The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 12, July 1908 - April, 1909 Page: 154
332 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
Vera Cruz; and that upon certain conditions he would undertake
to explore the whole coast from Tampico to Apalache and to pre-
pare a map of the Bay of Espiritu Santo and the rest of the coast.
A junta de guerra accepted the proposal, and on the 2d of August
the king ordered the governor of Florida to cooperate with Echa-
garay. At the same time he repeated the request for a report from
the viceroy, "in order that from all directions may be had the
desired notices with respect to all the foregoing, for the greater
security and certainty of the achievement of the discovery of the
said Bay of Espiritu Santo and the kingdoms of Quivira and
Tagago, and of their settlement and conservation, in order by this
means to make the said provinces of Florida secure from the
menaces in which they stand from the corsairs and pirates who
commonly infest those coasts."'
The interesting thing about this document is the fact that the
only specific motives given for desiring the report by the viceroy
are those set forth in the former cedula. Whatever connection
there may have been, if any, between the proposal of Echagaray
and news of the La Salle expedition does not appear. So far as
we learn, Echagaray was not ordered to look for any party of
Frenchmen, but to map out the coast, and, particularly, the Bay
of Espiritu Santo, while the viceroy was, as before, ordered to re-
port upon the advisability of occupying that bay and converting
the Quiviras and Tagagos. No mention is made of the La Salle
expedition, of which the authorities in Mexico had known for
some time. Indeed, the repetition of the cedula of 1678 would
seem to indicate that it was the activities of Pefialosa and not a
later expedition that the king still had especially in mind as the
cause for anxiety. How this may be, other documents not yet
discovered may make clear. At any rate, in the light of these
cedulas, the Spanish activities in Texas following the La Salle
expedition appear as a less sudden development than they have
hitherto seemed. In their light, moreover, some statements
about the preliminary search. by land for the Bay of Espiritu
Santo, which has been interpreted to mean specifically or even
solely a search for the La Salle party, take on a new meaning.2
'Reales ddulas, Vol. XX, folios 272-276.
'See letter of Massanet, in THE QUARTERLY, II, and Dr. Clark's paper,
p. 15.154
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 12, July 1908 - April, 1909, periodical, 1909; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101048/m1/172/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.