Many Indians were swindled out of their land by Anglo immigrants and Tejanos, historians said. They received land grants called porciones via a lottery system called suertes, Spanish for luck.īy the early 1800s, the remaining Indians were part of the Tejano community, intermarrying. More civilians moved into the mission.īy 1793, the Spanish secularized Valero and awarded land, houses, farms and ranches to mission Indians and Tejanos. “From the very beginning, there were civilian and military assistants at the missions.”Īs the Indian population dwindled, missionaries became more dependent on civilian Tejano families to farm and ranch, de la Teja said. acted as guards, as trainers, foremen and taskmasters,” said historian Jesus F. Hispanic civilian residents at the missions along with soldiers from the presidio. “Contrary to popular belief, the missionaries did not teach the Indians all the various skills. Along with Tejanos, they built roads.Ī few, the youngest and brightest, were taught to sing, read and write, play musical instruments and serve at Masses. Indians worked as cowboys, farmers, blacksmiths, cooks, potters, weavers and stone masons. Some texts say the Indian population was 311 in 1745 and 328 in 1756. of UTSA said Valero had about 275 inhabitants. Priests appointed an Indian “town chief,” or gobernador, who helped missionaries govern.Īt its height in the 1750s to 1760s, historian Felix D. Mission Indians were assigned Spanish names at baptism, what Garay called the beginning of the end of their cultural identities. Missionaries, backed by Tejano soldier-settlers, offered Indians protection from hostile Apaches and Comanches and taught them to farm, the first steps to converting them. Valero, which had earlier starts before being established in its current spot in 1724, enjoyed an almost 70-year run. “By the 1700s, they had created a system of building what I call missionary-led Indian towns,” Hinojosa said.
They not only had experience in converting Indians in Central Mexico but had interacted with local Indinas since the late 1600s. Zavaleta of the University of Texas-Brownsville.
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“They knew exactly how to do it,” said anthropologist Antonio N. Historians agree on another point: Mission Indians came under the control of Franciscan missionaries who were exceptional planners. They relied on seasonal resources and fared well, said historian Gilberto Hinojosa of the University of the Incarnate Word, even in droughts.Īll of them spoke dialects of the Coahuiltecan language, said Richard Garay, a researcher and Coahuiltecan descendant who regards all such groups as Coahuiltecan. They lived in hundreds of small groups of extended families, not tribes. Historians may have varying views of the 13-day siege of the Alamo, but they agree that the hard work of building it was done by indigenous people - Indian hunters-gatherers who roamed the regions between the hill country and the coast for 12,000 years. The unfinished chapel, now an iconic symbol of Texas history, was just one of many buildings that stood just east of the San Antonio River on a compound that stretched out to fertile fields farther east and to two bustling cattle ranches 20 miles away.
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