The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 17, July 1913 - April, 1914 Page: 325
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The Founding of Missions on San Gabriel River
even mentioned their names."' And Bancroft, he might have
added, devotes to them only a little more than a page. Besides
Bancroft, Dr. McCaleb should have excepted Shea, who devotes
a few short paragraphs to the subject.2 Had the assertion been
intended to include books printed in a foreign language it would
have excepted, also, Arrivicita's Cr6nica Serdfica y Apost6lica,a a
very rare work, which contains a fairly good, though in many re-
spects unsatisfactory, account of the missions, in whose founding
and administration the author took part. Arricivita's worst de-
fect is his utter disregard for chronology and geography. There
is, in addition, the still rarer treatise, for it is as yet unprinted,
by Father Morfi, which devotes a considerable amount of space to
the San Xavier missions. This history and that of Arricivita are
the chief basis of the brief and obscure paragraphs of Bancroft
and Shea.'
Since Dr. McCaleb wrote the words quoted, no advance has been
made in published works, excepting a minor contribution by the
present writer.' At the time when that was published, only Ban-
croft had even dared guess the identity of the San Xavier River,
on which the missions were established. He conjectured that it
might have been a branch of either the Colorado or the Brazos,
a guess giving considerable latitude, since these streams are from
fifty to seventy-five miles apart in their middle courses.6 Other
features of the history of the missions have been equally or more
obscure. Indeed, even the date of their establishment has not
hitherto been correctly recorded.
And yet the reason for this obscurity is not that the missions
"THE QUARTERLY, I, 221.
2See Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days (1886), 500-501;
Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, I, 623 (ed. of 1884).
'Mexico, 1792. Pp. 321-338.
4Morfi, Memorias para la Historia de Tejas, cir. 1781. A copy is in the
Bancroft Library, and is now being edited for publication.
'The reference is to the article by the present writer entitled "Spanish
Missions in the San Gabriel Valley" published in the Williamson County
Sun, -March 21, 1907. This article correctly identifies the site of the mis-
sions and gives a general .outline of their history, but it contains some
errors and is indefinite at points where definite information is now at
hand. The same article was published 'contemporaneously in the Rockdale
Express. It was written for the purpose of arousing local interest in the
mission remains and obtaining local information concerning them.
6Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, I, 623.325
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 17, July 1913 - April, 1914, periodical, 1914; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101061/m1/331/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.