The History of Texas. Robert A. Calvert

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2 Spaniards in a Far Northern Frontera, 1721–1821

      The king’s plans to solidify control of New Spain’s Far North do not fully account for the development of Spanish settlements in Texas. Although the new communities may have acted as buffers against possible French and British incursions into the province, other motives prompted frontierspeople to make their way into the Far North. The expanding frontera (frontier) gave some an outlet for escape–from natural disasters, ecological hardships, or unemployment in another province of New Spain. In addition, pulling up roots offered common folks restrained by ethnic prejudice a fresh start, for social distinctions tended to blur on the frontera. Frontier living also gave respite from oppressive taxation and miscellaneous duties imposed on the lower classes in some well‐established communities. Moreover, the cattle and mining industries that thrust outwardly from New Spain held out the prospects of improvement through gainful employment. The northern lands even extended the possibility of achieving a livelihood in landholding or some modest business venture. Finally, unsavory types visualized the frontier as a wide‐open place in which to escape the authorities and continue to engage in smuggling and banditry.

      Such motives have propelled migratory movements in other places and times, and they played themselves out in New Spain. By no means, however, did pobladores inundate Texas. Several factors explain why the migrational flow northward never swelled beyond a trickle. Epidemic diseases had so severely reduced New Spain’s population in the sixteenth century that the overcrowding pressures that generally uproot people did not build for quite some time thereafter. Even in the early eighteenth century, European immigration was so slight that few people already in New Spain felt crowded enough to brave adventure by relocating to the unknown hinterlands. Landowners in New Spain, furthermore, faced a severely reduced labor supply and fought hard to retain control of their workers. In addition, concerted efforts by royal officials to populate Texas entered a lull during the last half of the eighteenth century. After Spain acquired Louisiana in November 1762, Texas no longer had to serve as a frontier defensive outpost. Accordingly, the Crown shifted its concerns to other, more pressing problems.

At the same time, Texas was hardly a place with many immigrational “pull” factors. The region lacked an infrastructure, hostile Indian tribes threatened the lives of many settlers, and fruitless searches had convinced people that no great deposits of precious metals lay in the land to fulfill their hopes. Indeed, at the close of the eighteenth century, Texas remained one of the least‐inhabited territories of New Spain.

      Never, however, did isolation degenerate into imperial neglect. Orders from the viceroy and lesser officials filtered down systematically to colonial officials, primarily the governor of the province. As the king’s appointee, the governor (his assignment was to reside in the presidio of Los Adaes, but he sometimes took up residence in Béxar) held a range of duties that included overseeing the military, dealing with the Indians, and tending to law enforcement and various other civic affairs. Settlers were expected to abide by the governor’s commands, benign neglect permitted Tejanos (Mexicans living in Texas) to carry out the Crown’s directives in their own way, modifying royal mandates to meet the demands of frontier life. Therefore, society in Spanish Texas emerged as a compromise between policy prescribed by imperial and national goals and the survival instincts that served the colonists trying to build decent lives in an uncompromising land.

      After the 1730s, the Spanish Crown made no concerted effort to recruit and dispatch new settlers to Texas. Population increases in the province derived instead from the voluntary arrival of more settlers (and the periodic assignment of soldiers to the province), most of whom arrived from Coahuila and Nuevo León. On the frontier, the newcomers joined their predecessors in a process of demographic change, cultural growth, and economic activity revolving around the centers of socialization: the missions, presidios, ranchos, and civilian settlements.

Frontier Institutions

      Missions

In the Far North, Catholicism remained the sole religion, disseminated by missionaries belonging to ecclesiastical orders (regular clergy) who labored both for the Crown and the Church in the tradition of the patronato real. The king provided the clergymen with government subsidies; the priests reimbursed the monarch by guarding the frontier line and ministering to the un‐Christianized Indian flocks, whom the king wanted brought into “civilized life.” In such an accord, the king retained title to the plots of land upon which the friars (also known as fathers, or padres) built their missions. The Church, in turn, owned the mission compounds, which comprised the structures the friars erected, the surrounding gardens, the mission pasturelands and livestock, and the campo santo (holy burial ground). In the mission compound, the friars introduced the Indians to Christianity and instructed them in “acceptable” behavior, using the Indians’ own language at first before gradually switching to Spanish. The friars held their charges to a rigid routine that included daily mass, the recitation of prayer and the rosary, as well as lessons on the mysteries of the holy faith. The friars also forced the Indians into assisting with the maintenance of the mission: men worked the fields or tended to the livestock, while women spun cotton or wool and made clothes. The friars often used corporal punishment–involving the lash, torture, or other abusive practices–to enforce religious and temporal responsibilities. Once the so‐called neophytes had been deculturized and converted into faithful subjects (and, incidentally, tax‐paying citizens), the state‐subsidized missionaries left for new grounds, turning responsibilities for the preservation of the faith over to parish priests (secular clergy). Figure 2.1 shows the frontier institutions in Texas.

Figure 2.1 Frontier institutions in Texas.

      For the gente de razón (literally translated as “the people of reason” but meaning members of Spanish colonial society), the missions also served as surrogate agencies that administered religious rites, the friars tending to the people at baptism, marriage, and death. СКАЧАТЬ