The San Antonio Missions and their System of Land Tenure 9780292758872

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THE SAN A N T O N I O M I S S I O N S A N D THEIR SYSTEM OF L A N D T E N U R E

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Long upon the Land

Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, circa 1920. Courtesy of the Catholic Archives at San Antonio, Catholic Chancery.

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THE SAN ANTONIO MISSIONS AND THEIR SYSTEM OE LAND TENURE Felix D. Almaraz, Jr.

U N I V E R S I T Y OF T E X A S PRESS, A U S T I N

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Copyright © 1989 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition, 1989 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819.

LIBRARY O F CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Almaraz, Felix D. (Felix Diaz), 1 9 3 3 The San Antonio missions and their system of land tenure / Felix D. Almaraz, Jr.—1st ed. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-292-74653-9

1. Land tenure—Texas—San Antonio River Valley—History. 2. Franciscans—Missions—Texas—San Antonio River Valley— History. I. Title. HD266.T42S263 1989 333-3'°97^4I—^CI9 88-21796 CIP

ISBN 978-0-292-75887-2 (library e-book) ISBN 978-0-292-75888-9 (individual e-book)

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TO MY SON, ANTONIO O. ALMARAZ

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Franciscan Missionary, Presidial Captain, and Indian Youth

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CONTENTS

Preface Acknowledgments The Mission's Unique Role in a Spanish Frontier Society Land Tenure Exchange The Missions and Their Lands Twilight of the Mission Lands Appendixes A. Registry of Land Grants, Irrigation Rights, and Assessed Fees and Payments at Mission San Jose B. Appraisal of Houses and Outer Wall at Mission San Juan Capistrano c. Summary of Land Grants, Irrigation Rights, and Subsequent Conveyances at Mission San Juan Capistrano D. Registry of Land Grants, Irrigation Rights, and Assessed Fees and Payments at Mission San Juan Capistrano E. Land Grants at Secularized Mission San Juan Capistrano F. Summary of Purchases and Accounts of Conveyed Structures at Mission San Juan Capistrano G. Appraisal of Houses at Mission San Francisco de la Espada H. Summary of Purchases and Accounts of Conveyed Structures at Mission San Francisco de la Espada 1. Registry of Land Grants, Irrigation Rights, and Assessed Fees and Payments at Mission San Francisco de la Espada Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

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MAPS

i. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

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Spanish Texas at Mid-Eighteenth Century Acequias of the Five Franciscan Missions Plat of Tracts of Land in the Labor of Mission Concepcion The Mission Ranchos Plat of Division of Mission San Jose Lands Plan of the Secularized Mission of San Juan Capistrano

5 11 23 33 43 45

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PREFACE

In this century, as a topic of research, the old Franciscan missions of San Antonio have attracted a cavalcade of writers, both earnest investigators and avocational dilettantes. Among the cadre of serious scholars who contributed meaningful publications to the historical literature were Herbert Eugene Bolton, Carlos Eduardo Castaneda, Marion A. Habig, Benedict Leutenegger, and Thomas Patrick O'Rourke. As patriarch of researchers, Bolton constructed the conceptual framework of the Spanish Borderlands upon which the others readily hoisted their treatises. Although O'Rourke eruditely interpreted the philosophical thrust for the evangelization of Hispanic North America, he based much of his composition on the Texas missions upon printed documents available in the United States, because revolutionary turbulence in Mexico hindered him from consulting primary sources in that country. Castaneda, a few years later, was more fortuitous. Confidently utilizing Bolton's Guide to Materials for the History of the United States in the Principal Archives of Mexico, he identified, copied, and compiled a plethora of documents relevant to Spanish colonial history of Texas. For nearly twenty-five years Castaneda dedicated himself to producing a massive multivolume Our Catholic Heritage in Texas in which he treated in detail the evolution of the Franciscan missions scattered throughout the Lone Star State. In recent years Habig and Leutenegger concentrated the focus of their scholarship on documentary histories and interpretive essays of carefully selected aspects of the San Antonio missions.1 Since none of the foregoing scholars devoted much attention to the land tenure system of the missions, the value of such inquiry became apparent when administrators of the National Park Service (NPS) in 1981 invited independent researchers to submit competitive proposals with

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PREFACE

outlines for an in-depth study. As the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park became a reality in 1978, by virtue of congressional authorization in Public Law 95-629, it was only natural that NPS personnel expressed a need to know the land-use antecedents of the cultural resources in their jurisdiction. Of the five Franciscan foundations in the Rio San Antonio corridor, federal legislation creating the park included only four missions within the boundary—La Purisima Conception, San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada. The other mission (actually the initial foundation in the region)— San Antonio de Valero, immortalized in the 1836 confrontation of arms as El Alamo—remained in the custody of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Accordingly, the substantive research upon which this monograph is based originated with the NPS contract in 1981. With the submission of a comprehensive final report, however, the obligation to NPS management formally terminated.2 Subsequently, the manuscript underwent thorough revision and refinement with new illustrations and additional information, In 1986 the manuscript garnered second prize in the Presidio La Bahia Award competition, sponsored by the Sons of the Republic of Texas under the auspices of the Kathryn Stoner O'Connor Foundation. Several broad questions served as functional guideposts to channel the research effort toward defined goals. What were the legal bases for the Franciscan foundations as part of the Spanish empire? What was the extent of the initial land grants at the time of the missions' establishment in the San Antonio River basin? As a corollary to the preceding question, after the missionary friars commenced their building programs, where were the ancillary structures located, and what were their approximate dimensions? What was the configuration of the missions' agricultural and pastoral lands? Finally, during the successive political authorities under which the missions existed, what impact did urbanization have upon the former Franciscan foundations? Not surprisingly, the primary sources yielded considerable information for some questions and less for others. For the most part, however, the research design adequately accommodated the land tenure issue from the colonial period to the threshold of the twentieth century. The research extended over an eighteen-month span, concentrating on seldom used primary documents in local depositories. Replete with vital information were the records in the Bexar County Courthouse and in the City Hall of San Antonio, supplemented by auxiliary data from the Bexar

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PREFACE

Archives (typescripts and translations) and the Old Spanish Missions Research Library (now at Our Lady of the Lake University). The investigation succeeded in gathering pertinent information from the Minutes of the Commissioners Court, Probate Court Records, Deed Records (direct and reverse), litigation proceedings, Minutes of the City Council of San Antonio, plat maps and survey field notes of the City Engineer, and maps from the Public Works Department of Bexar County. The data gleaned from these sources, integrated with facts culled from the historical literature, revitalized the skeletal outline of the land tenure system that commenced with the jurisprudential right of discovery and progressed through various phases of Spanish colonial development, culminating with ownership of the mission properties under successional civic jurisdictions. Following the introductory essay on the historical perspective for the founding and subsequent growth of Franciscan frontier institutions, the narrative has been divided into separate units for each mission establishment to facilitate comparison of data on land tenure and structures. Strictly as a practical consideration, the analysis followed a chronological sequence to foment thoughtful, yet orderly, discussion. Admittedly, the records disclosed aspects that were common to all missions, resulting in unavoidable overlapping. Although not considered explicitly within the scope of the research design, owing to its presence outside the National Park Service, the analysis included Mission San Antonio de Valero to bridge a gap in the comparative segment and to provide additional insights on land acquisition. Moreover, Valero's inclusion eliminated the necessity of cross-referring research data affecting all missions along the Rio San Antonio corridor. The outcome of the research disclosed a time-honored truism that human beings will covet productive land regardless of time and place. The Franciscan friars, as agents of church and state, founded missions in the San Antonio River corridor to convert native inhabitants to a Hispanic way of life. In the process the missionaries instructed the neo-Christians to cultivate the soil and to gather bountiful harvests. When the Spanish colonial period ended in the early nineteenth century, secular individuals petitioned the government to convey to them ownership of the former mission lands. That tendency continued throughout the decades. Although the land changed ownership periodically, the mission churches remained as symbols of a spiritual enterprise that transcended temporal considerations.

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Mission San Francisco de la Espada, circa 1935. Courtesy of the Catholic Archives at San Antonio, Catholic Chancery.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In every scholarly enterprise, numerous individuals contribute to its successful outcome. This study of the San Antonio missions is no exception. Grateful appreciation for providing valid criticism and timely suggestions is extended to Dr. Gilbert R. Cruz, former staff historian at the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, currently residing in Phoenix, Arizona. Also supportive in formulating hypothetical questions relating to the substance of the research were Superintendent Jose A. Cisneros, now assigned to Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico, and Ernest W. Ortega, then Chief Ranger in San Antonio and presently top administrator at Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota. At NPS regional headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Dr. Joseph P. Sanchez regularly offered insightful comments and collegial encouragement. I wish to acknowledge the magnanimous support of Robert D. Green, County Clerk of Bexar County, who made available at nominal cost copies of Spanish colonial records, thereby facilitating research on a practical level. Guadalupe H. Gonzales, archivist assigned to that office, was especially helpful in suggesting sources to consult and in copying pertinent documents. Gonzales' successor, John O. Leal, was equally helpful in retrieving bound records of the modern period in county government from distant storage centers. Similarly, I would like to thank Norma S. Rodriguez, City Clerk of San Antonio, and her staff without whose cheerful cooperation the research might have terminated at the sidewalk of Plaza de Armas. The reference librarians at St. Mary's University—Elizabeth Q. Riley and Regina M. Richter—were benevolently outstanding in offering the use of carrel accommodations and their extensive collection of historical journals. In the same vein I am grateful to the Rev. Dr. John

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A. Leies, S.M., President of St. Mary's University, for granting special parking and library privileges that expedited the revision of the manuscript. Crucial to the success of the project, especially in meeting editorial deadlines, was the affable assistance of Elisa Valderas de Jimenez, who typed the final copy of the manuscript. Auxiliary support by colleagues at the University of Texas at San Antonio—Thomas J. Bellows, Berry Sutherland, and Dwight F. Henderson—in the form of duplicating services and graphics composition is congenially noted and appreciated. In the UTSA Office of Media Resources, Thomas W. Palmer skillfully transformed maps and other artwork into camera-ready illustrations. The late and gentle Father Benedict Leutenegger, O.F.M., of Mission San Jose, was genuinely supportive in allowing me to consult his transcripts and translations of rare unpublished manuscripts of 1772 inventories of Franciscan foundations in Hispanic San Antonio. Likewise, in Chicago, Father Marion A. Habig, O.F.M., of pleasant memory, generously shared the products of his own research on topics pertaining to Texas mission history. The Rev. Dr. Barnabas Diekemper, O.F.M., friend and scholar, now director of the Sacred Heart Province's Franciscan Archives in St. Louis, Missouri, was readily available with counsel and encouragement. Jose Cisneros, premier artist of El Paso and loyal friend for many years, continues to amaze me. Whenever he retreats into his quaint basement studio to attend his beloved jinetes of the Borderlands, I have invaded his tranquil interludes with one petition after another for illustrations to adorn special projects. Cognizant of the fact that gifted artists cannot be hurried, across the decades I have found solace in the expectation that the results will be exquisite and captivating. With deep affection I thank Jose for sharing the harvest of his talent on this festive occasion. In his adolescence, my son, Antonio Olivares Almaraz, named in honor of a courageous eighteenth-century Franciscan leader who established the genesis of modern-day San Antonio, frequently wondered why a historian devoted more time to archival research than to outdoor recreation. Through this modest contribution to mission history, I hope that Antonio and his generation will gain insightful appreciation of the Spanish pioneers who endured and overcame hardships to make Texas a capstone province in the wilderness. Finally, during the revision phase of this manuscript, requiring countless acts of patience and renewal, my wife, Dolores Marie Cardona de Almaraz, contributed magnificently by her sensitivity and understanding

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

whenever the writing enterprise faltered for lack of creative motivation. To her I owe a debt that only constant refinement of a few God-given talents can partially repay. For all weaknesses of omission and errors of commission in this monograph, I am singularly accountable; for whatever intellectual benefits readers may gain from its contents, I am humbly thankful.

Old Vecinos at Mission San Jose y San Miguel

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de

Aguayo

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Act of Possession at Mission Concepcion

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THE SAN A N T O N I O M I S S I O N S A N D THEIR SYSTEM OF L A N D T E N U R E

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HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER; THAT THY DAYS MAY BE LONG UPON THE LAND WHICH THE LORD THY GOD GIVETH THEE. EXODUS Z O : l 2 .

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I T H E M I S S I O N ' S U N I Q U E ROLE IN A SPANISH FRONTIER SOCIETY

In the wide geographic sweep of the Spanish Borderlands in North America, the conventional institutions through which the crown gained control over distant frontiers were the mission, the presidio, and the civil town. With various levels of success, the institutions contributed to the settlement pattern of Spain's evolving empire from the sixteenth century until the first quarter of the nineteenth.1 Of the three frontier institutions, the presidio and civil community were clearly secular oriented and almost devoid of religious connotation except as military chapels or parochial churches related to the spiritual welfare of borderland pioneers. The mission, therefore, was the most complex medium, owing to the intricacies of church and state relations stemming from diplomatic concessions acknowledged in the Patronato Real between the Papacy and the Spanish crown. As the mission system achieved a modicum of success in the second half of the sixteenth century, the state encouraged and even sponsored its implementation in the northward expansion through the Gran Chichimeca, a vast arid region of indigenous hostility and resistance in the central corridor of New Spain.2 Before the close of the sixteenth century, Franciscan missionaries, extending their activities beyond the northern fringe of settlement, participated in the colonization of New Mexico. 3 During the seventeenth century, Spanish occupation of the frontier occurred along the western slope of Gran Chichimeca, principally a vanguard achievement of Jesuit missionaries. Within the broad central corridor, flanked on both sides by the eastern and western ranges of the Sierra Madre, Jesuits and Franciscans shared the missionary field in a zigzagging division of the territory. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Spain's inauspicious era of depression, the Franciscans estab-

i

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THE M I S S I O N ' S U N I Q U E ROLE

lished the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro as a specialized training center to prepare missionaries for service in remote frontiers. (Santa Cruz became the prototype for other apostolic colleges in Spanish America.) Upon completion of rigorous training, these zealous Franciscans assumed responsibility for spreading the gospel among diverse indigenous cultures of the eastern corridor that stretched in a curve from the semiarid lands of Coahuila to the humid forests of Texas.4 Whether Jesuit or Franciscan (or after 1767 other religious orders on the western slope), the missionaries advanced into the Borderlands as trustees of the properties the crown officials provided to the native cultures. Under supervision of the Spanish state, the constitutions of regular orders prohibited missionaries from acquiring ownership of the material properties. As an agency designed to acculturate and assimilate the natives to a Hispanic lifestyle, theoretically, the mission was a transitory medium with a projected tenure of twenty years, or the equivalence of one generation. The sequence of development involved five steps: 1. mision, commitment to establish an objective; 2. reduccion, congregation of Indians in a suitable location; 3. conversion, formal religious instruction; 4. doctrina, acceptance and observance of Spanish Christianity; and 5. parroquia and pueblo, political designation of parish and civil status, secularization. The final phase signified the duality of the transference of administrative responsibility to the diocesan clergy and of the emergence of a civil community of resident landowners (vecinos) and parishioners. 5 In actual practice in Coahuila and Texas, as well as elsewhere in the northern borderlands, the implementation of the mission—from concept to reality—required several decades before the terminal step of secularization transpired. A multitude of factors motivated Franciscan evangelists and presidial leaders to petition royal authorities to continue annual support for the missions as the most humane method of securing control of frontier regions. Whenever the population of a mission declined, the explanations were disease epidemics, aggression by hostile raiders, or escapes due to the Indians' dislike of work schedules and social regimentation. Two other factors that adversely affected a mission's agricultural and pastoral economy were cyclical droughts and severe winters. Thus, in the northern borderlands, as the Texas experience illustrated, the missions remained in operation longer than the anticipated date of secularization. The cluster of Franciscan establishments along the upper San Antonio River formed a unique example of church and state unity, accompanied by a mix of tension, adjustment, and confluence. The Franciscan foundations on the banks of the Rio San Antonio were

2

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THE M I S S I O N ' S U N I Q U E R O L E

part of a larger design of frontier defense in the final decades of the seventeenth century. As a consequence of French encroachment in the mid-i68os by the Sieur de La Salle upon the coastlands, Spanish officials determined to secure the extensive Texas terrain with a combination of missions and presidios. The Franciscan enterprises in the East Texas timberlands, beginning in 1690, were the efforts of friars of the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz in Queretaro. In the ensuing twenty-five years, the vicissitudes of international rivalries in North America between Spain and France resulted in a systematic chain of missionary and presidial outposts, extending from the Rio Grande on the western edge to the Rio Sabinas on the eastern fringe of the empire (see map 1). During that initial period, the Franciscans of Santa Cruz agreed to share the missionary field with friars of the new College of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas. In the context of borderland vigilance, the San Antonio foundations became integral components of the settlement pattern of Hispanic colonization. During the second decade of the eighteenth century, viceregal officials, convinced of the merits of Fray Antonio Olivares' proposal for the establishment of another Queretaran mission in Texas to serve as an interior relay settlement, authorized the founding of San Antonio de Valero. On May 1, 1718, Friar Olivares and Governor Martin de Alarcon designated the land on the west bank near the headwaters of San Pedro Creek for the new mission foundation. Within close proximity southward, on May 5, the Presidio San Antonio de Bexar was established by Alarcon to provide security to the fledging outpost. Circumstances later motivated Olivares to seek more adequate sites until the mission attained a semblance of permanency in 1724 on the east side of Rio San Antonio. 6 Spain's fluctuating fortunes in global politics in the Red River Valley forced the Franciscans of both apostolic colleges to abandon their efforts in East Texas, causing friars, soldiers, and civil settlers to retreat temporarily toward the incipient colony on the San Antonio River. In the interim, a respected leader among the Zacatecan friars, Antonio Margil de Jesiis, capitalized on the appointment of a successor governor of Texas to advocate the founding of a second mission along the San Antonio River. With the assistance of Captain Juan Valdez of Presidio San Antonio de Bexar, accompanied by military and missionary personnel, Friar Margil, on February 23, 1720, inaugurated San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo (named in deference to the governor-designate, the Marques de Aguayo) on the east bank of the river. Seven years later, for practical reasons, the missionaries claimed a site on the opposite bank. Shortly thereafter, fol-

3

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THE M I S S I O N ' S U N I Q U E R O L E

lowing the death of Venerable Antonio Margil, another friar, Miguel Nunez de Haro, selected a permanent location for the church and auxiliary buildings in the highland slope away from the floodplain of the river.7 In the 1720s, the location of three institutions—a presidio and two missions—within a riverine vicinity did not create crowded conditions regarding demands on available natural resources. In fact, to reinforce the early foundations, Governor Aguayo earnestly recommended to royal officials recruiting civilian settlers for Texas from Spain proper and from the Canary Islands. Late in the decade authorities in Madrid decided favorably upon Aguayo's recommendation, culminating in the arrival of fifteen immigrant families in 1731. Concomitantly, a retrenchment policy that reduced the level of military preparedness in East Texas compelled the Queretaro friars to terminate three of their missions. Unable to continue operations in the woodlands, the Franciscans requested permission to relocate in the west, finally selecting the riverside sites in San Antonio. On March 5,1731, presidial soldiers assisted the friars in the founding of Nuestra Seriora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuiia, approximately halfway between San Antonio de Valero and San Jose on the east bank of the river. Next, the military, again representing the state, inaugurated San Juan Capistrano (formerly San Jose de los Nazonis) on the east bank below the Zacatecan mission of San Jose. Finally, the missionaries and soldiers, on the opposite bank, established San Francisco de la Espada. Admittedly, these were formal acts of possession to satisfy legal requirements. The actual program of occupation, delineation of lands, and construction of rudimentary buildings occurred later in the year. Less than a week later, on March 9, at Presidio San Antonio de Bexar, soldiers and their families, Franciscan missionaries, and Coahuiltecan converts welcomed the arrival of immigrant families from the Canary Islands.8 Unlike the relatively harmonious relations of previous decades, the presence of three missions and a civil settlement, all competing for equitable shares of natural and human resources, fomented animosities and tensions among the isleno community (Canary Islands immigrants and their descendants) and the Franciscan missions.9 In fact, by the 1740s and continuing indefinitely, legal entanglements and petty squabbles made it necessary for state authorities to delineate agricultural and pastoral land grants. Even so, vague and ambiguous descriptions occasionally crept into official documents, which complicated matters in later years. Nonetheless, through common acceptance and mutual consent, such ambigu-

4

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, I D 1 A , A

SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO (1718) SAN JOSE' Y SAN MIGUEL DE AGUAYO (1 720) N.S. DE LA PURfsiMA CONCEPCldN DE ACUNA (17311 SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO (1731) SAN FRANCISCO DE LA ESPADA (1731) SAN ANTONIO DE BE'XAR (1718) BE'XAR (1718) SAN FERNANDO DE BE'XAR (1731)

A REAL DE SAN LORENZO (1680) + SAN LORENZO (1726) + SAN ANTONIO DE SENECU (1682) ASENECU (1760) + CORPUS CHRISTI DE ISLETA (1680) AlSLETA (1760) t- N.S. DE LA CONCEPCION DEL SOCORRO (1683) SAN MIGUEL DE LINARES DE LOS ADAES,(1717) A d N . S . DE PILAR DE LOS ADA'ES (1721) LOS'ADAE*S (1721

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C W

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KEY Villa Presidio Mission Nuestra Senora

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Map i. Spanish Texas at Mid-Eighteenth Century.

THE M I S S I O N ' S U N I Q U E R O L E

ities functioned satisfactorily in a frontier complex of a presidio, a civil settlement, and five Franciscan missions. Although church and state administrators periodically conducted inspections (visitas) for the purpose of obtaining information about conditions of frontier enterprises, the Franciscans compiled a more comprehensive record of assessment. In contrast, military leaders in the eighteenth century, owing to innovations of the Bourbon Reformers in the Spanish government, performed only two wide-ranging evaluations of defensive outposts: from 1724 to 1728 by Brigadier General Pedro de Rivera, which culminated in the Reglamento of 1729; and from 1766 to 1768 by the Marques de Rubi, which resulted in the royal Regulations of 1772.10 Driven by a sense of spirited competition between the two apostolic colleges operating missions in Texas, the Franciscans frequently cited the visitas of Fray Miguel Sevillano de Paredes (1727), Fray Francisco Xavier Ortiz (1745 and 1756), and Fray Gaspar Jose de Solis (1768). The significance of the foregoing visita reports notwithstanding, 1772 was a landmark year for the Queretaro missions of the Rio Grande and the Rio San Antonio. Whereas at the Rio Grande the Queretaro friars voluntarily relinquished administration of their missions to Franciscans of Guadalajara, in San Antonio they transferred responsibility of spiritual and temporal affairs to confreres of Zacatecas. An important outcome of these transfers was the compilation of detailed inventories of temporalities that for the first time indicated the extent of material progress achieved at the missions.11 In the final quarter of the eighteenth century, administrative reforms in the northern borderlands affected most aspects of colonial society. For instance, although the creation of the supraordinate Commandancy General of the Interior Provinces initially addressed political concerns in the defense system, gradually it embraced the management of Franciscan missions in Texas. Thus, when Commandant General Teodoro de Croix decreed that mission herds (and other unbranded livestock) were taxable chattels on the king's domain, the Zacatecan friars reluctantly decided to recommend to the state the secularization of their projects along the Rio San Antonio.12 Secularization, the legal procedure by which the missions changed political status from transitory ecclesiastical centers to permanent civil pueblos and parishes, began in Texas in April 1793, with an inventory and distribution of temporal properties to the native Christians of San Antonio de Valero. In the summer of 1794 the process continued downriver with the partial secularization of adjacent missions, namely, San

6

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THE M I S S I O N ' S U N I Q U E R O L E

Francisco de la Espada (July n ) , San Juan Capistrano (July 14), San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo (July 16), and Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuiia (July 31).13 For another three decades San Antonio's remaining missions struggled to maintain a modest level of operation, gradually declining in resident Indian population and material resources. In 1823, the government of independent Mexico issued a mandate requiring "full and complete secularization." In compliance with the national decree, Fray Jose Antonio Diaz de Leon, the last Franciscan to work in Texas, transferred spiritual and administrative supervision of the four riverine missions to the pastor of San Fernando church in San Antonio. Hence, the missions along the Rio San Antonio officially ended in February 1824.14

Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna, circa 1925. Courtesy of the Catholic Archives at San Antonio, Catholic Chancery.

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II LAND T E N U R E E X C H A N G E

FOUNDATION OF THE MISSIONS OF THE RIO SAN ANTONIO: INITIAL LAND TENURE EXCHANGE The legal basis for the establishment of Spanish colonial sovereignty in the Americas (and in the Pacific Ocean) was the act of discovery. Frequently performed on the mainland of Spanish America, the act of possession stemmed from the priority of discovery. For effective basis, Spanish law required the discoverer or a duly appointed lieutenant to be present on the land over which he exercised complete control. Significantly, the leader declared orally and prescriptively his intention of acquiring the territory in the name of his lord and sovereign, the king of Spain. By virtue of proclaiming ownership in behalf of the reigning monarch, the discoverer (or explorer) extended Spanish sovereignty over the territory. Subsequently, the intention attained legal sanction in a symbolic ceremony called acto de posesion, or the requisite act of sovereignty. As pioneers pushed the line of exploration and colonization northward and eastward into Texas, the ritualistic acto de posesion occurred repeatedly throughout the frontier of Spanish America. Within the sphere of accepted rules of international conduct, the act of sovereignty attained validity in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Except for The Netherlands, the major European colonial powers—Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain—generally respected prior claims of discovery. In the event conflicts erupted, resolutions were achieved through negotiation and treaty making. 1 Another important factor, embedded in law, that strengthened the Spaniards' possession of territorial holdings was the Patronato Real. Pope

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LAND T E N U R E E X C H A N G E

Julian II in 1508 promulgated a special relationship between the Vatican and the Crown of Spain whereby the Spanish state agreed to supervise and promote the spread of Christianity and to oversee the maintenance of churches and missions. Conversely, the church accepted responsibility for upholding the political goals of the Spanish state and agreed to permit secular intervention in ecclesiastical affairs. In actual application, the Patronto Real became a legal grant issued by the church through which Spain received certain rights, privileges, and obligations in extending its sovereignty into known and unknown lands. Therefore, in the conquest, exploration, and colonization of North America, the state and church participated jointly in the establishment of pueblos, presidios, and missions.2 In May 1690, in assisting Franciscan friars in the founding of the first mission in Texas—San Francisco de los Tejas—Captain Alonso de Leon performed the acto de posesion on land delineated for the religious effort. By observing the requisites of the acto, Capitan de Leon reaffirmed earlier claims vaguely asserted by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda (1519), Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1528-1535), and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (1542), all three of whom in their explorations proclaimed Spanish sovereignty across the expansive region. Within the framework of Spanish jurisprudence, the land belonged to the Crown by virtue of prior discovery. In 1690, therefore, through Capitan de Leon, the monarch assigned responsibility for bountiful utilization of the land to the Tejas Indians and their trustees, the Franciscan missionaries.3 Clearly, the acto de posesion changed the land from virtual wilderness to an area of control by Spanish subjects. As members of a relief expedition, led by Governor Domingo Teran de los Rios in 1691, Franciscan missionaries celebrated a special mass on the banks of the Rio San Antonio to commemorate the feast of St. Anthony of Padua, in whose honor the explorers named the river. Consequently, the application of Hispanic nomenclature to a natural resource of the topography was another manifestation of sovereignty.4 Land tenure in colonial Texas, from the late seventeenth century, was based on the legal principle of the acto, which included a moral obligation to make the labores (farmlands) bountiful and productive. Despite temporary setbacks in the East Texas frontier evolving from intercolonial rivalries, in the initial two decades of the eighteenth century, Spanish executives of church and state astutely created an awareness of the relationship of land and productivity among European immigrants and indigenous cultures. For example, when Father Antonio Olivares

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founded Mission San Antonio de Valero (May i, 1718) near the headwaters of Arroyo San Pedro, he selected a site adequately endowed with natural resources and sufficiently removed from the proposed location of Presidio San Antonio de Bexar (founded May 5, 1718), east of the creek, so as to ensure compatible growth and development of both institutions. In the case of the mission, the acto de posesion signified conveyance of land tenure from a benevolent monarch to Friar Olivares in behalf of the native inhabitants. 5 With regard to the presidio, it was an action of the Spanish state designating a specific site for use by government employees in pursuit of a political objective,6 namely, providing protection to the fledgling mission and reasserting Hispanic sovereignty over a land that non-Spanish colonial rivals perceived as a vacant territory. Hence, an assumption of French encroachment in Spanish terrain was tacit recognition of prior Hispanic land claims. Accordingly, the acto de posesion acquired greater symbolic importance in the eighteenth century in the founding of missions in Texas, because documentation constituted a solid legal basis of Spanish intention, occupation, and utilization of the land. After 1718, the provincial governor (or his representative) conveyed land to qualified applicants. Land, obviously, was the basic resource in Texas. Gradually, the designation of land grants to different types of recipients contributed to the emergence of a variegated pattern of occupancy along the banks of the San Antonio River. Subsequent to the founding of San Antonio de Valero, Friar Olivares sought permission to relocate the mission east of the river, opposite the horseshoe bend, in order to take advantage of a natural barrier and divide the domain of the two institutions of church and state. With approval from secular authorities, Olivares defined the limits of mission lands east of the river for irrigation agriculture,7 augmented by livestock raised on a distantly situated rancho. Just east of the river's source, the land pattern around the mission resembled an elongated gourd, bulging at its base and terminating at the horseshoe bend. The Franciscans exercised their riparian rights to water from the Rio San Antonio north of the mission plaza.8 Families of presidio personnel selected arable lands west and north of the riverbend and designated them as labores de arriba. Through official declaration and common practice, military settlers obtained irrigation water via an acequia system extending southward from the Arroyo San Pedro (see map 2). The shape of the land distribution resembled a harp, and the irrigation canals looked like a washboard. 9 For nearly a decade the emerging pattern of land tenure near the riverside remained virtually unchanged. Even when Franciscans of the College

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Labor de Arriba R ^ | Labor de Abajo Labor del Alamo

Labor de San Jose Labor de San Juan Labor de Espada

Labor de Concepcion

> a H W

G w w X n

> O w

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Map 2. Acequias of the Five Franciscan Missions.

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of Guadalupe de Zacatecas founded Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo in 1720, the focal point of the new undertaking was satisfactorily downriver to avoid congestion in the demographic outline. Eventually, responding to practical considerations, the friars relocated the mission plaza of San Jose on a highland slope west of the river, thereby placing the labores on the opposite bank, distantly removed from the incipient population center.10 Sovereign Right Reaffirmed: The Sevillano Paredes Visita The Marques de Aguayo's comprehensive recommendations to reinforce the pioneer missionary-military efforts in Texas with civil settlements ultimately produced a dramatic impact upon the land tenure composition along the Rio San Antonio. In 1727 the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro dispatched Friar Miguel Sevillano Paredes to visit and evaluate the missionary enterprise in the frontier watershed between the Rio Grande and the Rio San Antonio. Since Mission San Antonio de Valero was the only Franciscan foundation at the eastern edge of the watershed, Sevillano Paredes conducted a perfunctory inspection, confined mostly to personnel matters, devoting his attention to the Rio Grande establishments. A probable explanation for the brevity of Sevillano Paredes' visita at San Antonio de Valero may be related to the modest level of material and spiritual achievement, prompting the Franciscan visitador to allow more time for internal development before conducting a thorough assessment.11 The Report of General Pedro de Rivera Brigadier General Pedro de Rivera's inspection of presidial garrisons, occurring about the same time as Sevillano Paredes' visita, concentrated primarily on political and military questions. The administration of Mission San Antonio de Valero, therefore, was outside the realm of his instructions from secular leaders. Even so, Rivera's recommendations, aimed at reducing governmental expenditures by suppressing Presidio Nuestra Sefiora de los Dolores in East Texas,12 created a repercussion in the San Antonio River community with the transfer and reestablishment of three Franciscan missions of the College of Queretaro. 13 Complicating the demand for equitable distribution of natural resources (land and riparian rights) was the arrival of fifteen immigrant families from the Canary Islands with a royal mandate to initiate a civil settlement. Neither Rivera nor Sevillano Paredes commented on the development of 1731, because their reports had already been submitted to superior authorities.

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Earlier, the friar had envisioned a positive benefit to the missions to be derived from the presence of Canary Islands settlers; Rivera, however, forecast innumerable problems and conflicts. When consulted for an opinion prior to 1731, the brigadier general expressed no serious objections to the transfer of three Franciscan missions to the Rio San Antonio as long as the friars did not request funds from the royal treasury. Genesis of Urban Growth: Soldiers, Friars, and Settlers While the assignment of land (utilizing the conventional acto de posesion) for the Franciscan missions influenced the design of settlement downriver, the distribution of urban solares (town lots) and suertes (water rights) of water to isleno colonists definitely affected the area adjacent to the presidio. After 1718, the acequia system for presidial settlers began near the headwaters of the Arroyo San Pedro and flowed southward, parallel to the north-south path of the Rio San Antonio. To avoid disputes, law and custom prohibited military settlers from tapping the water from the San Antonio River. The arrival of Canary Islanders in no way altered the outline of distribution for settlers occupying lands west of the river. What actually transpired was that a presidio and a civil settlement in close proximity placed additional demands on a limited resource, namely, the San Pedro Creek. In stark contrast, the five Franciscan missions enjoyed almost exclusive privilege to the water of the San Antonio River. Mission Concepcion, located on the east side of the river approximately two leagues below San Antonio de Valero, had its dam (presa) constructed near the arc of the river's bend so as to force the water level to rise and flow southward to the agricultural fields. Since Mission San Jose already was situated west of the river, a modification of the pattern was unnecessary. Farther downriver, church and state officials established Mission San Juan Capistrano and its adjacent labores east of Rio San Antonio and Mission San Francisco de la Espada on the west bank. The pattern of mission land tenure that developed, starting with the foundation of 1718, was east, east, west, east, and west of Rio San Antonio. The distance separating San Antonio de Valero and Concepcion was two leagues (5.2 miles), thus being nearly in compliance with a three-league guideline of the Laws of the Indies (1573). Downriver, the alternating pattern of mission settlements obviated an apparent violation of the three-league rule. (A linear league measured 2.6 miles; hence, three leagues equaled y.S miles.) Considerations of frontier defense probably dictated the configurative design of the mission plazas and labores.14 While Franciscan enterprises progressed and prospered throughout

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most of the eighteenth century, precise delineation of labores was not required, conceivably because social customs and traditions respected mission lands. The application of rules governing water distribution, however, was an entirely different matter. Owing to an advantage of geographic nearness to the headsprings of the river, missions San Antonio de Valero and Concepcion reaped considerable benefit in volume and velocity of water diverted for irrigation and other needs. Conversely, the friars at the three descending missions frequently complained about abuses in the management of the acequia system, usually directed at isleno settlers (who actually transgressed the law in drawing more than their legal share of water from the Rio San Antonio). In the early colonial period it was inevitable that a concentration of Hispanic institutions along the San Antonio River, involving a cluster of social groupings, would result in strained human relations over the issue of water distribution.15 The problem, however, was not a monopoly of people in only the eighteenth century. Actually, it continued generation after generation into the late nineteenth century when the municipal government of San Antonio adopted modern technology of underground pipes, pressure pumps, storage tanks, and a schedule of service fees. The technical terms used in the Spanish colonial period to describe land grants are vital for understanding and appreciating the cultural development of the missions. The ado de posesion was a prerequisite ritual that placed the Indians in virtual occupation of the land. However, owing to the fact that royal law regarded the mission neophytes as social adolescents, the Franciscan friars accepted responsibility as trustees of the land and structures. Whereas the plaza was a well-defined area around which artisans constructed a church (traditionally on the east side with its front entrance facing west, toward the plaza) and ancillary buildings, the archival documents described the agricultural labores and pastoral ranchos in vague, imprecise terms. Admittedly, such tendencies later created problems for researchers, but at the time of their widespread application the intention was to delimit land tenure, which members of a frontier society accepted as functional and satisfactory. For demarcations of vast proportions, the linear legua of 2.6 miles was the standard measure. Conversely, structures of all types and small units of land tenure called for the vara (32.99 inches, or the more pragmatic 33 inches). The mission documents are replete with references to sitio de ganado mayor (4,338 acres), sitio de ganado menor (1,928 acres), solar (159.51 acres), caballeria (105.76 acres), and fanega de sembradura

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(8.81 acres). Since unoccupied land was plentiful in colonial San Antonio and its adjacent region southeast along the river, the foregoing terms appeared in documents without exactitude. All missions, for example, needed sitios de ganado mayor to raise livestock (cattle, horses, donkeys, and mules), but the requisite did not exclude other farm animals (hogs, sheep, and goats). In practical usage, the term rancho became popular. Whereas in sixteenth-century New Spain caballeria connoted a land grant conferred upon cavalrymen, in the Borderlands two centuries later the term underwent modification to signify a terrain used for raising horses. The fanega was closer, perhaps, to the actual measurement of 8.81 acres. As such, within a large mission compound, the fanega was a garden patch for the cultivation of select fruits and vegetables.16 During the secularization of the missions in colonial San Antonio, the word suerte gained widespread acceptance. Prior to 1792, there was no need to ascertain the number of suertes of irrigable plots of land to which a mission was entitled. The dimensions of a suerte as a land grant varied in length and width, depending upon the demand and availability of known productive acreage. Hence, a suerte referred to a clearly defined plot of land for cultivation with irrigation rights prescribed in dulas or portions of a dula (such as a hali-dula, which usually denoted a half-day or twelve hours). After the 1792 secularization, references to suertes and dulas associated with mission lands became conventional.17 Throughout the nineteenth century, as the demand for mission properties increased, the vara became the standard unit of measurement. The Visita of Friar Francisco Xavier de Ortiz In 1745, about a generation after the visita of Friar Miguel Sevillano Paredes, the College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro deemed it appropriate to conduct a thorough evaluation of the missionary endeavor in Texas. Accordingly, Friar Francisco Xavier de Ortiz inspected the Queretaran missions of the Rio San Antonio. On this occasion the inventory documents for the four missions (excluding San Jose) reflected an impressive level of achievement in conversions and material progress. To verify the testimony of the missionaries, and, in all probability, to promote harmonious relations, Father Ortiz interrogated presidial personnel, a gesture that un18 derscored an interdependence of church and state. Four years later, in 1749, Zacatecan missionaries at San Jose prepared a detailed assessment of their accomplishments, including descriptions of an ongoing construction program. 19

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The Report of Friar Gaspar Jose de Solis By midcentury the San Antonio River missions represented a composite assembly of temporal and spiritual advancement. Father Gaspar Jose de Solis in 1767 and 1768 visited all Texas missions. In the spring of 1768, Fray Solis inspected the San Antonio River foundations, putting in place one of the cornerstones for the church of San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo (with Governor Hugo Oconor setting the second stone). Despite the tardiness in the construction of the church, Solis commented extensively on other temporalities of the mission, especially the fertility of the labores and the crops under cultivation. Although Solis was not superfluous in his assessment of the other missions, the absence of negative criticism is an indication that evangelization and material programs were adequate. Since Fray Solis had been assigned to conduct the visita by the Apostolic College of Zacatecas, as a loyal member of that noble institution he was obligated to use the facilities of Mission San Jose as a base of operation during the inspection. A highly notable result in his Diario was detailed commentary on life at San Jose and only fleeting references to the other missions relating strictly to the business of the visita.20 TRANSFER OF FOUR QUERETARAN MISSIONS TO ZACATECAN CONTROL: SECOND LAND TENURE EXCHANGE The expulsion of the Jesuits from New Spain and other dominions of the Spanish Empire in 1767 created a manpower vacuum in the northern borderlands. Although the impact of the expulsion was not immediately felt in the eastern corridor, by the beginning of the decade of the 1770s the need for missionary personnel to administer the former Jesuit foundations became obvious to state and church executives. In response to government appeals, the Franciscans of the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro reassessed their accomplishments in Coahuila and Texas. Working in consultation with Franciscan frontiersmen in the Borderlands, the leadership of Queretaro decided late in 1770 to relinquish voluntarily their missions to other religious of the Order.21 Therefore, in 1771, while the Rio Grande missions of Coahuila were passed to Franciscans of the Province of Jalisco (Guadalajara), in 1772 in Texas the friars transferred responsibility for their spiritual and temporal achievements to confreres of the College of Nuestra Sefiora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas.22

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The administrative transfer required a comprehensive inventory of temporalities and a census of mission converts in residence. Representatives of church and state witnessed the prescribed formalities, the first record-taking event of its type in Texas, signifying that mission foundations, administered according to canon and secular law, were multifaceted social entities that embodied the principle of justice. In this context it is important to emphasize that the Franciscans of Queretaro did not lose their missions; rather, they willingly conveyed the management to the Zacatecan friars and volunteered for duty in the former Jesuit frontiers in the western corridor.23 The detailed inventories of 1772 of the four Queretaro missions along the banks of the Rio San Antonio affirmed the legal principle of ownership of land by royal grant (for the neophyte converts) and supervision in locus parentis (by the Franciscans). Neither the friars of Queretaro nor those of Zacatecas ever pretended to own the land of the missions. Consistently reiterated in all of the visita reports was the concept of communal ownership by the Indians. In summary, the inventories of 1772 are significant for two inclusions: 1. minute details of temporal structures and material culture but not of the extensive land holdings; and 2. insights into the humanistic values of the friars and some frontier captains. The 1772 transfer connoted an important pivotal point in mission history of Coahuila and Texas. For another generation the Zacatecan friars maintained control of the administration of the Texas missions.24 CHANGING CONCEPTS OF LANDOWNERSHIP: THIRD LAND TENURE EXCHANGE The secularization of the Franciscan missions of San Antonio introduced the first major change in the concept of landownership. The full transfer of San Antonio de Valero from ecclesiastical to civil use (1793) and the partial secularization (1794) of the downriver missions accelerated the emerging trend. In consort with the formalities of the secularization of Valero, the one-time mission Indians became vecinos and citizens of the town. In theory, partial secularization of the other missions acknowledged the property rights of the vecinos. Owing to the scarcity of secular or diocesan priests to assume responsibility of the parish churches, however, the Franciscans remained as teachers of the parishioners about their civic duties.25 Whereas the presence of the Franciscans had a positive benefit in the

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protection of the vecinos' property rights at the downriver missions vis-avis the avarice of unscrupulous townspeople, at Plaza del Alamo the new landowners were left exposed to the whims and malpractices of speculators. Within the span of a generation, as indicated in the Bexar County Clerk's Deed Records, the names of the original vecinos of Alamo Plaza disappeared from the rolls. At the time of the final secularization (1824), a decree that did not apply to the former mission of Valero, the list of residents contained many new surnames not on the Spanish document of 1793. Several probable explanations account for this apparent discrepancy: 1. some female landowners, if they were widows, used their maiden surnames rather than those of their deceased husbands; 2. landowning widows, upon remarrying, assumed the surnames of the new spouses, thus entering other names in the rolls of proprietors; 3. childless married couples failed to convey property to designated heirs; thus, upon their deaths the land reverted to the public domain, and the municipal government awarded it to other vecinos; 4. in the vicissitudes of the wars of Mexican independence in Texas, when Spanish royalists in 1813 confiscated properties of known insurgents and suspected allies, the names of loyalist, recipients superceded those of rebel families; and 5. some original owners sold all or parcels of their land grants (or they had been swindled) before the compilation of the Mexican records of 1824.26 In the post-1836 period of San Antonio history, the frequency of Spanish surnames decreased and the preponderance of Anglo-American cognomens became clearly established. This social phenomenon was evident in the application of names to streets authorized by the city government. Secularization Decree of 1794 Pertaining to the Downriver Missions The secularization decree of 1794 technically terminated the four downriver missions of San Antonio. Concomitantly, it also was the formal close of the Franciscans' trusteeship arrangement and the end of the missions' communal property rights. Following the ceremony of secularization, public knowledge and awareness of the fertility of the mission labores became widespread among townspeople of San Antonio de Bexar, civilian and military. Notwithstanding the covetous nature of some municipal residents in attempting to acquire choice lands for a nominal fee, the history of the mission sites continued. Obviously, the beneficial aspects of the labores made the farmlands attractive to both old-line families and new arrivals. The mis-

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sion records in the Bexar County Clerk's Archives are replete with applications for land grants within the boundaries of the former Franciscan establishments, underscoring the covetous disposition of people in general. MODIFICATION OF THE CONCEPT OF MISSION LANDOWNERSHIP AND RIPARIAN RIGHTS TO INCLUDE SPANISH RESIDENTS IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF SAN FERNANDO: FOURTH LAND TENURE EXCHANGE The removal of the Franciscans as trustees of the missions (permanently from San Antonio de Valero in 1793 and gradually after 1794 from the southernmost enterprises) left the occupants exposed to the envious designs of land grabbers. The relative proximity of Mission Conception to the presidio made its labores especially appealing to town dwellers. Prospective applicants found not only fertile fields but also rubble for use as building materials.27 After 1814, when the Franciscans abandoned Concepcion due to a shortage of priests, all of the mission's material culture (farmlands, interior solares, plaza, and structures) became the target of speculators. Almost simultaneously, with the elevation of the municipal status of San Antonio from villa (civil settlement) to ciudad (city) in 1813, the town council was the agency through which applicants filed their petitions for the nearby lands of Mission Concepcion. By midcentury, following a well-established trend, the city government annexed Concepcion and its adjacent territory.28 Landownership/Riparian Rights Concept Based on the Final Secularization Decree of 1824 With the attainment of Mexican independence in 1821 and the inauguration of a republican form of government in 1824, the Franciscan missions as frontier institutions entered the final phase. For the Texas missions (with the notable exception of three foundations near the Gulf Coast), the year of termination was 1824; New Mexico and California received reprieves until 1834. For New Mexico, isolation and distance from political centers of control were factors that influenced the decision to postpone final secularization for ten years. In the case of the Alta California missions, the circumstances of the recent beginnings of the missionary endeavor, the ongoing work of dedicated Franciscans from the Apostolic College of San Fernando, and the remote isolation of the colony justified the ten-year de-

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lay.29 In comparison, the decision to terminate the San Antonio missions plausibly stemmed from an incipient attitude of anticlericalism that permeated the minds of young Mexican nationalists. The census records and inventories of mission temporalities in the early 1820s paled in contrast to the statistics of the California foundations.30 Irrespective of vital differences in topography, cultural geography, extent of public support, natural and human resources, and behavioral habits of indigenous cultures, the tendency to compare the Texas missions with their California counterparts rarely escaped the attention of government officials and private observers. Acquisition of Former Mission Lands and Riparian Rights by Anglo-American Settlers Beginning in the years of the Republic of Texas, Anglo-American settlers in San Antonio became individual property owners, with accompanying rights to water, of lands formerly assigned to the Franciscan missions. The sudden shift in jurisprudence from Hispanic to Anglo created tensions and dislocations with regard to civil and property rights in San Antonio. Accustomed to public acknowledgment and respect of their possessions and traditions, old-line Hispanic families feared losing their extensive properties near the missions. The acknowledgment with which they were familiar included restraint from the temptation to encroach upon a neighbor's land, developed or undeveloped, occupied or vacant. During the colonial period of San Antonio's history, the town government adjudicated disputes between individuals regarding ownership of property. A traditional method of justice required vecinos and citizens to render oral testimony concerning properties and proprietors. In a sense, justice was intimate and functional within a comfortable cultural environment. In the Anglo-American period, the administration of justice placed the burden of proof of ownership upon members of families who had lived on the land for generations. An immediate effect was that a squatter, encroaching on mission lands or other properties and being vaguely familiar with Anglo-American frontier justice, enjoyed a definite advantage over a Spanish-surnamed Tejano. In the absence of support documentation (a copy of an original land grant, for instance), a judge often ordered the land in dispute to be divided between the litigants. Another facet of litigation that placed the Hispanic party in a lawsuit at a disadvantage was that court proceedings were conducted in English. Although court records and instruments of conveyance are silent concerning dimensions

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of properties in a land dispute or transaction, the rapid obliteration of Hispanic property owners from the old Plaza del Alamo in the mid-nineteenth century is a strong indication of the inner workings of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Whereas the objectives of legal justice were served, the cause of social justice remained unfulfilled. By the half-century mark, the number of court-related transactions or disputes of mission lands increased. The Deed Records in the Bexar County Clerk's Office are satiated with examples of land sales or exchanges, some more outstanding than others. Mission Concepcion is a valid case in point. Father Refugio de la Garza, pastor of San Fernando, acquired approximately ioo acres of land at Concepcion as part of a personal estate. (Since he was a diocesan priest and not a member of a regular religious community such as the Franciscans, canon law permitted De la Garza to secure temporal properties.) Following a disagreement with Bishop John Marie Odin of Galveston over priestly functions, De la Garza sold the land in 1838 to William P. Delmour for an undisclosed amount. In any event, it is doubtful that Father De la Garza received full compensation for the conveyance of land, particularly since he left Texas and later returned as chaplain of an invading Mexican army in 1842. The priest's involvement with an army of aggressors (retaliating for the Texan invasion of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1841) may have been his justification for terminating the financial obligation owed to him. When Delmour died, his estate was administered by William P. Jaquez, who, in 1841, conveyed 80 acres of Concepcion land to Bishop Odin. John M. Odin, probably through a legal surrogate, actually acquired the 80 acres at public auction (conducted at the San Antonio courthouse door) for the sum of $700.00. While Bishop Odin may have acted in the Catholic church's interest in preserving as much of the mission lands as possible, sixteen years later (in 1857) he sold 25 acres of the 80-acre tract to Francois Joseph Hubert for $600.00. Conversely, on the eve of the Civil War, the bishop, for the symbolic gesture of one dollar, obtained ownership of property within the walled plaza of Concepcion from an absentee proprietor, Ramon Musquiz, who resided in Monclova, Coahuila. Nearly twenty years after the Civil War, at a sheriff's auction, Musquiz' heirs conveyed to George H. Bennack the title to a sizable tract of land southeast of the old stone Watergate, Compuertita de la Concepcion, for a pittance of $9i.oo. 31 In the initial years of Texan statehood, an enterprising newcomer to San Antonio who perceived an escalating value in mission lands was Roderick J. Higgenbotham. With an inflated measure of confidence bor-

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dering on arrogance, Higgenbotham persuaded Mayor Charles F. King to present a fanciful proposal to the city council. Capitalizing upon anticipated urban expansion in the direction of Mission Concepcion, Higgenbotham assured the alderman he could construct a stone bridge across the San Antonio River at the site where the mission's dam served as a convenient pedestrian "foot-away." Contingent upon his pledge "to keep the Bridge in [usable] order for a hundred years," Higgenbotham vaguely suggested as suitable compensation "some unappropriated and unimproved lands." Disappointed, and possibly angered, when the council rejected his bombastic proposal, Higgenbotham subsequently filed suit in neighboring Gonzales County. The trial, conducted in the 2nd Judicial District Court of Judge William E. Jones, resulted in a jury verdict favorable to the plaintiff. The court awarded Higgenbotham a compensatory settlement of $1,333.50. Placed on the defensive, the city of San Antonio accepted the judgment and resolved a firm course of action. First, the council instructed the city engineer to survey unappropriated land east of the San Antonio River near Concepcion. Next, the aldermen invited the sheriff of Bexar County to dispose of the land at auction on the front steps "of the Court House door," beginning on Thursday, September 30, 1849, and continuing forthwith during "lawful hours" until the judgment was satisfied.32 Indeed, R. J. Higgenbotham's aggressive entry into the practice of accruing mission lands netted him a sizable tract, if not at Concepcion then certainly in the midst of San Jose's upper labores. Another individual who was quite active in acquiring arable farmland at Concepcion was Asa Mitchell. In the early Mexican period (ca. 1821-1825), the town council conferred extensive land grants at the mission to Manuel Yturri Castillo. In 1850, Mitchell negotiated with the executor of the Yturri Castillo estate (Mariano Rodriguez) for an exchange of land at the southern edge of the mission labores, with conventional riparian rights to the acequia, so that his properties would constitute a compact entity (see map 3). Toward the end of the decade, Mitchell filed a complaint with the city council of San Antonio, petitioning the removal of obstructions (fences and litter) on the road along the west side of the Concepcion acequia. After the Civil War, during the Reconstruction period, Mitchell habitually complained to municipal authorities about the deteriorated condition of the acequia road. Although other citizens petitioned for maintenance of the acequia proper, Asa Mitchell concentrated on improving existing surroundings of the roads. 33 Mitchell most likely perceived an adequate access route, rather than the availability of water distribution, as a definite increment to the value of his

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Map 3. Plat of Tracts of Land in the Labor of Mission Concepcion (Compiled from data in Probate Final Record, C-Red [1846-1857]: 143-145; County Clerk's Office, Bexar County Courthouse, San Antonio, Texas.) Cartography by Thomas W. Palmer.

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properties. An assessment of Mitchell's tendency to interlock private interests with public issues can be gauged by the fact that city authorities named a street north of Mission Concepcion (Mitchell Street) in deference to his civic involvement. Reluctant to display creative imagination, urban planners continued the practice of naming streets and roads adjacent to the missions in recognition of major property owners rather than of the cultural heritage of the colonial past. THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF TEXAS (GALVESTON) AND THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE/ ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN ANTONIO: SUCCESSORS IN ACQUIRING TITLE TO FIVE MISSION CHURCHES In the context of contemporary awareness of the importance of safeguarding historic structures, the Catholic church was an influential conservator/preservator of the old mission churches and auxiliary buildings at a time when funding for major restoration was neither available nor anticipated. Although a religious institution, the Catholic church is also a corporate entity administered by men of varying abilities, ambitions, and motivations. Such administrators are the bishops in charge of dioceses and the priests who assist them. When John M. Odin formally assumed episcopal responsibility of the Diocese of Galveston in 1847, the sprawling territory he supervised as pastoral leader extended from the Gulf to the far western termini of the Pecos River and the Rio Grande. The former missions of the San Antonio River, therefore, fell within his spiritual domain. Earlier, in 1841, the Congress of the Republic of Texas enacted legislation confirming title to the bishop of Texas of "the use and Occupation and Enjoyment" of the mission and church properties in the municipalities of San Antonio, Goliad, Victoria, and Nacogdoches. The specific missions identified in the 1841 act were Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan Capistrano, Espada, and Nuestra Seriora del Refugio. Interestingly, the former San Antonio de Valero, probably because it was completely secularized in 1793, was not included in the provisions of the act. The properties in Victoria and Nacogdoches pertained to parish churches and town lots. Also, perhaps due to a lack of understanding by members of Congress, Mission Nuestra Senora de la Bahia del Espiritu Santo was not indicated. The 1841 law stipulated fifteen acres as the maximum tract of land adjacent to the mission churches that Bishop Odin and his successor could claim, a restriction that subsequent governments ignored, plausibly

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because settlers already resided within the confines of the plazas and labores.34 Be that as it may, during the early statehood period, the city attorney of San Antonio advised the council on the status of the mission land tenures. Acknowledging that prior land grants at the four downriver missions had been sold or guaranteed to Mexican citizens, the attorney, Thomas J. Devine, focused attention on sales of property at Plaza del Alamo. He carefully noted that "of the Alamo property not more than three or four lots were sold on the west side of the Alamo to Citizens." Devine's explanation in 1850 for the limited number of real estate transactions was that the buildings were "occupied" by the families or descendants of Mexican soldiers, implying that they could not be evicted or that their presence discouraged other ethnic groups from establishing residences in the vicinity.35 With specific reference to the 1841 act of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, Devine broadly interpreted the powers of eminent domain exercised by the city council "to sell and alienate . . . such Public Lots or Parcels of Land . . . to which there is no legal claimant or title." Ostensibly respecting the intent of the Mexican government and that of the Republic of Texas, Devine widened the scope of the city's interest and authority of annexation. In effect, he advised the city council to promote development and expansion in Alamo Plaza by asserting claim to the remainder of the property by virtue of fee simple absolute. An indication of this trend occurred in February 1854, when the city council's committee on ways and means recommended acquiring title to "all tracts of land or lots unsold either in town or nearest to it particularly some of the lots formerly belonging to the Alamo and not claimed by the Bishop of the Catholic Church in Texas . . ," 36 Whereas through the legislative process Bishop Odin obtained title to the Alamo and other former mission properties, his successor, Claude M. Dubuis, in 1871 disposed of San Antonio de Valero for $2,500.00. The alienated property encompassed "all that tract, piece, parcel or Lot of land, lying and being on the Eastern side of the San Antonio River," including the plaza and granary. Apparently, the emerging separate Diocese of San Antonio retained title to some Alamo mission lands, because in 1876 Bishop Anthony D. Pellicer unsuccessfully petitioned the city council for a reduction of the assessed value to $9,000.00. Ten years later, Pellicer's successor, John C. Neraz, conveyed title to a downtown lot (30,000 square feet), described as the "entire north front of Alamo Plaza," to the United States government, in consideration of five dollars, for the construction of a federal building.37

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Regarding lands of the downriver missions, the Catholic bishops achieved a checkerboard pattern of preservation and alienation. Besides negotiating transactions of land at Concepcion, in 1874 Odin transferred title to a tract of land located in the northern labores of Mission San Jose, originally granted to Ignacio (Guillermo) Lara and Francisco Ruiz by the Mexican government, to the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word for the establishment of an orphanage. Bishop Neraz reconfirmed this sales agreement in 1890.38 At Concepcion, Bishop Odin's outstanding negotiation transpired in r$55 when he persuaded the Society of Mary, a religious community of men dedicated to education, to accept possession of the entire complex of mission buildings and plaza. The Society of Mary secured title to the property in 1859 and held it for more than fifty years. In 1911, the Society of Mary relinquished ownership of Concepcion to Bishop John W. Shaw, who needed the area for the construction of a seminary.39 At Mission San Jose, Bishop Odin portrayed the role of preservator in acquiring title to numerous parcels of land that initially were part of the plaza and adjoining labores, an accomplishment that his successor in 1873 erased in a single transaction. 40 Undoubtedly for the purpose of furthering the spiritual goals of the church, as perceived by religious personnel of French extraction (comparable to Odin's arrangement with the Society of Mary), Bishop Dubuis conveyed title to Mission San Jose and 600 acres of land to Notre Dame University. Fortunately for the local history of the missions, the Notre Dame fathers, unable to develop plans for a southwestern faculty residence or hospital, in 1885 voluntarily surrendered ownership to Bishop Neraz without financial consideration or compensation.41 In 1893 Bishop Neraz lost a lawsuit filed against Celestin Villemain for reclamation of land on the east side of the wall of Mission San Juan Capistrano. Later in the same year, the bishop sold two riverfront lots adjoining the mission wall to Hortensia Ozuna and Dolores G. Huron. 42 Episcopal leaders were not the only members of the Catholic clergy involved in land acquisitions. In the late Spanish (1816—1821) and early Mexican periods, Father Francisco Maynes, a diocesan priest and occasional army chaplain, was quite successful in petitioning the town council for lands at Espada and elsewhere. Next, there was Father Refugio de la Garza and his land estate near Concepcion. In the second half of the nineteenth century, French-born Father Francis Bouchu, initially assigned to San Fernando, began a systematic process of acquiring properties at San Francisco de la Espada. In 1855, Bouchu secured assignment to Espada,

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where he resided for more than fifty years. According to Deed Records in the Bexar County Clerk's Office, Father Bouchu negotiated eight land transactions, including two with bishops. In 1878, he purchased the convento and most of the mission plaza from Bishop Pellicer for $100.00. Then, in 1884, for $500.00, he obtained title to the unimproved labores extending north, east, and south of the mission wall. Other sales agreements that the priest concluded with the laity pertained to lots and structures inside and outside the mission plaza.43. Although Father Bouchu's renovation program may have lacked an aesthetic quality commensurate with colonial architecture, without his intervention some of the principal structures might have collapsed and eventually been ruined beyond repair. Consequently, the French priest earned the accolade as the virtual conservator of Mission Espada. The clergymen of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, bishops and priests, attained an inconsistent record of historic preservation of the former Franciscan missions. No one priest or bishop actually formulated a longrange plan of conservation and reconstruction. At best, their achievements constituted a patchwork pattern of selective, yet haphazard, acquisition of land tenure without deliberation of the historical significance of the acquired properties. The episcopal leader of San Antonio who actually commenced a dedicated restoration program of the missions was Archbishop Robert E. Lucey. In all fairness to the prelates who preceded Lucey in office, their spadework in obtaining mission lands was a sturdy foundation upon which the archbishop based a meaningful rebuilding campaign. PUBLIC RECORDS RELATING TO MISSION LAND TENURE IN THE BEXAR COUNTY COURTHOUSE AND CITY HALL OF SAN ANTONIO The data gleaned from nontraditional sources in the Bexar County Courthouse and City Hall of San Antonio, insofar as the mission lands and structures are concerned, revealed that the historic sites were being gradually surrounded or overrun by creeping urbanization. First San Antonio de Valero, next Concepcion, and then San Jose were the three missions upon which urbanization had the most direct impact. The other two missions, San Juan Capistrano and Espada, given the rural environment of their setting, were not adversely affected, except for roads and residential housing that touched the marginal areas. The public records are replete with information relating to the mission

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lands as part of urban expansion. Decisions concerning supervision of acequias, appointment of acequia commissioners, road surveys, reports of "juries of view" (landowners appointed by the Commissioners Court to conduct land surveys), bridge construction and maintenance, extension of utilities—either by city council or Commissioners Court—all underscored urban growth in the direction of the mission lands. The names of streets and roads around the missions, to cite one indicator,44 did not occur accidentally or indigenously. For the most part, streets and roads received the names of persons who were actively involved in pushing modernity into the suburbs.

Mission San Juan Capistrano, circa 1940, Courtesy of the Catholic Archives at San Antonio, Catholic Chancery.

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The administrative decision to establish missions in Texas and elsewhere in the Borderlands constituted the fundamental step in the complex process of converting Indians to the Spanish way of life. Apart from basic support from the royal treasury during the formative years, a mission ultimately derived sufficiency from beneficial use of its farm- and ranchland. All missions, therefore, required land around the central plaza for the church and ancillary buildings, an adjoining region for the agricultural labores, and a distantly located expansive tract for the pastoral rancho. Along the Rio San Antonio, the Franciscan missionaries' spiritual endeavors to convert the Coahuiltecan Indians to a Hispanic lifestyle (including the practice of Christian rites) necessitated temporal reinforcement in land and commodities.1 SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO With respect to the Franciscan missions of Texas, the most informative documents for a land tenure study are the 1772 inventories, by which the friars of Santa Cruz de Queretaro transferred temporal properties and spiritual responsibilities to confreres of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas. These documents, reflecting nearly a half-century of progress, provided detailed descriptions of the principal and auxiliary structures of the missions affected by the change of administration (with the exception of San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, which began and continued as a Zacatecan institution). To assist in comparing architectural and other land-related aspects of the four Franciscan components of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, an overview of San Antonio

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de Valero is essential. The inventory of 1772 described the church in the following words: The church is 35 varas long and 9 wide, all of Tuscan workmanship. It has a transept and a very large sacristy, 12 varas long and 5 Vi wide. The facade is adorned with demirelief and the arches must be the arris type. The one in the sanctuary is already completed. The 4 principal arches of carved stone [act] as a foundation to support the dome. The principal face of the entire building is very beautiful and of Tuscan workmanship. According to the plan, it must be 1.4V3 varas at the highest point. At the present time it is 9 varas high with 4 main collateral columns and 4 niches. In 2 of the latter are the statues of our holy Fathers St. Francis and St. Dominic . . . more than a vara high. Above the said niches are 2 others, carved but not completed. They still lack the columns and the 2 images of St. Clare and St. Margaret of Cortona. One of them is almost finished, and there are many other parts for the third section, which will be completed with a statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception with a fitting niche according to the designer's plan. The mission pueblo consisted of five rows of houses. "Each row has three houses and each house is 8 varas long with a door facing east and a window facing west. These houses have corridors or porches with stone arches for lighting and comfort of those [Indians] who live here. Two other houses are located away from those mentioned. Although they do not have porches, they are well built for protection against the rain and wind." The missionaries' convento, according to the 1772 inventory, was an intricate structure. The building which is generally called the mission by some, the convent by others, . . . [has] a patio in the center of which is a well with its curbstone and arch surmounted by an artistically carved stone cross. The patio is 30 varas square with an arched cloister. Four sides of the cloister are roofed for the lower floor area which gives an idea of the lower cloister, though not perfectly, because the part facing east is not completely roofed. The walls of the sides facing west and south being made higher with their corresponding roof

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form the part that we call the upper cloister, though at p r e s e n t . . . it is merely half of an upper cloister. The principal entrance is at the west side. It is sufficiently larger being 9 varas long and 5 wide. It comprises two rooms of the same size: one used as a workshop and the other as an office. Above these rooms are three rooms of the same dimensions. One is a guest room, and the other two are the living quarters for the missionaries. The one designated as a guest room is almost uninhabitable because part of the roof is propped up. The next room is the missionary's and is in keeping with a spiritual life. Finally, the pastoral and agricultural lands that supported the missionary effort generated considerable commentary. This . . . mission has 3 farms, each about a league long; all 3 are fenced in with poles and there is plenty of irrigation by means of a deep irrigation ditch which receives water almost from the very origin of the [San Antonio] river and runs it in divisions throughout the areas of the said fields. One of the farms is presently planted in late corn, which is now ripe. . . . About 18 or 20 leagues from this pueblo, the pueblo [sic] has a ranch called La Mora which, . . . according to a fair estimate, has from 4,000 to 5,000 cattle. The said ranch has 3 stone houses of sufficient size with good wooden roofs for every comfort. About 3 or 4 leagues from the mission there is a large number of cattle pastured from which the pueblo is kept supplied with its weekly ration from Mount [Monte] Galvan.2 Owing to the destructive effects of the Battle of the Alamo (1836), several of the important structures described in the 1772. document are no longer extant for comparative studies. Moreover, the church proper has undergone several alterations and renovations, including late in the nineteenth century when the city government permitted the premises to be utilized as a suburban police station.3 The mid-nineteenth-century surveys by the San Antonio city engineer to delineate the riparian rights of the municipality 4 conformed favorably to the 1772 descriptions alluding to the mission's irrigated farmlands. The three labores of San Antonio de Valero extended north of the plaza

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along the east bank of the river, terminating near the location of the presa that controlled the ingress of water into the acequia. Southward, the labores ended just below the confines of the pueblo in an area commonly identified as La Villita (signifying lack of corporate status). Although the 1772 inventory vaguely described the location of Rancho la Mora (or Las Moras) as east of San Antonio de Valero, modern archaeological surveys determined that the headquarters of the mission's pastoral operation was south of Rancho de las Cabras on the west bank of the Rio San Antonio (see map 4). The mission's other ranch, Monte Galvan, was situated much closer to San Antonio de Bexar, in the northeastern chaparral slope near Cibolo Creek in the general vicinity of what is now Randolph Air Force Base.5 Because of the hostility of the Indians and the unsuitable nature of the terrain, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries neither missionaries, presidial troops, nor civilian settlers established ranchos north and west of San Antonio. The security offered by numerous ranchos along the lower Rio San Antonio and its tributary streams no doubt persuaded livestock raisers (both religious and secular) to graze their herds in the eastern, southeastern, and southern ranges. The inventory of 1793, by which church and state authorities secularized Mission San Antonio de Valero, confirmed several descriptions contained in the 1772 document. Formal inventories were conducted on the remaining four Franciscan missions in 1794, and, although technically secularized, they remained in operation (with the exception of La Purisima Concepcion) for another thirty years. NUESTRA SENORA DE LA PURISIMA CONCEPCION DE ACUNA The 1772 inventory of Mission Concepcion revealed interesting descriptions of the land and structures, particularly the church, the plaza, and the granary. About the church and its twin towers, the inventory noted: "The church has two towers, each with a small turret and a flooring with four small bells. Each tower has its cornice and octagonal arch, and at the top are small, square turrets which are very artistic; each one has its iron cross and weather vane. One tower has two bells, one weighs 24 arrobas [600 pounds] and the other weighs 6 arrobas [150 pounds]. There is a staircase made of stone and posts to go up to the said towers and in their corners are four merlons [battlements] artistically arranged. The entire church has its battlements and stone gutters." Located directly in front of the main entrance of the church was the

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mission plaza. "The pueblo [plaza] is entirely walled in with a strong wall of rough, worked stone having four gates, one on each side. There are 24 finished houses and two more almost completed (only the partition walls are lacking) with the plan of making 6 more . . ." The granary, a subject of modest controversy concerning its exact location, was described as follows: "The granary is 20 varas long; widthwise it has two sections, each 5 varas. It is made of roughly worked stone; the roof is of beams and boards, and for greater protection for the grain it has its loft of tule and should hold 200 fanegas of corn. On the outside is a support of six pillars made of stone and lime." 6 Admittedly, the 1772 inventory was not precise regarding the topographical location of the granary vis-a-vis other structures in the plaza. In the 1794 assessment for secularization, the mission's vecinos (formerly the Indian converts) received, among other temporalities, the granary, which was identified as "an adobe and stone granary of two naves (sections), twenty-one varas in length and nine in width, the roof of which, because of leaks, is in need of repair; this building has a very good door with a lockplate." 7 In its general outlines the 1794 description reaffirmed the commentary of 1772, but it was silent on the exact location of the granary, probably because only after fifty more years of operation did the local gentry agree on the identity of that landmark building. After the transfer of administration in 1772 and prior to the mission's final secularization in 1824, Jose Antonio Huizar, son of the renowned surveyor Pedro Huizar, petitioned the civil authorities for a special grant of land and structures at Concepcion. As a public official with duties at both San Jose and Concepcion in 1806, Jose Antonio explained that he preferred a land grant at the latter mission because popular demands upon its resources were not as intense. Even though Governor Antonio Cordero approved the request in 1806, Huizar received neither official confirmation nor an invitation to perform the requisite acto de posesidn because illness prevented the state delegate from conferring the actual grant and the insurgency of Miguel Hidalgo disrupted civil tranquility in Texas. When General Joaquin Arredondo reconquered Texas for the Spanish crown in 1813, Huizar successfully reapplied for his land grant at Mission Concepcion. In the documentation from 1806 through 1824, references to the granary (description and location) are frequent. About the land that Huizar requested, his initial document disclosed information about "a tract of land adjacent to said Mission Concepcion de Acuiia. Said land is situated on the road that leads to Mission San Jose, between the [San Antonio] river and the ace-

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quia, which has its source at the first mission [Concepcion] and flows into said river. This land, pasture, and corner [rincon] have been cultivated by the petitioner, his late father, and brothers for several years." Of significant value to the land tenure study was the allusion to the granary. "He also asks for possession of the building which was used as a granary in said Mission Concepcion, and is now almost in ruins; but which he rebuilt so that he may live in it in the neighborhood and in sight of the tasks peculiar to his calling." In 1815, following restoration of Spanish rule in Texas, Huizar formally received the land grant. Jose Antonio Bustillos, representing secular authority, conducted the act of possession. In said mission [Concepcion], on July 22, 1815, I, the . . . delegate judge, in compliance with the previous order [of Governor Benito Arminan], went to the place where the said house and labor called "El Rincon" were situated . . . I took the following measurements, beginning with the house or granary, as it is called, which Jose Antonio Huizar requests. The house has 40 varas in frontage facing the East, and is bounded by the little plaza which is in front of the chapel cemetery and by the house of Damian Cordova. Its depth runs east and west for a total of eleven varas. It is bounded on the South by the main entrance to the plaza. Said house or granary has ten varas of land toward the West as the yard of the house. Despite the vagueness of some of the descriptions of the granary, a few facts remained constant. The reference to El Rincon signified an acknowledged location of a corner point in the mission plaza, most likely in either the southwestern or the northwestern sectors. The granary's front wall "facing the East" adjacent to "the little plaza" situated "in front of the chapel cemetery" almost conclusively established the storage structure at the west wall of the compound, in all likelihood in the vicinity destroyed by the excavation for, and construction of, Mission Road. Furthermore, in both the 1772 and 1794 inventory documents there is corroboration about the existence of "two sections," and "dos naves" in the granary. Whereas the 1772 document indicated a linear measurement of 20 varas, the inventory of 1794 (just prior to partial secularization) allowed for 21 varas in length. A notable difference in dimension pertained to the width: 5 varas (1772) as compared to 9 varas (1794). A probable explanation for the discrepancy of 5 varas (nearly 12 feet) is the

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construction of an addition to the structure during the intervening twenty years, or possibly imprecise calculations in measuring the internal dimensions of the building in one instance (1772) and a more comprehensive assessment in 1794 by including external measurements and backyard improvements. Finally, in placing Jose Antonio Huizar in possession of the granary and land at Concepcion, the city council representative reported dimensions for a house with "40 varas in frontage." Conceivably, Serior Bustillos included the granary and adjacent perimeter walls adjoining the property of Damian Cordova. Huizar's own description of the granary as "almost in ruins" may have been a factor in Bustillos' decision to allow a 100 percent increase in linear dimensions as a basis for obtaining reconstruction materials.8 Equally important for the material culture of Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion, as with the upriver mission of San Antonio de Valero, was the acequia system. In 1772 the compiler of the inventory wrote about the presa located in San Antonio's suburb La Villita: "This Mission has a dam in the river completely made of stone; it is next to the presidio with an intake area of water that is made of stone and lime. It is 5 quarters (handspans) high and 1 vara wide." Evidently the compiler was cognizant of the lands and structures being assessed and described. Therefore, the seemingly inaccurate location of the Pajalache, or Concepcion dam, being "next to the presidio" had an association to La Villita rather than to the Plaza de las Armas. In 1772, it seems logical that even visitors to the community were capable of distinguishing such wellknown landmarks as the presidio and the dam. Thus, it does not seem plausible that the presidial reference in the 1772 inventory actually pertained to the military plaza. Rather, housing facilities at the presidio having reached maximum capacity, the governor conceivably authorized enlisted personnel and their families to occupy temporary quarters in La Villita. Although in the late colonial period La Villita was not a desirable neighborhood in which to reside, practical considerations neutralized social inhibitions, and the presence of military families very likely contributed to an imprecise designation of a presidio located near the dam. In reference to the distribution of water via the Pajalache acequia to the mission's labores, all located north of the compound along the east bank of the river, the inventory of 1772 contained informative details concerning the productivity of the farmlands. "The irrigation ditch is completed, about one league long, and waters three fields: one of the fields harvests from 9 to 10 fanegas; the other from 3 to 4; and the third a little more than two. The first two [labores] are enclosed with pole fenc-

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ing except one part of the large wall; the other is enclosed by branches because it got broken down last year. The large field . . . should yield about 600 fanegas of maiz." Comparable to the pastoral activity of San Antonio de Valero, Mission Concepcion's rancho, called El Pasthle (or Paistle), was located 12 leagues (approximately 31 miles) in an easterly direction, probably near present-day Seguin or La Vernia. The 1772 inventory noted that Rancho El Pasthle "has houses made of stone; they were abandoned in 1767 because of attacks by hostile Indians who took all the horses. The horses and cattle are generally kept in the summer pastures of the said ranch and its surroundings. In the year that this area was abandoned, according to the soldier Francisco Sanchez who was in charge of the Indians [mission converts], there were 1,200 cattle. 400 head (approx.) were branded that year." Of paramount importance to the livestock industry of several missions (including Concepcion) was Rancho Monte Galvan (or Galban) from which the Franciscans obtained "weekly rations of meat from two or three head of cattle, these are brought from Monte Galban where this Mission has rights as also Missions San Antonio and San Juan Capistrano. In that ranch is a spacious corral made of pole fencing. Next to Monte Galban is another corral." 9 Of the five missions comprising the Alamo chain, Valero and Concepcion were severely affected by the political decisions of the town council, beginning in the transitional period from Spanish dominion to Mexican sovereignty. The location and condition of the Concepcion dam, for example, in the evolving urban center of San Antonio de Bexar, greatly concerned influential citizens who were fearful of property losses from rising waters during occasional rainstorms. Although the dam belonged to the residents of Concepcion, the pastor of San Fernando church recommended its removal to municipal authorities "for fear that damages would result from flooding if it remained . . ." The issue lingered in suspense without definite resolution throughout the Mexican period and beyond the tenure of the Republic of Texas, owing to an inherent dilemma: the cost of urban security in inclement weather versus unavailable fiscal resources with which to compensate downriver residents at Concepcion for loss of irrigation water.10 In the formative years of independent Mexico, the national government generally respected the temporal properties in the care of frontier missionaries, particularly the churches. When final secularization of the missions occurred in 1823 (completed in 1824), national authorities delegated responsibility for carrying out the mandate to state and local offi-

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cials. Although Mexico's national colonization law of 1824 protected mission properties from widespread encroachment, the process of alienating the irrigable lands already had begun under the supervision of municipal officials. In 1825, the legislature of the dual state of Coahuila y Tejas authorized the governor to "alienate the lands that pertained to the extinguished missions." 11 In San Antonio the result was merely a confirmation or reaffirmation of what already had transpired at the former Franciscan missions, especially the two within geographic proximity to the corporate limits of the city, namely, Valero and Conception. The distribution of water via the acequia system became a sensitive partisan issue requiring the appointment of commissioners to monitor the public use of that valuable natural resource. Also of concern to the municipal government was security of persons and properties at the missions, a problem city leaders resolved by the appointment of police officers.12 The alienation of mission lands at Valero occurred even before the inauguration of Mexican independence. The public records are sketchy on this project, but it is fairly safe to generalize that the former mission Indians (recategorized as vecinos), uncertain of the intricacies of law and taxation, became displaced as property owners by avaricious townspeople who were more knowledgeable in the acquisition of real estate. Within the span of one generation, the surnames of owners in land deed records became a mixture of Spanish and Anglo. Popular among some members of metropolitan San Antonio society is the folklore, perpetuated by oral tradition, that descendants of "the original settlers" of mission lands still reside in the vicinity of the labores. In reality there were two distinct periods of land distribution: 1793 to 1794 and 1823 to 1824. During the former period, under strict supervision of church and state officials, the Indians at the Franciscan missions received an allotment of land and implements. In the ensuing thirty years the identity of the "original" property owners lost certitude. Subsequently, when the Mexican state mandated final secularization of the mission temporalities in the nineteenth century, another generation of government representatives assumed responsibility for the distribution of land. In this latter period there did not seem to be any overt concern about respecting property rights of previous owners at the missions. In the meantime, the principle of entail (limiting the inheritance of landed estates to a specific line of heirs) had come under severe criticism in Spain by politicians of liberal persuasion. Accordingly, if entail had been jealously defended as a prerogative by American-born Spaniards, how could the privilege be

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shared with mission Indians? Without either experience or understanding of the legal process to protect private property, it is conceivable that many mission vecinos disposed of their newly acquired land holdings for a pittance. Also, they possibly became indebted to some individual who petitioned the state to award the real estate as satisfaction of an outstanding mortgage. When the second distribution transpired (1823-1824), the land around the missions was the same; only the names of grantees changed. Hence, contrary to the repeatedly conveyed folklore regarding descendants of mission settlers, entail as a principle of Spanish jurisprudence was not practiced uniformly in and around San Antonio de Bexar. At Mission Concepcion, the alienation of land occurred at a slower rate than elsewhere, owing perhaps to the transriverine location of properties in an area without adequate bridges. In any case, between 1806 and 1829, the primary recipients of land grants at Concepcion (ranging from small solares to modest suertes) were Jose Antonio Huizar (already noted in relation to the granary), Juan Martin de Beramendi, Manuel Yturri Castillo, Baltazar Calvo, Juan Montes, and Tiburcio Ruiz.13 A plausible explanation for the relatively small number of land grants was the confinement of desirable farmlands to a narrow strip adjacent to the east bank of the San Antonio River, extending from the dam on the north to the riverbend just south of Concepcion, near where San Jose's presa was located. During the decade of the Republic of Texas (1836—1845), when governmental jurisdictions between the city and county were divided, public demands on the material resources of Valero and Concepcion intensified. The city council defined the corporate limits of the municipality as "the distance of One League in every direction" from San Fernando church "as a common center." While such delineation clearly absorbed Valero, it just barely excluded Concepcion at the southern terminal. Shortly thereafter, the council authorized citizens to obtain rubble from Mission Valero. Father Jose Antonio Valdez of San Fernando church requested a permit to buy stone from the Alamo walls "at fifty cents per cartload." 14 The priest ostensibly utilized the stone in reconstruction projects at the parish church. Although the records are silent on this development, other townspeople presumedly took advantage of the generosity of the city leaders in obtaining construction materials for the repair of buildings. Likewise, in county government, the Commissioners Court appointed a special committee (Juan N. Seguin, Ambrocio Rodriguez, and John W. Smith) to coordinate the sale by contract of "Public Rock" at Concep-

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cion. Clearly exempt from such sale was rubble "from the old church of that Mission."15 Undoubtedly, such concessions promptly eliminated a number of structures and sections of defensive wall. By midcentury the city extended the line of corporate limits south of Concepcion, but not quite as far as San Jose. Residents of the annexed area of Concepcion requested street improvements and equitable distribution of irrigation water via the acequia. The county also responded to the need for reasonable supervision of the irrigation canals by enacting a legal code for consultation by the acequia commissioner for each of the downriver missions of San Jose, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada.16 During the Republic of Texas and early statehood, two important legal landmarks affected the status of the former Franciscan missions. First, on January 18, 1841, the Congress of the Republic enacted legislation acknowledging ownership of the San Antonio missions and properties in other communities by the Catholic church. Second, in a test case, the Supreme Court of the state of Texas recognized ownership of the mission properties by the bishop of Galveston.17 Both benchmarks signified that the temple buildings and the land adjoining such structures (approximately 15 acres) belonged to the Catholic church, which conformed to earlier concessions by Mexico's national and state authorities. For most of the nineteenth century these properties remained the patrimony of successor bishops in San Antonio. A notable exception occurred in 1871 when Bishop Claude M. Dubuis conveyed title of the church of San Antonio de Valero to the city government for $2,500.00. 18 Although the lands surrounding the four downriver missions changed ownership numerous times, the churches proper continued under the temporal administration of episcopal leadership. SAN JOSE Y SAN MIGUEL DE AGUAYO In 1824, when Mexican officials ordered final secularization, the town council of San Antonio approved twenty-five land grants at San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, an action that resulted in availability of an expansive tract of irrigable land and fertile terrain, which attracted nonmission residents to compete for tangible rewards from local government (see appendix A). The labores of San Jose, situated on the west side of the San Antonio River, extended southward from the dam just below Concepcion to a terminus considerably beyond the mission plaza at the riverbank opposite the fields of San Juan Capistrano. 19 Among the twenty-five gran-

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tees were personalities well versed in politics of San Antonio de Bexar, such as Juan Martin de Beramendi (4 suertes), Jose Maria Escalera (2 suertes), Jose Angel Navarro (1V2 suertes), and Colonel Francisco Ruiz (2 suertes). Other grantees received not less than a \\dM-dula (12 hours of irrigating privileges and a comparable piece of land) and not more than an entire dula. Even so, some of the suertes comprised several hundred acres. All recipients paid assessments (fees) for riparian rights, and the government maintained an annual record of payments.20 This riparian tradition continued into the Anglo-American period of San Antonio history from which evolved standardized rules of administration. In later years, during Texan statehood, an indication of the extensive nature of some of the land dealings around Mission San Jose was the legal transaction of R. J. Higginbotham, an enterprising businessman in real estate who was actively involved in municipal and county politics. In 1855, in consideration of $2,000, Higginbotham acquired 528 V2 acres of the labores of San Jose from John S. McClellan. Part of the transaction included one suerte and one solar on the west side of the mission plaza. Earlier, McClellan had secured conveyance of these and other lands from the heirs of the 1824 grantees and descendants of the prolific Huizar family.21 Toward the end of the century, Bishop John C. Neraz conveyed a sizable portion of the upper labores of San Jose—granted in 1824 to Francisco Ruiz, Jose Maria Urena, and Jose Padilla—to the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word for the establishment of an orphanage. 22 Interestingly, just as one bishop alienated mission properties to a religious order of women, another episcopal leader in an earlier period systematically acquired bits and pieces of real estate adjacent to San Jose. In the mid-i85os, Bishop John M. Odin purchased properties from Juan Ramirez de Zambrano, Marcos A. Veramendi, Agapito Trejo, Refugia Duran de Tejeda, Marcario Huizar, Edward Miles, Maria A. Veramendi de Sierra and other relatives of the Sierra family, and Juan de la Garza (see map 5).23 The most startling conveyance, however, occurred in 1873 when Bishop Dubuis granted complete title to Mission San Jose and 600 acres to the Very Reverend Edward Sorin, president of Notre Dame University. Unable to utilize the property as a summer residence for the university faculty, Father Sorin in 1885 legally relinquished ownership and returned the property of San Jose to Dubuis' successor, Bishop Neraz.24 In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the lands adjoining Mission San Jose were frequently subjected to surveys by juries of view in response to proposals for the construction of county roads. Closely asso-

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ciated with such projects were individuals whose surnames became part of the landscape nomenclature in the form of street/road signs, such as Charles Pyron, Henry S. Berg, David Morrill Poor, Jean Baptiste Chavagneux, and Frank Ashley. Of these civic-minded citizens, Ashley and Pyron were consistently engaged in politics, often accepting nonsalaried positions (road overseers, acequia commissioners, or election judges), which afforded them unique opportunities to become knowledgeable about partisan decisions affecting the timing and direction of urban development toward the mission lands. For such loyal service, county officers occasionally awarded compensatory contracts to Ashley in the category of public works (road fences, bridge repairs, construction of wooden bridges, cattle walks, etc.).25 With so much public works activity, by the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Mission San Jose was surrounded by crawling development, a phenomenon that earlier rapidly overwhelmed Mission Concepcion with the construction of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway along the east side of the river near the two missions of La Purisima Concepcion and San Juan Capistrano. Finally, although colonial records alluded to the mission's operation of Rancho del Rio Atascoso (near modern-day Pleasanton), the contemporary documents were mute on the disposition of land and other resources at this location. SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO Although the documentary evidence for the year 1772 is rather sketchy for the last two Franciscan missions in the Alamo network (especially for San Juan Capistrano), the benchmark of secularization (1824) is replete with statistical data about the land grants, structures, and water distribution. The old church of San Juan Capistrano in 1824 is described in great detail. "The old church that is being used is constructed of rock walls and its roof is of badly maintained beams. Its nave is 25 varas long and 6 wide. The principal door is one handspan with its lock. The entrance to the sacristy does not have a door. [The church] has a choir loft of beams with a wooden ladder and banister of the same material. There is a confessional with its armed chair. A copper vessel upon a wooden stand is for holy water." The sanctuary of the church elicited the following comment: "The sanctuary has two graded steps of lumber and a banister of the same material, with a door of twisted dowels in the center. Three wooden pedestals [provide accommodation] for a pair of wooden processional candlesticks and a broken copper crucifix with a wooden

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Map 5. Plat of Division of Mission San Jose Lands (Compiled from field notes and plat map of]. W. Garretson, 1882, in Record Book 2 [1882]: 91; City Engineer's Office, City Hall, San Antonio, Texas.) In original source most of the properties lacked summation of acreage. Cartography by Thomas W. Palmer.

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handle. Three old wooden chairs, [and] 3 wooden tiers form the throne of the altar. The altar consists of a large wooden table, and a wooden colororalito [?] with a niche in the center and two responones [?] at the sides. . . . The belfry has a cross and two bells with iron clappers." About the projected new church, the inventory noted: "First the new church is [constructed] of stone without cruciform: it has under construction forms for a sacristy in a spherical shape and a square baptistry. All of this construction will have a dome and its walls are at present at different levels of completion." 26 The competition for land grants at San Juan Capistrano in 1824 apparently was more acute than at the upriver missions of San Jose and Conception. One factor for the spirited contest among both men and women was the extent of the labores on the east slope of the San Antonio River. Another influence was the fertility of the terrain, stemming from an adequately maintained acequia system. A third factor was the propensity of military officers at the Bexar garrison to apply for land at San Juan, as opposed to other mission sites, which suggested a certain quality about the agriculture of these labores. Captains Juan Castaneda and Mariano Rodriguez, respectively, received two suertes and one suerte of land. Bachiller Francisco Maynes, a former military chaplain recently assigned to San Fernando church, readily identified with the army fraternity and received three suertes (see map 6). Among the other grantees were four women: Maria Calvillo (1 suerte), Maria Luisa de Luna (1 suerte), and Luisa and Teresa Ximenez (1 suerte each).27 In contrast to that of the other missions, the documentatry evidence that is extremely interesting for Capistrano, in terms of future restoration and interpretation, is the 1824 inventory of houses and the outer wall. Evidently, the city government placed some value on the mission structures, because even what was deemed unserviceable was estimated in cartloads of stone and appraised in pesos and reales. On the east side of the plaza, for example, was a section of wall measuring 102 varas long and 3 varas high, which the jefe politico, Jose Antonio Saucedo, appraised at 78 pesos and 4 reales for an estimated 306 cartloads of stone. On the south side was another section (50 varas long, 2 varas high) calculated at 100 cartloads and valued at 25 pesos. Of the descriptions of the various structures at Capistrano, perhaps the most revealing pertained to the friars' convento, located on the west side of the plaza. A component of the convento was a one-room unit, 9 varas long by 5 varas wide, constructed of stone. An arch apparently connected the single room to an adjacent structure, 13 varas long by 5

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V

HLJ

~ \ / - * T Crossing

Map 6. Plan of the Secularized Mission of San Juan Capistrano (Compiled from data in Deed Records Wz :4J3, Mission Records, 4-28; County Clerk's Office, Bexar County Courthouse, San Antonio, Texas.) Cartography by Thomas W. Palmer.

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varas wide, of stone walls and oak beams. Still a third component measured n V i varas long by 5 varas wide, with a brick floor, a thatched roof, and an arched doorway. Finally, an annex of the convento measured 7 varas in length by 4V2 varas in width. All of these structures, including the connecting archway, were numbered 14, 15, 16, and 17, respectively (see appendix B). Although there seemed to be in the records a discrepancy in military rank for Castaneda (one account indicated a captaincy; another listed a colonelcy), this officer assumed responsibility for the three largest sections of the convento (15, 16, and 17), for which he pledged to pay the city 354 pesos. Bachiller Maynes and Castaneda agreed to share the rubble of the section of the broken church walls. Maynes also paid for the privilege of salvaging rubble from the north and east walls of the defensive perimeter.28 Within three years after the land distribution of 1824, there occurred a considerable transfer of properties at San Juan Capistrano. Many of the grantees retained possession of their lands; others augmented their holding by acquiring title from some of the 1824 recipients. Captain Alexandro Trevino, whose name did not appear on the 1824 registry, acquired 3V2 suertes and dulas. Jefe Politico Saucedo, who received an initial 1 Vi dulas, increased his property by a \vd\i-dula. Captain (or Colonel) Castaneda augmented his holdings to four suertes, as did Bachiller Father Maynes.29 The resulting pattern of landholdings at San Juan Capistrano resembled a patchwork of suertes, dulas, and structures. Ironically, the documents were silent regarding alienation of land at the mission's Rancho de Pataquilla, situated near the present-day location of Panna Maria and Hobson. Father Maynes may have established a precedent for clergymen in San Antonio to become active land speculators. In the era of Reconstruction following the close of the American Civil War, a French priest assigned to San Juan Capistrano, Francis Bouchu, began a systematic process of acquiring parcels of land around Mission Espada. It is not clear if Bouchu, who used his private resources, performed an intermediary role for episcopal authority to preserve the former mission grounds or whether he acted on his own personal initiative and enterprise.30 Another facet of Father Bouchu's tenure at the missions pertained to his close association with some of the larger landowners who frequently petitioned the county government for special considerations, either in the appointment of acequia commissioners, road overseers, or juries of view for the designation of new roads to the missions.31 In a celebrated court case in 1893, Bishop John C. Neraz lost a legal

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battle to recover land adjoining San Juan Capistrano on the east side of the road leading to the main entrance of the mission. The 45th Judicial District Court awarded title to 3 V2 acres of mission land to Celestin Villemain, who later suggested the application of his own name for a road in the same vicinity. Although Bishop Neraz lost in one instance, he gained in other attempts to acquire land for San Juan Capistrano by outright purchase, signifying that the Catholic church was a precursor of modernday conservation.32 Another property owner who was energetically involved with county politics by successfully securing public works contracts was Frank Ashley. Civic mindedness to the contrary, there was one consistent trait to Ashley's enterprise: he looked after his private interests first and those of the mission residents second.33 It is no small wonder that Mission San Juan Capistrano survived the avarice of secular land grabbers. The acequia system of San Juan Capistrano continued to operate throughout the nineteenth century. Commissioners Court of Bexar County periodically entertained petitions from area residents concerning the appointment of a nonsalaried official designated "ditch commissioner." The individuals who performed this duty included E. G. Payne and Juan Montes. As late as the final decade of the century, maps in the Water Rights Records indicated the existing flow of irrigation water via the San Juan acequia through the properties of William Small, J. M. Kay, and James William Tinsley.34 The map also shows tJiat within three generations practically all of the Spanish surnames on the 1824 registry of land grants had disappeared. In 1895, o n t n e Mission San Juan side of the river, the property owners with Spanish surnames were Jose Sandoval and Juan Montes, the latter being in possession of a sizable tract of land, which partly explained his inclination to serve as acequia commissioner. SAN FRANCISCO DE LA ESPADA In terms of documentary resources for a land tenure study, ironically, the mission for which there is ample commentary in archival holdings, San Francisco de la Espada, is the one in dire need of preventive restoration in modern times. In the year of the watershed inventory of 1772, when the Queretaro friars voluntarily transferred administrative and spiritual responsibility to Franciscans of Zacatecas, the scribe prepared detailed descriptions of the main structures, all of which suggested an above-average level of material achievement. The church, he wrote, "is a room 14 varas long and 5 V3 wide and 7 high. It is made of stone; the roof

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consists of beams and mortar. It was made to be the sacristy, and has two doors: one leading to the living quarters of the religious, and the other to the transept of the church which is yet to be built. The said sacristy presently is used as the church . . ." The missionaries' convento was a complex structure with multiple cells, workshops, and guest rooms. The living quarters for the friars, adjoining a cluster of cells and workshops that ran north and south, extended east and west, which allowed the formation of a patio in the center. The friars' dormitory comprised two rooms. "For the living quarters of the religious there is a low corridor of 28 varas long and 3 VA wide and high; made of stone, wood, and mezcla [mortar], which protects the entrance to the following rooms: The first room which is next to the one that is used as church is an office. It is 8V2 varas long, 5V2 wide; in the front is a shelf with various boards and the rest has wooden benches on which necessary items are arranged." The remainder of the living quarters consisted of workshops and cells. Specifically, the friars' two rooms elicited the following description: "First, a room jVi varas long, 5 wide and high of stone; its room is made of beams, mortar, and brick; it serves as an ante kitchen and is restful and comfortable. The second room is ten and 3A varas long, 5 and a little more wide and 4V2 high; it has an arch, hearth, and chimney." Nearby was a new structure designated as a granary: "a new granary made of stone, 31 varas long, 8V2 wide and 8 varas high within it has 5 arches of mortar and brick. It is roofed with wood vaulted in Roman style. Its roof is reinforced with plaster of stone and mortar over the brick and its gutters carved from one solid rock; it has doors and windows though not placed as yet because it is being plastered inside." Still in active use, the old granary was "a log and tule hut, 40 varas long and 7 wide, . . . in [which] are about 300 fanegas [774 bushels] of corn . . . There is an hera [thrashing floor in which grains are cleaned] with a rock and flagstone floor, fenced in for threshing beans or for shelling corn." An important structure, apparently not emphasized at the other missions, was a brick kiln. Mission Espada, the inventory compiler observed, "has an oven for baking bricks and a log and tule hut 21 varas long for drying the brick and keeping it, and its door and key. In the mission about 300 flagstones and 10,000 bricks are baked, and kept in the hut for whatever use needed." The productivity and capability in brick making was indeed impressive, an indication of the level of supplementary material accomplished. By 1772, Mission Espada definitely had surpassed the formative stages of development.

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Agriculture was a basic enterprise at all the missions, but at Espada it was an extraordinary activity that prompted the inventory taker to include in the official record the following commentary: The mission has 2 fields fenced in with strong mezquite logs, nailed and tied with their gates and crossbar. The large field is large enough to plant 14 fanegas of corn [123 acres], the necessary beans, and orchards; in the latter [field] are 5 fanegas [44 acres] of corn which should yield from 800 to 1,000 fanegas [2,064 to 2,580 bushels of grain]. In the same field 2 fanegas [17.6 acres] of beans are planted which should yield about 50 fanegas [129 bushels] sufficient for the people to observe Lent and the abstinence on Fridays and Vigils of the year. If the foregoing were not adequate acreage under cultivation, the residents of Mission Espada enjoyed the benefits of a few ancillary horticultural pursuits. "The small field can contain one fanega [8.8 acres] of corn for planting; in it cotton is planted; with what has been picked and what remains [to be harvested] may yield 100 arrobas [2,500 pounds] which is more than enough with what may remain, for the needs of the people and may last the year." Finally, the inventory scribe noted that the orchard was "fenced in with logs, large enough for planting as many vegetables as one may wish; it has 88 prisco and melocoton [varieties of peaches] which are trees that can [withstand the freezes of these lands." The dams and acequia networks of the other missions were commonplace and functional; therefore, the scribe merely acknowledged their existence and operation without further explanatory comment. However, either the Espada dam impressed him a great deal or an alert resident friar provided statistical data about the resources. In any event, the report contained a succinct statement about the dam: "For watering these fields the mission has on this river a rock dam, 47 varas long, 2 wide, and 3 high." The acequia merited exceedingly vivid annotation: "It has its irrigation ditch with the necessary sluices made of lime and stone both for water distribution and drainage. So that the canal may cross a ravine without damage, it has a water trough 16 varas long of lime and stone. So that it may cross a creek [Arroyo de las Piedras], it has another canal (a t[r]ough or basin) made of lime and stone, 38 varas long and 6 high with its punta de diamante [diversionary prows] and 2 openings which allow

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the floods from the said creek [to flow through] and can reach the acequia to which in the dam they may give the water it may hold; it receives more than a square vara." The mission's Rancho de las Cabras (near present-day Floresville) was situated along the San Antonio River and extended for 8 leagues (20 miles). The area designated as living quarters for the shepherds and vaqueros, to protect them from marauders, was "fenced in by a rock wall, one vara wide and 3 high." The defensive perimeter "winds around for 158 varas length. It has two entrances with their gates and crossbars, one toward the river and the other toward the field. Inside are 4 huts, made of wood and thatch . . ." The rancho supported a sizable pastoral enterprise, aside from small livestock, of "more than 3,000 head" of cattle.35 Impressive as the level of material achievement was in 1772, a halfcentury later at the time of final secularization, the descriptions of structures at Espada resembled ghosts of an idyllic past. The church proper, for instance, "was constructed of rock the same of which was 22 varas long and 5 wide; roofed with beams, but badly ruined. The belfry is a simple extension with an iron cross and three bells, one of which is without a clapper. The principal door is two handspans wide. The mediumsized side door is of the same width, both of which have locks and keys. The sacristy has a door and a banister . . . The confessional is constructed of lumber. The altar has two tables, one of which is the main altar, with two smaller side tables." The sacristy's roof was completely ruined. The structure had a door without a lock and inside was a dresser with four drawers for storing religious ornaments. 36 Highly visible during the secularization proceedings was Bachiller Francisco Maynes, chaplain of the Bexar militia and priest-in-charge of San Fernando church while the pastor, Refugio de la Garza, attended public affairs in Mexico City at the constituent congress in 1824. It is interesting to note how politically active were the diocesan priests of San Antonio de Bexar, with Bachiller Maynes in the midst of land transactions. 37 Jefe Politico Jose Antonio Saucedo inventoried twenty-eight structures of various sizes at Espada early in 1824. Comparable to the appraisal of nearby San Juan Capistrano, the assessment at Espada listed the buildings according to their proximity to the four sides of the plaza. The mission's convento, on the west side, was, as in an earlier period, a complex unit of components valued in terms of oxcartloads of stone. One building of the convento was "a one-room house, 7 varas long by 5 varas wide; flat roof, with extending grass roof, a porch with extending grass roof

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with a door at 5 pesos; estimated at one hundred oxcartloads of stone at 6 reales." The individual to whom the jefe politico awarded possession of two of the convento structures, numbers 25 and 26 (see appendix G), was Rafael Casillas. After receiving preferential treatment in the form of a reduction of one-third of the appraised value of the property, Casillas pledged to pay the city government 94 pesos, 1 real, and 1 grano. Ramon Casillas, perhaps a relative of Don Rafael, was the successful petitioner for the largest structure of the convento, desirable more for the 12 varus of wall than the actual building, for 10 pesos.38 The competition was more intense for the mission's outlying labores on the west bank of the San Antonio River than for the structures. Owing to the fact that a change in city administration had occurred between the disposition of buildings and the alienation of the land, with Juan Martin de Beramendi succeeding Jose Antonio Saucedo as jefe politico, the checklist of recipients of land grants and water rights revealed an intriguing pattern. Of the twenty-five grantees of land, nine (or 36%) were also owners of mission structures: Jose Ciriaco Cantu, Jose Dolores Casanova, Juan Cortina(s), Higenio Cuellar, Jose Maria Hernandez, Jose Ramon Leal, Nicolas Paez Colomo, Manuel Rodriguez, and Jose de Sandoval (see appendixes H and I). Some of the grantees, like the elder Paez Colomo, had resided at the mission for many years; it was home to them, and the government acknowledged this reality in the distribution of land and structures. The majority (16, or 64%) were townspeople or nonmission residents who apparently were more interested in acquiring irrigable farmland. The distribution of the Espada labores resulted in a potpourri of half-suertes and hali-dulas and complete suertes and full riparian rights. While three citizens received two suertes, eight merited only one, with the remainder becoming owners of half-suertes.39 Throughout the nineteenth century, the former labores of Espada continued to be cultivated as productive farmlands, stemming in part from the constantly flowing acequias and the modification of agricultural techniques to permit the lands to retain fertility. In fact, extending the acequia or rerouting its course, usually fomenting disputes over water rights, was a recurring theme among litigants with Anglo surnames. After the Civil War, James Trueheart, who repeatedly petitioned the county Commissioners Court for favorable decisions to enhance the value of land investments, was the epitome of property owners near Espada. An effective method that Trueheart employed was to be appointed acequia commissioner.40 Another individual who was engaged in land speculation was Father Francis Bouchu, who systematically acquired parcels of land ad-

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joining Espada mission proper. For nearly twenty years Father Bouchu practiced the art of land development.41 Other mission neighborhood residents who served as acequia commissioners include E. G. Payne, Henry Liss, Leon D. Leonard, Carmelio Payan, Henry Struve, Sabino Olivas, Louis Kunze, and A.Y. Walton. It was quite evident in some appointments that Frank Ashley was instrumental in the selection process,42 carefully avoiding the nonsalaried duty himself so as to enjoy flexibility to participate in more lucrative endeavors. In spite of the efforts of the politically knowledgeable gentry around Espada, the mission was not overrun by rapid expansion of residential and commercial development. Except for the construction of county roads, a goal advocated by such principal landowners as Bouchu, Walton, Pyron, Chavagneux, and Ashley, the landscape remained relatively agricultural in orientation and utilization, an important factor in the preservation of Espada as a historical landmark.

Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) as a quartermaster depot for the U.S. Army, circa 1868. Photograph from the Grandjean Collection, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Library at the Alamo.

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IV T W I L I G H T OF T H E M I S S I O N L A N D S

Following Christopher Columbus' initial voyage to the New World, Spanish explorers based their claims to unknown lands on the principle of prior discovery. Regardless of whether an expedition was public or private, all enterprises required royal sanction before proceeding. In executing the acto de posesion over vast territories, refined to an art form by the end of the sixteenth century, explorers of state and church asserted crown law in isolated frontiers. Although secular authorities performed the act of possession for the foundation of a mission, the indigenous cultures theoretically owned the temporalities. Within the jurisprudential structure of the Patronato Real, which defined the prerogatives of the Spanish state in ecclesiastical matters, Franciscan missionaries carried out their objective of evangelization as trustees of the Indians. Established in a wilderness environment in order to convert and acculturate Texas Indians to a Hispanic way of life, the missions served the goals of church and state by safeguarding remote regions in the Borderlands. After early attempts at missionization in East Texas failed in the 1690s, the line of settlement recoiled toward the Rio Grande where Franciscan friars consolidated their spiritual and material achievements. Owing to tensions caused by international rivalries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi and Red River valleys, Spanish royalists at the beginning of the eighteenth century rapidly pushed the cordon of missions and presidios northward to secure distant frontiers from French encroachment. Utilizing resources from the Rio Grande enclave known as San Juan Bautista (near present-day Guerrero, Coahuila), missionary and military pioneers in 1718 established the first rustic outposts of empire in the central region of Texas with the founding of Mission San Antonio de Valero and Presidio San Antonio de Bexar.

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Satisfying the exigencies of crown and cross in protecting the area midway between frontier settlements at the Rio Grande and the timberlands of East Texas, the fledgling riverine community within two years expanded modestly with the founding of another Franciscan mission, San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, administered by friars of the Apostolic College of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas. With the rise to prominence of the Bourbon Reformers, technical advisers who influenced the Spanish monarchy in the management of the empire, institutions in the Borderlands of North America underwent thorough evaluation from 1724 to 1728. Aimed at curtailing governmental expenditures, a significant outcome of Brigadier General Pedro de Rivera's inspection of frontier defenses was the suppression of Presidio Nuestra Senora de los Dolores in East Texas, a decision that severely handicapped Franciscan evangelization in the pine forests. The unadorned settlements at the Rio San Antonio indirectly benefitted from the government's suppression of a wilderness fort. In 1731, royal officials in Texas participated in two benchmark events: 1. Three East Texas missions operated by friars of the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro were transferred and reestablished along the banks of the river; and 2. sixteen immigrant families, who later inaugurated the first municipal government in the province, arrived from the Canary Islands. While the royal presidio and the civil settlement represented the secular goals of the state, the five Franciscan missions symbolized the Spaniards' deep spirituality. Notwithstanding periodic conflicts that characterized the colonial era, these institutions formed an interdependent community. Of nearly two scores of Franciscan missions located in what is now Texas, the group in San Antonio constituted a unique phenomenon because nowhere else in North America was there a concentration of Spanish colonial institutions confined to an urban setting. In the 1730s and 1740s, missionary friars devoted rigorous attention to the spiritual and material objectives of the enterprise. With regard to the former, presidial soldiers frequently assisted the Franciscans in gathering nomadic Coahuiltecans to convert, a process that required patience, perseverance, and renewal. The presidio customarily assigned a squad of soldiers, an escolta, to instruct and direct the Indians in discharging a multitude of manual duties, including participation in construction projects, cultivation of nearby agricultural fields, and the management of livestock in distant ranchos. The missions needed sizable grants of fertile land on which to raise

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products to nourish a moderately increasing convert population. The comprehensive reports of religious inspectors, who periodically visited frontier missions for evaluation, disclosed ample information about temporal and spiritual progress. Although the missions, as well as the civil town and the royal presidio, occasionally sustained serious setbacks due to epidemical scourges and violent raids by aggressors from the northern plains, the Spanish pioneers' commitment to renewal gradually increased the material growth in the second half of the eighteenth century. Rapidly adjusting to changes implemented by the Spanish government under the Bourbon monarchs, the Queretaro friars in 1772 voluntarily relinquished their missions to Zacatecan confreres and withdrew from Texas. The detailed inventories of 1772 for missions San Antonio de Valero, Concepcion, San Juan Capistrano, and Espada revealed a remarkable level of upgrading in building construction, interior decorations, household furnishings, grain harvests, hardware and equipment, dry goods in storage, and agricultural and pastoral gains at labores and ranchos. San Jose also showed noticeable improvements in subsequent assessments. The 1772 comprehensive inventories compared quite favorably to later achievements reported in the secularization documents of 1793 and 1823. The land surrounding the missions, complemented by the produce of subsidiary ranches and farms, reflected an attentive husbanding of natural resources, yielding bountiful harvests, which enabled the Franciscans to continue their instruction of converts and their descendants. In the late 1770s, a dramatic shift in administrative policy, with the creation of the Commandancy General of the Interior Provinces, placed the Texas missions under the supervision of a bureaucracy that demanded stricter accountability of expenditures vis-a-vis statistical indicators. Mandated by the Bourbon Reformers, the Commandancy General embraced the northern tiers of provinces stretching from Sonora to Texas. During an initial tour of inspection (1778 —1779), marveling at the vast mission herds, Commandant General Teodoro de Croix determined that the livestock industry constituted a vital source of revenue. Proceeding on the thesis that the Spanish monarch had donated the seminal herds, Croix, without consulting the Texas missionaries, unilaterally imposed a tax on all livestock (unbranded cattle primarily, but also horses and mules) hunted, sold, and slaughtered. Croix's decree virtually destroyed the economic underpinning of the mission system. Obligated to pay a fee for the privilege of rounding up their own unbranded animals, the friars lost an advantage of trading surplus livestock in neighboring Coahuila in

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exchange for manufactured products needed at the San Antonio missions. Early in the final decade of the eighteenth century, a successor commandant general, in cooperative agreement with Franciscan leaders of ecclesiastical centers in Zacatecas and Mexico City, decreed the secularization of Texas missions that had been in operation longer than twenty years, exempting three recent Zacatecan foundations in the coastal plains near the Gulf of Mexico. Secularization signified that the missions had achieved the goal for their initial establishment, namely, the conversion of the natives. In 1793, the governor's office in Bexar selected Mission San Antonio de Valero, owing to its longevity, as the first Franciscan enterprise to be terminated. The legal process required a comprehensive inventory of temporalities, as well as a census of the mission population. Upon concluding the inventory, royal officials distributed the properties, including land, as equitably as possible among the families whose members received the social distinction of vecinos. Prior to departing for another frontier assignment, the resident friar at Valero transferred the mission records (baptisms, marriages, and burials) to San Fernando church across the river on the west bank. Completely secularized, San Antonio de Valero with its plaza became a suburban community of an expanding municipality. The remaining four downriver missions underwent only partial secularization because state officials were unable to recruit diocesan priests to assume custody of the spiritual welfare of the new vecinos. Accordingly, with reduced levels of replacement personnel for frontier service, the Franciscans tenuously administered the downriver missions for another quarter century. Shortly after Mexican independence, the succeeding national government mandated complete secularization by 1824. Public awareness of the deadline for final secularization in San Antonio created a minor land rush to acquire the extant properties of the old Franciscan missions. In the transition from Spanish to Mexican control, a flurry of land transactions devolved on the missions. Although the size of the grants varied, the petitions generally shared a common thread: every applicant expected to receive productive land and water rights from a benevolent local government. Situated closer to San Antonio than the other missions, Conception, with tighter constraints on available resources, sustained heavy competition. Westward across the Rio San Antonio, neighboring Mission San Jose, with more extensive holdings, attracted a host of petitioners, all of whom alleged to be meritorious. The remaining riverine missions, San Juan Capistrano and San Francisco de la Espada, appealed

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to a respectable number of applicants. For every case the jefe politico, in accord with approval of the Ayuntamiento of San Antonio de Bexar, conducted the ceremony of giving the recipients possession of their land grants. Especially during the brief fifteen-year period of Mexican sovereignty, following the inauguration of the duostate of Coahuila y Tejas and the transfer of the political capital from San Antonio to distant Saltillo, the mission churches and ancillary structures endured the ravages of time, weather, and humanity. As a rule, municipal government (initially Spanish- and later Anglo-dominant) viewed the former missions as windfall stockpiles of construction rubble for the convenience of preferred citizens. With subtle twists and pivots, governmental intercession in the mission properties continued throughout the nineteenth century. In a successive period, during an even briefer tenure of the Republic of Texas, the Congress, responding to petitions of newly arrived Frenchdominant Catholic clergymen, clarified the legal status of the former Franciscan missions. Acknowledging the religious intent of the missions within the hegemony of Spanish colonization, the government in 1841 enacted legislation bestowing ownership of the secularized properties, significantly reduced to fifteen acres around the church proper, to the bishop of Texas (Galveston) and his successors. Essentially, the Congress inadvertently equated prior trusteeship or management with outright ownership. In effect, the 1841 legislation established the basis for subsequent episcopal involvement in real estate transactions around the missions of San Antonio. The historic structures of the missions provided the property owners with a cultural identity. Not surprisingly, a majority of the residents proclaimed an affiliation with the religion that the mission churches symbolized. Not a few of the old-line families in possession of an odd assortment of small and large plots of land acted as preservators of the remnants of the mission temporalities. In the sixty-year span from 1835 to 1 8 9 5 , t n e urban development that occurred around the missions failed to obliterate the earlier work of the friars. Moreover, in the mission neighborhoods the families maintained a sense of community, which was a cultural value the Franciscans had imparted to the Indian neophytes. In some mission areas, such as Concepcion and San Jose, stemming partly from their geographic proximity to the downtown center, the pattern of land tenure in the post-18 24 era quickly changed as private ownership swiftly transformed the environment. To a greater extent at San Jose than at Concepcion, the emerging configuration of secular

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ownership reflected the controlling influence of dominant families—such as the Huizar clan—whose members competitively acquired sections of the mission's farmlands near the river. In the decades after the Civil War and Reconstruction, urbanization spread southward, paralleling construction of a railroad in the direction of the missions. Streets, bridges, houses, stores, and other forms of material progress eventually approached the dilapidated mission walls. The remote location of the two southernmost missions—San Juan Capistrano and San Francisco de la Espada—preserved the resources from rampant exploitation in the nineteenth century. In the transitional period from Hispanic to Mexican rule, the demand for grants of land, water, and structures was vigorous. Vecinos of San Antonio energetically competed for awards of fertile fields with irrigation rights, complemented, if possible, with conveyance of old structures within the mission plaza for immediate occupancy or for rubble to enhance construction elsewhere. Land transactions occurred with monotonous regularity, but none with greater frequency than the business arrangements of two Catholic priests—Bachiller Francisco Maynes in the Hispanic era and French-born Father Francis Bouchu in the Anglo-American period. By their respective transactions, the two clergymen, unintentionally perhaps, performed an important service for historic conservation by safeguarding some mission properties from further deterioration. Since these downriver missions were beyond the corporate limits of the city of San Antonio, county government exercised authority in matters pertaining to bridges, fences, roads, surveys, and distribution of water through the time-honored acequia system. The rural orientation of county government, by necessity, compelled landowners near the missions to participate in the partisan activities that affected the value of their properties. Until the threshold of the twentieth century, the politics of water distribution was a prime example of how large landowners influenced county government in the appointment of an acequia commissioner. For nearly a century the land tenure system of the Franciscan missions of San Antonio underscored an assumption of Spanish colonization in Texas, namely, that the presence of friars, soldiers, and settlers contributed to the security and permanence of a community. The founding of five Franciscan missions within the jurisdiction of a large settlement pattern definitely reinforced the colonial effort. Although the missions' system of land tenure conformed to Hispanic law and tradition, in the succeeding centuries the influx of newcomers imposed a heavy burden on

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civil government to adjudicate the private interests versus the public welfare. The fact that the old Spanish missions still stand as active parishes is a tribute to concerned public officials, conservationist groups, and the Archdiocese of San Antonio for preserving the historic structures as living memorials to the Franciscan missionaries. In modern times, the advent of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park is a unique phenomenon of the delicately balanced, cooperative arrangement between church and state.

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APPENDIX A

REGISTRY OF LAND GRANTS, IRRIGATION RIGHTS, AND ASSESSED FEES AND PAYMENTS AT MISSION SAN JOSE, 1824 Grantee

Dulas of Water Vi

Ansures, Eusebio

Fees Assessed

Fees Paid Pesos Reales

20 rs.

2

4

Bueno, Fulgencio

1

5 ps.

5

0

Casillas, Felipe

1

5 ps.

5

0

de Beramendi, Juan Mariano [Martin]

4

5 ps. ea.

20

0

2 2

4 4

10

0

2

4

10

0

Vi Vi

de la Cruz, Dalmacio de la Garza, Jose Manuel Escalera, Jose Maria

5 ps. ea.

2 Vi

de Leon, Tomas

20 rs. 20 rs. 20 rs. 5ps. ea.

2

Garcia, Antonio

Vi

20 rs.

2

4

Guerrero, [Maria de la] Trinidad

Vi

20 rs.

2

0

Herrera, Francisco

1

5 ps.

5

0

Lara, Ygnacio

1

5 ps.

5

0

Menchaca, Miguel

1

5ps.

5

0

Navarro, Jose Angel

Vh

5 ps. ea.

7

4

2

4

10

0

Padilla, Jose

Vi

20 rs.

Ruiz, Francisco

2

5 ps. ea.

Ruiz, Jose Maria

1

5ps.

5

0

20 rs.

2

0

20 rs.

2

4

109

0

Sierra, Eustaquio

Vi

Urena, Jose Maria Total

22

Source: Mission Records, pp. 86—93, Archives of the Bexar County Clerk, Bexar County Courthouse, San Antonio, Texas.

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APPENDIX B

APPRAISAL OF HOUSES AND OUTER WALL AT MISSION SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO BY JOSE ANTONIO SAUCEDO, JEFE POLITICO DE BEXAR, FEBRUARY 11, 1824 Number

Description

Appraised Value Pesos Reales

North Side of Mission Plaza 1

2 3 4

Rent house, 8 varas in length with side walls of stone and end walls of adobe; with unserviceable thatched roof and door; walls estimated at 48 cartloads of stone at 2 reales each

12

0

One-room house, 8V2 varas in length; stone walls and thatched roof; adobe side walls; common door

14

0

One-room house, 8 varas in length; stone walls and adobe side walls; unserviceable thatched roof and door

12

0

40 varas of wall, without houses; 3 varas high consisting of 120 cartloads of stone

30

0

102 varas of wall, 3 varas high; consisting of 306 cartloads of stone

78

0

One-room house, 8 varas long by 4 varas wide; ruined stone walls; new thatched roof; common door

12

4

22 varas of wall, 2 varas high; estimated at 44 cartloads of stone

11

0

25

0

Building site, 16 varas long by 10 varas wide; walls of crushed stone consisting of 32 cartloads of stone

8

0

Dwelling site, 13 varas long by 5 varas wide; several sections of ruined wall consisting of 50 cartloads of stone

12

4

Dwelling site, 18 varas long by 5 varas wide; stone walls; unserviceable thatched roof; walls estimated at 120 cartloads of poor-quality stone at 1 real each

15

0

East Side of Mission Plaza 5 6 7

South Side of Mission Plaza 8 9 10

11

50 varas of wall, 2 varas high; estimated at 100 cartloads of stone

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A P P E N D I X B (continued)

Number

Description

Appraised Value Pesos Reales

West Side of Mission Pluzu 12

13

14 15

16

17

18

19

20

One-room house, 6 vurus long by 4 varas wide; with walls of fine crushed stone; 2 stone walls consisting of 26 cartloads

6

4

45

6

9

0

Section of aforementioned convento, 13 vurus long by 5 vurus wide; stone walls and oak beams; consisting of 150 vurus of structure, walls at 1 peso per vuru; 3 door archways; damaged roof; all estimated at 50 cartloads of stone at 6 reules each; door in bad condition at 3 pesos 190

4

Sention of aforementioned convento, IIV2 vurus long by 5 vurus wide; brick floor and thatched roof in damaged condition; walls estimated at 108 vurus of structure at 1 peso per vuru with door archway; estimated at 12 cartloads of stone at 6 reules each with common door at 6 pesos

123

0

Annex of aforementioned sections of convento, 7 vurus long by 4V2 vurus wide; consisting of 60 cartloads of stone at 5 reules each; with damaged door at 3 pesos

40

4

House section, 15VL vuras long; stone walls; thatched roof; walls estimated at 80 cartloads of stone at 2 reules each and a door at 3 pesos

23

0

Section, 8 vurus long by 4 vurus wide; stone walls in bad condition; adobe partition; thatched roof; walls estimated at 36 cartloads at 2 reules each

9

0

Section, 8 vurus long by 4 twras wide; stone walls; roofless; walls estimated at 36 cartloads at 2 reules each

9

0

One-room convento (formerly of the missionary friars), 9 vurus long by 5 vurus wide; with unserviceable roof; stone walls consisting of 56 cartloads at 6 reules each; door in good condition Arch belonging to aforementioned convento structure; estimated at 12 cartloads of stone at 6 reules each

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A P P E N D I X B (continued)

Number 21

22

23

24

25

26

Description

Appraised Value Pesos Reales

House section, 8 vurus long by 4 vurus wide; unserviceable thatched roof; stone walls; estimated at 36 cartloads at 2 reules each

9

0

Section, 8 vurus long by 4 vurus wide; thatched roof; stone walls; consisting of 36 cartloads at 4 reules each and door at 12 pesos

18

4

Section, 9 ftfras long and 4 w m s wide; fiber roofing; stone walls; estimated at 40 vurus of structure at 4 reules per f Comm. Ct. Minutes I,

ABCC.

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GLOSSARY

Acequia. An irrigation trench or canal, sometimes stone lined, by which water was conveyed for domestic needs and agricultural pursuits. Acto de posesion. A civil rite, prescribed by Spanish law, conducted at the location of a land grant whereby the recipient performed overt actions that symbolized taking actual possession. Alcalde. In Texas, a civil officer with judicial, executive, and legislative duties. Arroba. A commonly used standard (25 pounds) for weighing bulky and heavy objects. Arroyo. A creek, usually with running water. Ayuntamiento. A municipal council consisting of elected and appointed officials. Bachiller. A term used to identify a college graduate; the holder of a bachelor's degree. Caballeria. A land grant of 105 acres awarded to cavalrymen who participated in the conquest and colonization of colonial New Spain. Casas Reales. The meeting hall in San Antonio de Bexar where the town council officially met. Chaparral. A thickly wooded area; a grove of small trees and underbrush. Ciudad. A city; the highest designation granted by the Spanish government to a civil settlement, with special rights and privileges not enjoyed by municipalities of lower status. Convento. Living quarters for religious personnel, such as in a friary or mission. Conversion. In ecclesiastical terms, a conversion through which Indians became members of a mission community. Doctrina. Doctrine; within the cultural context of the mission system doctrina represented an advanced stage of conversion in which abstract concepts of Christian doctrine were introduced to the resident Indians. Dula. Each of the plots of land irrigated by a common stream or canal; the number of clock hours required to irrigate a specified tract of land. Escolta. A squad of presidial soldiers assigned to a mission to train Indian con-

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GLOSSARY

verts in temporal responsibilities (carpentry, blacksmithing, stone masonry, farming, weaving, etc.). Fanega. A common unit of weight and land measure: as an arid measure, 2.58 bushels; as land measure for agricultural purposes, 1.59 acres. Grano. A monetary weight equal to .049 grams or .0016 troy ounces. Isleno. A Spanish immigrant from the Canary Islands who arrived in Texas in 1731; a descendant of such immigrant colonists. Jefe politico. Chief administrative officer in a Mexican municipality, responsible for setting the public agendum (also gefe politico). Labor. In Texas, a grant of land reserved for agriculture; usually identified in the plural (labores) for farming, farm work, animal husbandry. Labores de arriba. Farmlands located upriver from a given geographical point of reference; a riverine site above a Spanish settlement. La Villita. A civil settlement, without official status, in the jurisdiction of Presidio San Antonio de Bexar, located directly across the Rio San Antonio on elevated land of the east bank; inhabited by late arrivals in colonial San Antonio when more desirable tracts of land west of the river had been awarded to early military and civilian settlers. Legua. A length measurement of 3V2 miles; an agrarian land measurement of 4,428 acres. Mision. Mission; the first step in a five-tier hierarchy of the mission system. Nave. An architectural reference to an aisle in a mission church. Parroquia. Parish; the culminating phase in the mission process signifying a transition from missionary to parochial status and responsibility. Patronato Real. The body of rights that monarchs of Spain possessed over the Catholic church in Hispanic America, based upon papal concessions of the early sixteenth century. Peso. In the nineteenth century, a standard monetary unit worth eight reales; hence, a half-peso was equal to four reales; a quarter-peso to two reales. Plaza. An "open" square in the center of a town; an open area in a mission compound; a public square. Presa. In a river, a dam, usually constructed of stone, designed to raise the water level and to cause it to flow into an acequia for irrigation and domestic purposes. Presidio. In the Spanish Borderlands, a royal fort; a fortification constructed of either stone or timber or, in arid locations, of adobe bricks. Pueblo. A town, a village, a congregation of people, without official sanction in the hierarchy of civil communities, such as ciudad or villa. Rancho. In Texas, a ranch principally for raising livestock. Reduccion. A congregation of Indians in a frontier mission; the second step in coverting the Indians to the mission system. Reglamento. A body of regulations or rules. Rincon. A corner; a small piece of land.

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GLOSSARY

Sitio de ganado mayor. A sizable land grant of 4,338 acres for raising large livestock (cattle, horses, donkeys, and mules). Sitio de ganado menor. An agrarian land measurement of 1,928 acres for raising small livestock (sheep, goats, and possibly hogs). Solar. A plot of land with defined boundaries, located within the limits of a municipality. Suerte. A demarcated area of land for cultivation; the reference to luck or fortune emanated from the fact that Spanish law specified the use of a lottery to assign lands. Vara. A popular linear measurement standardized at 32.99 inches. Vecino. A property owner; an inhabitant of a municipality; a well-known neighbor. Villa. A civil settlement, governed by a town council, established in accordance with Spanish law; higher in political status than a pueblo but lower than a ciudad. Visita. A formal inspection of a department of government of either church or state. Visitador. An inspector formally authorized to conduct a visita.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Sources Biblioteca Nacional. Mexico City, Mexico. Archivo Franciscano. Office of the City Clerk. City Hall, San Antonio, Texas. Spanish Minute Book, (1815-1845). City Council Minutes, (1837—1899). Spanish Minute Book One (1815 —182.0), Spanish Minute Book Two, (1830-1845), and Journal A (1837-1849). Journal of City Council A (June 1837—January 1849). Journal of City Council B (January 1849-August 1856). Journal of City Council C (April 1, 1856-February 21, 1870). Journal of City Council D (March 1870—February 1879). Journal of City Council E (January 29, 1879-February 25, 1884). City Council Journal F (March 3, 1884—June 28, 1886). Journal and Minutes of Council G (July 12, 1886-October 15, 1888). Journal of City Council H (October 22, 1888—April 14, 1890). Journal of City Council I (April 28, 1890-February 15, 1892). Journal and Minutes of Council J (February 25, 1892-July 19, 1893). Journal of City Council K (August 7, 1893—January 2> 1$95)Journal and Minutes of Council L (January 7, 1895-May 25, 1896). Journal of City Council M (June 1, 1896-April 19, 1899). Office of the City Engineer. City Hall, San Antonio, Texas. City Record No. 1, (1841-1879). Record Book 1, (December 1823-February 1882). Record Book 2 [undated]. Office of the County Clerk Archives. Bexar County Courthouse, San Antonio, Texas. Deed Records, (1841 —1911). Mission Records, (1793-1827).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Probate Records, (1846-1857). Commissioners Court Minutes, (18 3 6 -1900). Commissioners] Court Journal 2-A (1836—1868). Minutes Com'r Court 3-A (1868-1876). Minutes Com'r Court, B-i (August 14, 1876-November 25, 1878). Minutes Com'r Court, B-2 (November 30, 1878-April 14, 1881). Minutes Com'r Court C (May 9, 1881-May 17, 1884). Comm. Ct. Minutes D (June 9, 1884-November 13, 1886). Comm. Ct. Minutes E (November 15, 1886-February 20, 1889). Comm. Ct. Minutes F (February 21, 1889-March 14, 1891). Comm. Ct. Minutes G (March 13, 1891 -July 6, 1892). Comm. Ct. Minutes H (July 7, 1892-October 10, 1893). Comm. Ct. Minutes I (October 12, 1893-March 11, 1895). Comm. Ct. Minutes J (March 12, 1895-May 29, 1896). Commissioners Court Minutes K (May [30], 1896-August 2, 1897). Commissioners Court Minutes L (August 3, 1897-August 12, 1898). Commissioners Court Minutes M (August 15, 1898-September 9, 1899). Commissioners Court Minutes N (August 25,1899-November 30, 1900). Office of the District Clerk. Bexar County Courthouse, San Antonio, Texas. Civil Minutes, 45th District Court (October 1892-November 1893). Office of the District Clerk. Gonzales County Courthouse, Gonzales, Texas. District Court Civil Journal A ( I 8 4 6 - I 8 5 4 ) . Old Spanish Missions Research Library. Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio, Texas. Inventories of 1772 and 1824.

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Ballard, Helen Mabry. "San Luis Obispo County in Spanish and Mexican Times." California Historical Society Quarterly i (October 1922): 152-172. Bannon, John Francis, ed. Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. Bolton, Herbert E[ugene]. "The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish American Colonies." In Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands, edited by John Francis Bannon, pp. 187—211. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. . Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration. Berkeley: University of California Publications in History, 1915; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1962; reprint, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Brinckerhoff, Sidney B., and Odie B. Faulk, Lancers for the King: A Study of the Frontier Military System of Northern New Spain, with a Translation of the Royal Regulations of 1772. Phoenix: Arizona Historical Foundation, 1965. Castaneda, Carlos E. Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519 — 1936. 7 vol. Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Company, 1936-1958. Celiz, Francisco. Diary of the Alarcon Expedition into Texas: 1718-1719. Translated by Fritz Leo Hoffman. Los Angeles: Quivira Society, 1935. Cervantes, Rafael, ed. Diario del padre fray Gaspar Jose de Solis. Guadalajara: Editorial Font, 1981. Englehardt, Zephyrin. The Missions and Missionaries of California. 2 vols. Santa Barbara: Mission Santa Barbara, 1930. Fireman, Janet. The Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers in the Western Borderlands: Instruments of Bourbon Reform, 1764 to 1815. Glendale Calif.: A. H. Clark Co., 1977. Gammel, H. P. N., comp. The Laws of Texas, 1822—1897. I O v °k- Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1898. Geiger, Maynard. Franciscan Missionaries in Hispanic California, 1769 — 1848. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1969. Glick, Thomas F. The Old World Background of the Irrigation System of San Antonio, Texas. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1972. Gomez Canedo, Lino. Evangelizacion y Conquista: Experiencia Franciscana en Hispano America. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1977. , ed. Primeras Exploraciones y Poblamiento de Texas (1686—1694). Monterrey: Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, 1968. Habig, Marion A. The Alamo Chain of Missions: A History of San Antonio's Five Old Missions. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1968. . The Alamo Mission: San Antonio de Valero, 1718—1793. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977. . San Antonio's Mission San Jose: State and National Historic Site, 1720—1968. San Antonio: Naylor Company, 1968. Habig, Marion A., and Benedict Leutenegger, eds. and trans. The San Jose Papers. 2 vols. San Antonio: Old Spanish Missions Historical Research Library of Our Lady of the Lake University, 1978.

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Hammond, George P., and Agapito Rey, eds. and trans. Don Juan de Onate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595—1628. 2 vols. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953. Hewett, Edgar L., and Reginald G. Fisher. Mission Monuments of New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1943. Jackson, Jack. Los Mestenos: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721-1821. College Station: Texas A6cM University Press, 1986. Jones, Oakah L., Jr. Los Paisanos: Spanish Settlers on the Northern Frontier of New Spain. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. Kessell, John L. The Missions of New Mexico since 1776. Albuquerque: Cultural Properties Review Committee, 1980. Leutenegger, Benedict, trans, and ed. Inventory of the Mission San Antonio de Valero: 1771. Austin: Texas Historical Commission, 1977. , ed. and trans. Letters and Memorials of the Father Presidente Fray Benito Fernandez de Santa Ana, 1736-1754. San Antonio: Old Spanish Missions Historical Research Library of Our Lady of the Lake University, 1981. , trans, and ed. Life of Fray Antonio Margil, O.F.M. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959. , trans. Nothingness Itself: Selected Writings of Ven. Antonio Margil, 1690—1724. Edited by Marion A. Habig. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1976. Leutenegger, Benedict, Marion A. Habig, and Barnabas Diekemper. "Memorial of Father Benito Fernandez Concerning the Canary Islanders, 1741." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 82 (January 1979): 265-296. M'Caleb, Flavius. "Some Obscure Points in the Mission Period of Texas History." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1 (January 1898): 216—225. McCarty, Kieran. A Spanish Frontier in the Enlightened Age: Franciscan Beginnings in Sonora and Arizona, 1767-1770. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1981. McCloskey, Michael B. The Formative Years of the Missionary College of Santa Cruz of Queretaro, 1683-1733. Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955. Matson, Daniel S., and Bernard L. Fontana, trans, and eds. Friar Bringas Reports to the King: Methods of Indoctrination on the Frontier of New Spain, 1796-97. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977. Mattison, Ray H. "Early Spanish and Mexican Settlements in Arizona." New Mexico Historical Review 21 (October 1946): 273-327. Meyer, Michael C. "The Legal Relationship of Land to Water in Northern Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest." New Mexico Historical Review 60 (January 1985): 6 1 - 7 9 . Moorhead, Max L. The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975. Navarro Garcia, Luis. Jose de Gdlvez y la Comandancia General de las Provin-

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

cias Internas del Norte de Nueva Espana. Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1964. O'Rourke, Thomas P. The Franciscan Missions in Texas (1690-1793). Washington, D.C.: Washington Monotype Composition Co., 1927. Paschal, George W. A Digest of the Laws of Texas . . . from 1754 to 1873. Washington, D.C.: W. H. & O. H. Morrison, 1873. Polzer, Charles William, Thomas C. Barnes, and Thomas H. Naylor, comps. The Documentary Relations of the Southwest Project. Tucson: Arizona State Museum of the University of Arizona, 1977. Powell, Philip Wayne, "Franciscans on the Silver Frontier of Old Mexico." Americas 3 (January 1947): 295—310. . Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: North America's First Frontier War. Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies of Arizona State University, 1975. Schmitz, Joseph Wfilliam]. "Concepcion. In Six Missions of Texas, pp. 7 3 - 9 7 . Waco: Texian Press, 1965. . The Society of Mary in Texas. San Antonio: Naylor Company, 1951. Servin, Manuel P. "The Legal Basis for the Establishment of Spanish Colonial Sovereignty: The Act of Possession." New Mexico Historical Review 53 (October 1978): 2 9 5 - 3 0 3 . Smith, Harvey P., Sr. Measured Drawings of Harvey P. Smith. San Antonio Public Works Department, [1936]. Taylor, A. J., and Anne A. Fox. Archaeological Survey and Testing at Rancho de la Cabras, Wilson County, Texas, Fifth Season. San Antonio: Center for Archaeological Research of the University of Texas at San Antonio, 1985. Williams, Mary Floyd. "Mission, Presidio, and Pueblo: Notes on California Local Institutions under Spain and Mexico." California Historical Society Quarterly 1 (July 1922): 2 8 - 2 9 .

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INDEX

acequia system. See also water rights and distribution for military settlers, 10 of Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Conception de Acuna, 3 6 - 3 7 for presidial and isleno settlers, 13 of San Francisco de la Espada, 4 9 - 5 0 , 51 of San Juan Capistrano, 13, 47 supervision of, after secularization, 40, 58 acto de posesion, 14 in founding of Mission San Antonio de Valero, 10 as legal basis for Spanish colonial sovereignty, 8 - 9 Aguayo, Governor mission named after, 3 and recruitment of civilian settlers,

Apostolic College of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, 3, 16. See also Zacatecan missionaries; Zacatecan missions Apostolic College of San Fernando, 10

Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro, 1-2. See also Queretaran missionaries; Queretaran missions East Texas activities of friars, 2, 3 Arredondo, Gen. Joaquin, 34 Ashley, Frank, 42, 47, 52 Battle of the Alamo, effect of, on structures of the mission, 31 Bennack, George H., 21 Berg, Henry S., 42 Bexar County Clerk's Archives, 18,

4 Alamo. See Plaza del Alamo Alarcon, Gov. Martin de, 3 alienation of mission lands, 37—39 Alvarez de Pineda, Alonso, 9 Anglo-Americans acquisition of land and water rights by, 2 0 - 2 4 jurisprudence system of, 20

19, 2-7

Bolton, Herbert Eugene, xi Bouchu, Father Francis estate of, 8on.30 land transactions of, 2 6 - 2 7 , 4^, 51-52.* 58 Bourbon Reformers, 55, 76n.30 Bustillos, Jose Antonio, 35, 36

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Croix, Gen. Teodoro de, 5 5 Cuellar, Higenio, 51

caballeria, 14, 15 Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nunez, 9 California Bourbon Reformers and, 7 6 ^ 3 0 termination of missions in, 19—20 Calvillo, Maria, 44 Calvo, Baltazar, 39 Canary Islands immigrants arrival of, 12 conflicts of, with Franciscan missions, 4, 75n.i5 water rights and, 1 3 - 1 4 Cantu, Jose Ciriaco, 51 Casanova, Jose Dolores, 51 Castaneda, Carlos Eduardo, xi Castaneda, Capt. Juan, 44, 46 Catholic church legislation giving title of mission lands to bishop of Texas, 24—

Daughters of the Republic of Texas, xii de Beramendi, Juan Martin, 39, 41, 5i

de la Garza, Juan, 41 de la Garza, Father Refugio land transactions of, 21, 26 political activities of, 50 Delmour, William P., 21 de Luna, Maria Luisa, 44 Devine, Thomas J., 2 4 - 2 5 Diaz de Leon, Fray Jose Antonio, 7 discovery, principle of. See acto de posesion Dubuis, Bishop Claude M. sale of San Antonio de Valero land by, 25, 40 transfer of Mission San Jose to Notre Dame University by, 26,

2-5, 57 preservation of mission properties by, 24 Supreme Court of Texas recognizes ownership of mission land by, 40 use and sale of properties of, 24-27 Chavagneux, Jean Baptiste, 42, 52 church and state relations, 1, 15 joint colonialization efforts and, 2-, 9 Patronato Real, 1, 8 - 9 , 53 civil community, 1 Coahuiltecan Indians, 29, 54 Commandancy General of the Interior Provinces, 55, 7 6 ^ 3 0 Concepcion, Mission. See Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acufia Cordero, Gov. Antonio, 34 Cordova, Damian, 36 Coronado, Francisco Vasquez de, 9 Cortina(s), Juan, 51

4i

dulas, 15 Duran de Tejeda, Refugia, 41 entail, principle of, 38 — 39 Escalera, Jose Maria, 41 fanega, 15 fanega de sembradura, 14 farmlands. See labores France, rivalry of, with Spain in Texas, 3 Franciscan missionaries. See also Apostolic College of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas; Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro; Queretaran missionaries; Zacatecan missionaries in colonization of New Mexico, role of, 1

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as occupants of mission land, 14 property rights of, after secularization, 17—18 inspections of missions and presidios, 6. See also inventories of Friar Miguel Sevillano Paredes,

and mass commemorating teast or St. Anthony, 9 trusteeship of, terminated, 18, 19 as trustees of land, 14 as trustees of Tejas Indians, 9 Franciscan missions. See also Queretaran missions; Zacatecan missions administrative reforms affecting, 6 and conflicts with Canary Islands immigrants, 4, 75n.i5 as example of church and state unity, 2 final phase of, 19—20 preservation of, 27

12

of Gen. Pedro de Rivera, 1 2 - 1 3 inventories, 54 as Franciscan records of assessment, 6 of 1772, 17, 55 at Nuestra Senora de la Purfsima Concepcion de Acuna, 3 2 - 3 4 , 36 at San Antonio de Valero, 29-32 at San Francisco de la Espada, 47-48 of 1793 at San Antonio de Valero, 3 2 of 1794, 32 at Nuestra Senora de la Purfsima Concepcion de Acuna, 34

Gran Chichimeca, northward expansion of, 1 Guide to Materials for the History of the United States in the Principal Archives of Mexico (Bolton), xi Habig, Marion A., xi Hernandez, Jose Maria, 51 Higgenbotham, Roderick J., 2 1 - 2 2 ,

of 1824

at San Francisco de la Espada, 50-51

4i

at San Juan Capistrano, 4 2 - 4 7 irrigation water. See acequia system isleno community. See Canary Islands immigrants

Hispanics, and loss of landownership after secularization, 20—21

Hubert, Francois Joseph, 21 Huizar, Jose Antonio, 34—36, 39 Huizar, Marcario, 41 Huizar, Pedro, 34 Huizar family, 41, 58 Huron, Dolores G., 26 husbandry of the land, 9—10

Jaquez, William P., 21 Jesuit missionaries expulsion of, from New Spain, 16 occupation of Gran Chichimeca, role in, 1 Jones, Judge William E., 22 Julian II, Pope, 8 - 9 jurisprudence, shift in, from Hispanic to Anglo, 20

Indians Coahuiltecan, 29, 54 communal landownership by, 17 loss of lands of, after secularization, 3 8 - 3 9

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Kathryn Stoner O'Connor Foundation, xii Kay, J. M., 47 Kunze, Louis, 52

as Mexico's national colonization law of 1824, 38 Leon, Capt. Alonso de, 9 Leonard, Leon D., 52 Leutenegger, Benedict, xi Liss, Henry, 5 2 Lucey, Archbishop Robert E., 27

labores delineation of, 14 desirability of, after secularization, 18, 19 mission requirements for, 29 land measurement units, 14 productivity of, 9 —10 landownership. See also secularization by Anglo-Americans, 20—24 changes in, after secularization,

McClellan, John S., 41 Margil de Jesus, Antonio, 3 Maynes, Father Francisco land grants to, 44 land speculation of, 26, 46, 50, 58 Mexico's national colonization law of 1824, 38 Miles, Edward, 41 mission churches, symbolism of, xiii, 57 missions. See also Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acufia; Nuestra Senora de los Dolores; Nuestra Senora del Refugio; Queretaran missions; San Antonio de Valero; San Francisco de la Espada; San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo; San Juan Capistrano; Zacatecan missions adverse conditions in, 2 and early missionization attempts, 53 land requirements for, 29 map of, 5 preservation of, 59 and presidios, 1, 2 - 3 royal support for, 2 sense of community imparted by, 57 sequence of development of, 2 urbanization of, effects of, 27—28, 42 urban setting for, 54, 56 Mitchell, Asa, 22, 24 Monte Galvan (rancho), 32, 37 Montes, Juan, 39, 47 Musquiz, Ramon, 21

17-18 communal, by Indians, 17 court-related transactions or disputes of, 21 — 22 loss of, by Hispanics after secularization, 2 0 - 2 1 and principle of entail, 3 8 - 3 9 by royal grant, 17 and supervision in locus parentis, 17 land tenure exchange acquisition of mission lands by Catholic church, 2 4 - 2 8 and changing concepts of landownership, 1 7 - 1 9 and foundation of missions, 8 — 16 and landownership and riparian rights, 19—24 legal basis of, 9 transfer of Queretaran missions to Zacatecan control, 1 6 - 1 7 Lara, Ignacio (Guillermo), 26 Leal, Jose Ramon, 51 legislation granting use and ownership of mission land to Catholic church, 24—25, 40, 57

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Oconor, Gov. Hugo, 16 Odin, Bishop John Marie land dealings of, 21, 26, 41 supervision of church properties

Navarro, Jose Angel, 41 Neraz, Bishop John C. preservation of mission lands by, 46-47 sale of mission lands by, 25, 26, 41 New Mexico colonization of, 1 termination of missions in, 19 Notre Dame University, acquisition of title to Mission San Jose, 26,

by, 2 4 - 2 5

Olivares, Fray Antonio and founding of San Antonio de Valero, 3 and husbandry of land resources, 9—10

Olivas, Sabino, 52 O'Rourke, Thomas Patrick, xi Ortiz, Friar Francisco Xavier de, 6,

41

Nuestra Senora de la Bahia del Espiritu Santo, 24 Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuiia acequia road and, 22 acequia system of, 13, 14, 3 6 - 3 7 alienation of lands at, 38, 39 buildings and plaza of, 26, 3 2, 3 4 - 3 5 , 36, 37 founding of, 4 included in San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, xii inventory of 1772, 32, 34 inventory of 1794, 34 land grants, 56 Jose Antonio Huizar obtains, 34-35 transferred to Catholic church,

Our Catholic Heritage in Texas (Castafieda), xi Ozuna, Hortensia, 26 Padilla, Jose, 41 Paez Colomo, Nicolas, 51 El Pasthle (rancho), 37 Patronato Real, 1, 8 - 9 , 53 Payan, Carmelio, 52 Payne, E. G., 47, 52 Pellicer, Bishop Anthony D., 25 plaza, description of, 14 Plaza del Alamo decrease in number of Hispanic property owners at, 21 sale of property at, 25 San Antonio attempts to claim, 25 speculators and, 18 Poor, David Morrill, 42 presidios. See also San Antonio de Bexar inspections of, 1724-1768, 6 map of, 5 and missions, 1, 2 - 3 Pyron, Charles, 42, 52

24

land transfers of, through courtrelated transactions or disputes, 21—22

public demand on resources of, 39-40 ranchos of El Pasthle (or Paistle), 37 Rancho del Rio Atascoso, 42 sale of rocks from, 3 9 - 4 0 secularization of, 7 as target of speculators, 19 urbanization effects on, 27 Nuestra Senora de los Dolores, suppression of, 12, 54 Nuestra Senora del Refugio, 24 Nunez de Haro, Miguel, 3

Queretaran missionaries. See also Franciscan missionaries inventory by, 29 Queretaran missions founding of, 3 inspection of, 15

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San Antonio de Valero, xii, xiii alienation of lands at, 3 8 buildings of, 10, 30, 31 under custody of Daughters of the Republic of Texas, xii founding of, 3, 10, 53 inspection of, 12 pastoral and agricultural lands of,

inventories of, 6 relocation of, 4 transfer of administration of, to Zacatecans, 6, 12, 1 6 - 1 7 , 54, 55 Ramirez de Zambrano, Juan, 41 rancho, 15, 2.9 delineation of, 14 ranchos Monte Galvan, 32, 37 El Pasthle (or Paistle), 37 Rancho de las Cabras, 32, 50 Rancho del Rio Atascoso, 42 Rancho de Pataquilla, 46 Rancho la Mora (or Las Moras), 32 records of assessment. See inventories Republic of Texas Anglo-American settlers in San Antonio in, 20 legislation granting use of mission land to Catholic church in,

3i

public demand on resources of, 39 ranchos of, 32, 37 sale of, by Claude Dubuis, 25, 40 sale of stones from, 39 secularization of, 6, 1 7 - 1 8 , 56 urbanization and, 27, 56 water system of, 14 San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, 29 legislation creating, xi Sandoval, Jose de, 47, 51 San Fernando church, San Antonio, 7 San Francisco de la Espada acequia system of, 13, 4 9 - 5 0 , 51 agricultural fields of, 49 appraisal of houses at, 6 8 - 6 9 buildings of, 4 7 - 4 8 , 50 establishment of, 4 Father Bouchu acquires land at,

24-25

riparian rights. See also water rights and distribution at San Antonio de Valero, 10 at San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, 41 Rivera, Gen. Pedro de, 6, 12, 13, 54 Rodriguez, Ambrocio, 39 Rodriguez, Manuel, 51 Rodriguez, Capt. Mariano, 22, 44 Rubi, Marques de, 6 Ruiz, Col. Francisco, 26, 40 Ruiz, Tiburcio, 39

26-27

included in San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, xii land grants of registry of, 71 after secularization, 51, 56, 58 transferred to Catholic church,24 Rancho de las Cabras of, 50 secularization of, 7 summary of purchases of, 70 San Francisco de los Tejas, founding of, 9 San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, 16 acequia system of, 13 founding of, 3, 12, 54 as included in San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, xii

St. Anthony of Padua, 9 San Antonio Anglo-American settlers in, 20 justice in, 20 and title to Alamo land, 25 San Antonio de Bexar Canary Islands immigrants and, 4 founding of, 3, 10, 53

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and land distribution at San Francisco de la Espada, 51 and land distribution at San Juan Capistrano, 44 loss of landownership after by Hispanics, 2 0 - 2 1 by Indians, 3 8 - 3 9 of Nuestra Seiiora de la Purisima Conception de Acufia, 7 property rights of Indians after, 17-18 of San Antonio de Valero, 6, 1 7 - 1 8 , 56 of San Francisco de la Espada, 7, 51, 56, 58 of San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, 7, 4 0 - 4 2 of San Juan Capistrano, 44, 56, 66 Seguin, Juan N., 39 Sevillano Paredes, Friar Miguel,

inspection of, 16 land grants of, 56 registry of, 60 after secularization, 4 0 - 4 2 transferred to Catholic church, 24 secularization of, 7 land grants after, 4 0 - 4 2 riparian rights after, 41 transfer of northern labores of, 26 urbanization and, 27, 42 San Juan Capistrano acequia system of, 13, 47 appraisal of houses and outer walls of, 61 — 63 buildings of, 4 2 - 4 3 , 44, 46 founding of, by military, 4 as included in San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, xii land grants of, 5 8 distribution of, after secularization, 44, 56 registry of, 65 at secularized mission, 66 summary of, 64 transferred to Catholic church,

6, 12

Shaw, Bishop John W., 26 Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, 26, 41 sitio de ganado mayor, 14, 15 sitio de ganado menor, 14 Small, William, 47

Smith, John W., 39

24

Society of Mary, 26 solares, 13, 14 Solfs, Father Gaspar Jose de, 6, 16 Sons of the Republic of Texas, xii Sorin, Very Reverend Edward, 41 Spanish colonial empire, 1. See also acto de posesion Bourbon Reformers and, 76 n.30 France's rivalry with, 3 missionaries' tenure in, 2 sovereignty of, 8, 9, 53 street and road names, 24, 28, 42 Struve, Henry, 52 suertes, 13, 15. See also water rights and distribution

land sales near, 26 Rancho de Pataquilla of, 46 secularization of, 7 summary of purchases, 6j transfer of properties from, 46-47 Santa Cruz. See Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro Saucedo, Jose Antonio, 46, 5 0 - 5 1 secularization, 6—j, $6 acequia system after, 40, 58 and alienation of mission lands, 37-39 changing landownership after, xiii, 1 7 - 1 8 , 5 7 - 5 8 decrees, 18, 19, 20, ^6 labores, desirability of, after, 18, 19

tax imposed on livestock, 5 5 - 5 6 Tejanos, 20—21

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Walton, A. Y., 52 water rights and distribution, 1 3 14. See also acequia system; riparian rights acquisition of, by Anglo-Americans, 2 0 - 2 4 conflicts involving, 13 — 14

Tejas Indians, 9 Teran de los Rios, Gov. Domingo, 9 Tinsley, James William, 47 Trejo, Agapito, 41 Trevino, Capt. Alexandro, 46 Truehart, James, 51 urbanization, and mission system, 2 7 - 2 8 , 42, 54, 56 Urena, Jose Maria, 41

Ximenez, Luisa, 44 Ximenez, Teresa, 44 Yturri Castillo, Manuel estate of, 22 land grant of, 39

Valdez, Father Jose Antonio, 39 Valdez, Capt. Juan, 3 vecinos loss of lands of, after secularization, 3 8 - 3 9 property rights of, after secularization, 17-18 Veramendi, Marcos A., 41 Veramendi de Sierra, Maria A., 41 Villemain, Celestin, 26, 47 visitas. See inspections of missions and presidios

Zacatecan missionaries, 15. See also Franciscan missionaries assumption of management by, for Queretaran missions, 6, 12, 1 6 - 1 7 , 54, 55 Zacatecan missions founding of, 3 inspection of, 16

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