The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 5, July 1901 - April, 1902 Page: 101
370 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Pehalosa and the La Salle Expedition.
101
base for an expedition for the conquest of New Biscay, whenever
the king should desire it. The mines of this province, because of
the weakness of the armed forces and of the distance from the City
of Mexico whence help would be available, could be easily captured,
he said, by the filibusters composing his army, assisted by the In-
dians, mestizoes, mulattoes, and creoles, who were all bitterly
opposed to the yoke of Spain.
In January, 1684, shortly after La Salle's arrival in France,
Pefialosa submitted another memoir, which contained some modifi-
cation and amplification of his previous one. Instead of settling
at the mouth of Rio Bravo he offered to go straight to Panuco, and
with one thousand or twelve hundred filibusters from San Domingo
to seize the Spanish settlement there, and to proceed thence to the
capture of the entire province. The facility of the conquest and
the ease of maintaining it were plausibly set forth in much the
same terms as those in his first memoir. For the success of this
enterprise he asked for two vessels, one of thirty-six, the other of
thirty, guns, equipped with everything necessary for maintenance
and security. He further asked for two commissions, one for him-
self as governor of all the land he should conquer, the other for the
chief of the filibusters as king's lieutenant.
The correspondence in the two plans of La Salle and Pefialosa,
the adaptability with which they would lend themselves to co-opera-
tion, and stray references forcedly misinterpreted or unduly magni-
fied in importance, have furnished foundation for the theory that
the two proposals were combined by the government, that La Salle
was dispatched first to execute his part of the scheme, and that the
failure of Pefialosa to co-operate was due to the peace of Ratisbon
concluded between France and Spain, August 15, 1685.' Shea in
behalf of this theory goes so far as to contend that La Salle went
designedly past the mouth of the Mississippi and landed in the
region now known as Texas in order to establish there a base of
operations.2 Such a theory explains away some of the difficulties
connected with the subject of the expedition, and apparently its ad-
vantage in this respect alone has commended it to some historians ;3
'Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, 309.
2Shea, Peialosa's Quivira Expedition, Introd., p. 22.
8Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, 309.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 5, July 1901 - April, 1902, periodical, 1902; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101021/m1/107/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.