Write 2 paragraphs about the founding and failure of the East Texas mission.
Consider the following:
• why it was established
• the challenges it faced
Answers
Answer:
The Spanish royal administration closely coordinated all missionary activity in the New World. The intermingling of church and state was a legacy of Spain’s own long struggle to push Islam out of the Iberian Peninsula and to re-establish a homogeneous Christian faith and culture there. This experience of reconquest set the Spanish nation on a crusade for most of the rest of its history, combining all civil and religious activity into one.
In Texas, this meant that only rarely did missionaries venture into hinterlands without official authorization and without soldiers being stationed at nearby presidios for protection. This process of approving a new mission could be lengthy, sometimes beginning in Spain, but often determined by the viceroy in Mexico. The friars were almost always eager, but politics and financial restraints often created delays by the civil authorities. The establishment of the Texas missions, which were to total some 35, came in spurts, following the rhythm of the fortunes of Spain.
Map of Spanish mission sites in Texas
The locations of mission sites. Click to enlarge.
The Order of Friars Minor, known as the Franciscans, was founded by St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century. It was the Franciscans who were given responsibility for all the Texas missions. The first missionary journeys into Texas came from the west, where the Franciscans had begun evangelizing the Indian pueblos around Santa Fe soon after it was made the capital of New Mexico in 1610.
These earliest missions at San Angelo, El Paso and Presidio were directed from New Mexico, but later most of the Texas missions were directed from two conventos or colegios (colleges) of Franciscans in Mexico.
These two units of the order that had custody of the Texas missions were the College of Santa Cruz at Querétero and the College of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe at Zacatecas. Later, there were three missionaries from the College of San Fernando in Mexico City who served at the Apache missions on the San Saba River and the upper Nueces River.
This division of custody between the colleges of Querétero and Zacatecas was reflected in various decisions throughout the Texas mission history. For example, when the civil authorities removed the Presidio de los Dolores from East Texas (Nacogdoches County) in 1729, the Querétero Franciscans decided to remove their three missions from the area and eventually relocate them to San Antonio, while the nearby Zacatecas missions in Nacogdoches and San Augustine remained.
Besides providing protection for the Spanish missions and nearby settlements, the soldiers who lived at the presidios often became the source of trouble with the Indians and were often in conflict with the friars. Thus, there was a constant dilemma over whether to place the presidio close enough to the mission to provide quick response during attack or far enough away to keep the soldiers from harassing and aggravating the mission Indians.
The general purpose of the missions was to “reduce” or congregate the often nomadic tribes into a settlement, convert them to Christianity, and teach them crafts and agricultural techniques. Once these goals were met, the mission was to be “secularized”; that is, the church was to be turned over to the local bishop and administered by “secular” clergy (local priests not belonging to a religious order). The land was to be turned over to the Christianized Indians.
The Spanish civil authorities saw the missions and presidios as financial drains and were often the early proponents of shutting down the mission activities. Almost without exception, the decision to secularize was opposed by the friars. They felt the Indians were not sufficiently educated and would be taken advantage of by the authorities and the Spanish settlers. Thus, not until 1830 were the last missions in Texas secularized.
Early Evangelizing
The first mission in Texas was established in 1632 near present-day San Angelo. It was a follow-up effort to an initial 1629 missionary trip to the area at the request of the Jumano Indians, which was the first journey into Texas specifically for Christian evangelization. The Spanish Franciscans spent only a short time there in 1629 but promised to return. The 1632 mission existed for six months before it was abandoned because of its remoteness from the Franciscan home base in New Mexico.
This mission is believed to have been located near the confluence of the Concho River and the Colorado River, which was known as the Río San Clemente at that time. (Later, in 1684, another San Clemente mission was located in the same general area; see San Clemente section, following). Today, there is a small commemorative monument along the Concho River in the city of San Angelo.