptations to their preferred mission system. Such was the case in the first mission villages to be established within the boundaries of future Texas, those far to the west in the El Paso district.

These Indians brought with them a highly developed cultural organization. Just as in their former towns to the north, the local Indian authorities, with the approval of Spanish officials, retained control over the economic and political life of their communities. In spite of the missionaries' protests, the friars were only granted spiritual jurisdiction.

Although this community was officially entrusted to secular pastors from to , the Franciscans claimed that they actually had to do all the work since the pastors stayed in the distant town of El Paso itself.

Living side by side with their Spanish neighbors in these new settlements, the Indian mission communities were open villages like several other missions in what is now Texas , not the walled fortresses often portrayed as the sole mission model.

By the nineteenth century the social interchange in these increasingly mixed Indian and Spanish towns resulted in complete Christianization and a great deal of cultural assimilation. Only the Tiguas of Ysleta retained a distinct ethnic identity, but even they were primarily Spanish-speaking and acculturated in many ways. In the later s members of these groups began engaging on their own terms in a continuing system of migrant labor and military alliance with Spaniards residing in the Conchos River district of Mexico to the south.

Through these contacts many La Juntans gained a great deal of familiarity with Christianity. In some of them invited Franciscans to live among them. Unaccompanied by military or Hispanic settlers, the missionaries had to flee several times in the next few years due to regional revolts. When missions were reestablished in , again without military guards or settlers, the friars found the people well-behaved but independent. Periodic attacks of Apaches and other tribes again forced the Franciscans and some natives to flee at times.

The missionaries finally began to ask for a garrison and Spanish settlers, but to no avail. As a practical response some friars apparently adopted the practice of staying at La Junta only part of the year and spending the rest in the new town of Chihuahua. Through this unique missionary approach, adapted to a proud semimigrant population and lasting three-quarters of a century, many La Juntans apparently accepted an Indian-controlled process of Christianization.

Several nearby tribes pressured by Apache hostilities eventually joined the La Junta settlements and also entered into this process. The La Juntans were insistent that they did not want a Spanish fort or settlement established in their midst.

The friars wanted a garrison, but at a respectable distance from the settlements. In late , however, Presidio del Norte was built in the very heart of the settlements. The Spanish post that developed there with its own assigned chaplain quickly replaced the separate mission effort as many Indians abandoned the district.

The garrison was briefly moved elsewhere but then reestablished again. Any indigenous La Juntans who remained in the district soon disappeared as distinct ethnic groups, absorbed into the Hispanic society. Still other Indian groups in Texas were large and powerful, with well-developed trade systems or wide-ranging activities that gave them alternative access through French Louisiana and later the United States to those European goods, including firearms, that they most desired.

As the number of permanent Spanish military forces in the area was reduced during most of the crucial eighteenth century, the Spanish adopted the French Indian policy, which called for developing alliances with the stronger Indian groups through trade or pacts against common enemies.

Mission efforts in such circumstances, most notably among the agriculturally self-sufficient Caddos in East Texas, never succeeded in establishing permanent resident Indian congregations under missionary control or in garnering many converts. But these centers never consisted of much more than a modest chapel, a missionary residence, and a few dwellings built hopefully for Indians. Relations based upon trade and military alliance offered these Indian groups all they wanted with much more freedom than the mission approach.

The missionaries had to resign themselves to visiting villages and welcoming the Indians who visited the mission. Even then, the obligatory use of water in baptism carried negative connotations in Caddo understanding and further blocked conversion efforts. In —31, in reaction to the withdrawal of the local protective garrison, the supplies and official status of the three "interior" East Texas missions those farther from the Louisiana border were transferred to the more promising San Antonio area to help found additional missions there.

After Louisiana passed from French to Spanish rule in , thus eliminating the need for border defense in East Texas, the three remaining missions there were closed in , along with all other Spanish foundations, in order to reduce crown expenses.

When Nacogdoches was reoccupied as a Spanish civil settlement in , an official mission was not reestablished there. The Franciscans assigned as pastors were primarily occupied with the settlers, although they engaged in some work with interested Indians.

Although most East Texas Indians did not embrace Catholicism, a few were clearly assimilated into Spanish Catholic society, both before and after The entire East Texas missionary effort was thus carried out quite differently from the "self-contained town" model preferred by the missionaries and so often erroneously described as the sole Spanish missionary approach.

By the s the Lipan Apaches, which consisted of several strong, mounted bands, were beginning to lose ground in Central Texas to their enemies, the Comanches and their allies, who were ranging down from the north. Under this pressure the Apaches began to be friendly to the Spanish in Central Texas; they sought military cooperation and even encouraged Spanish outposts in their territory. The Apache responses to these missions demonstrated to Spanish eyes not only the Apaches' purely military motivations and lack of real interest in conversion, but also their unreliability as allies.

Colonial policy therefore shifted toward systematic war against the Apaches, who in turn continued to harass Spanish settlements sporadically. Later, during the tumultuous revolutionary decade of —21, Lipans and Comanches engaged in a virtual war of attrition against Spanish settlements. By the late s several factors caused the mission system to fall out of favor as an important element of Spanish frontier strategy.

The weaker Indian groups who had been more ready mission recruits declined steadily in numbers due to high infant-mortality rates, European-introduced epidemics, continued hostile pressure from other Indians, demoralization, and assimilation into either other Indian groups or Spanish society. The relative success of the San Antonio missions themselves was only maintained in the later s by distant recruitment among embattled groups near the Gulf Coast or in the lower Rio Grande country.

Furthermore, governmental frontier policy shifted more emphatically away from maintaining missions, which were now seen not only as economic liabilities but also as against the rising spirit of liberalism. They fled during pirate raids against the missions in but later joined the English in slave-raids on Florida.

Marys River, where they were pushed farther southward. All remaining missions across Spanish Florida had retreated to St. Augustine by the summer of Worth, John. Worth, J. Spanish Missions. In New Georgia Encyclopedia. Catholic missions were the primary…. Author John E. Worth , University of West Florida, Pensacola. Originally published Aug 7, Last edited Jun 8, Friars and Chiefs Although Franciscan friars were clearly in charge of religious affairs, they were politically subordinate to governing Indian chiefs, whose authority in secular matters was rarely contested.

Effects of the Mission System One important consequence of allegiance to the Spanish crown and incorporation into the Florida mission system was the repartimiento. Decline of Missions Over the course of the mission period Indian population levels declined rapidly and substantially, plummeting well over 90 percent in many areas. Article Feedback Why are you reaching out to us?

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