The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 17, July 1913 - April, 1914 Page: 326
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The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
were relatively unimportant, for they were more far-reaching in
design, longer in duration, and more successful in operation than
the San Saba mission, for example, of which much more is popu-
larly known. Nor has the reason been the non-existence of data
for making the episode fairly plain, for these are abundant. It
has been, rather, the inaccessibility of the data, and the fact that
considerable material remains of the San Sab4 mission have been
preserved, whereas those of the San Xavier River have been com-
pletely lost to view. Recently, however, a large quantity of docu-
mentary sources for the history of the missions on the San Gabriel
has been gathered from the archives of Mexico,7 and the site of
the missions and some of their remains have been identified. It
is now possible, therefore, to construct with some degree of ful-
ness, on the basis of the newly acquired material and a study of
the site, the story of the precarious career of these shortlived but
not unimportant missions.
2. The genesis of missionary activity in Texas.-One fact
which appears from a study of missionary activities in Texas in
the light of the distribution and organization of the native tribes,
is that mission development was not haphazard, but bore pretty
definite relations to the tribal grouping. The opinion sometimes
expressed that the Spaniards set out from the first arbitrarily to
establish a "chain of missions" in Texas, is in the main unfounded.
Mission distribution was conditioned, as we would expect upon
reflection, by native organization, and the practicability of such a
plan would depend largely upon the distribution of the native
tribes.
The first group of Indians in Texas to receive serious attention
from the missionaries were the Hasinai, or Asinai, of the Neches-
Angelina country, among whom missionary activity was begun in
1690, and renewed and extended in 1716. About 1700, with the
establishment of three missions on the lower Rio Grande, below
the present Eagle Pass, work was begun among the large group
of Coahuiltecan, or Pakwan tribes, who lived between the Rio
Grande and the San Antonio. This enterprise led logically to the
founding of missions at San Antonio, for the same group of tribes
'The larger part of them come from the archives of the extinguished
College of Santa Cruz de Queretaro, which founded the missions and where
they were discovered by the present writer. Specific references to the
materials are given throughout this paper.326
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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/m1/332/: accessed May 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.