the country along the Rio Grande. Don José de Escandón took charge of this expedition, and by the early 1750s he had colonized the south bank of the river and also planted the seeds of modern‐day Laredo, Texas. The lands of the lower Rio Grande Valley proved conducive to farming and ranching, and the region up to the Nueces River became pastureland for feral cattle and horses. The settling of this territory on both sides of the Rio Grande proved to be one of Spain’s most successful ventures in the Far North.
Church efforts to win converts also begot expansion, although attempts to broaden the mission system proved disappointing. In 1746, the Church established a mission (and the viceroy authorized the construction of a presidio in 1747) on the San Gabriel River (near present‐day Rockdale, Texas) to assist the Tonkawas, who were then being victimized by the Apaches and Comanches, and it added two more missions in the vicinity in 1749. But the Crown never fully attended to these assignments. Demoralization among the presidial soldiers and even the missionaries set in, and the Indians became dissatisfied due to what they felt was a lack of proper attention. The project on the San Gabriel thus died in 1755.
An attempt to convert the dreaded Apaches also failed. Since the establishment of the San Antonio complex, these Indians had made periodic attacks on the settlements there, but by the 1740s their own hostilities with the Comanches had made the Apaches receptive to an alliance with the Spaniards. In turn, attacks by the Comanches and their allies upon Spanish settlements prompted the Spanish to make appeals to the Apaches for mutual defense plans. Given this opportunity to Christianize the Apaches, the Spaniards in 1757 established a mission and fort along the San Sabá River (near modern‐day Menard, Texas); prospects of finding silver deposits also encouraged the enterprise. It did not last long. In March of 1758, a broad group of tribes allied against the Apaches (led by the Comanches) attacked the new mission and destroyed it completely. In addition, the Apaches showed indifference to the Spaniards’ proselytizing overtures. Following a series of futile attempts to carry out imperial and missionary objectives there, the viceroy abandoned the San Sabá enterprise in 1769.
Incorporation
What Spain sought by its efforts at settlement and missionization in Texas was the annexation of its far northern territory into the national core. Incorporation would involve transplanting the attributes of Spanish civilization to the frontier and ensuring the defense of the region from foreign threats by linking it to social and political systems in the interior of New Spain. Ideally, such a move would establish ties to the center of Spain’s New World empire, which would be maintained through the presidio, the mission, the rancho, and the villa, institutions that had been successful in the process of incorporating former frontier regions throughout New Spain. But, as in all such efforts, settling the periphery of the empire entailed dealing with the indigenous peoples, who by their numbers, military prowess, and economic and political support systems controlled all of Texas except for the San Antonio to La Bahía wedge.
Readings
Books
1 Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
2 Bannon, John Francis. The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.
3 Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
4 Carlson, Paul. The Plains Indians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.
5 Chipman, Donald E., and Harriett Denise Joseph. Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
6 ——— . Spanish Texas, 1519–1821, rev. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
7 Cruz, Gilbert R. Let There Be Towns: Spanish Municipal Origins in the American Southwest, 1610–1810. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988.
8 Driver, Harold E. Indians of North America, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
9 Hickerson, Nancy Parrott. The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
10 Jennings, Jesse. Prehistory of North America, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1974.
11 John, Elizabeth. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975.
12 La Vere, David. The Caddo Chiefdoms: Caddo Economics and Politics, 700–1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
13 ———. The Texas Indians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
14 Moorhead, Max L. The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.
15 Newcomb, William W., Jr. The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.
16 O’Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975.
17 Ricklis, Robert A. The Karankawa Indians of Texas: An Ecological Study of Cultural Tradition and Change. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
18 Smith, F. Todd. The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542–1854. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995.
19 Spencer, Robert E. et al. The Native Americans: Ethnology and Background of the North American Indians, 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
20 Wade, Maria F. The Native Americans of the Texas Edwards Plateau, 1582–1799. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
21 Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982.
22 Weddle, Robert S. The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
Article
1 Perttula, Timothy K. “How Texas Historians Write About the Pre‐AD 1685 Peoples of Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 115, no. 4 (April 2012): 364–76.
Bibliographies
1 Cruz, Gilberto Rafael, and James Arthur Irby. Texas Bibliography: A Manual on History Research Material. Austin: Eakin Press, 1982.
2 Cummins, Light Townsend, and Alvin R. BaileyJr. A Guide to the History of Texas. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.
3 Jenkins, John H. Basic Texas Books: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Works for a Research Library. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1988.
General reference books
1 Branda, Eldon S. Handbook of Texas, Vol. III. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1977.
2 The Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide. Dallas: The Dallas Morning News, published annually.
3 Tyler, Ron, ed. The New Handbook of Texas, 6 vols. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996.
4 Webb,
