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chapter two A City with a Long Past the name “nacogdoches” comes from the nacogdoche tribe of Hasinai Indians, who made their home on the present site of the city, between two creeks that run from north to south, the Banita and the Lanana. The tribe was one of eight in the Hasinai confederation of Caddoes, four of which lived in the area that became Nacogdoches County. Archaeological evidence, including a number of burial mounds, indicates there was a large Caddoan settlement in the thirteenth century near where downtown is now located, and there is evidence that Indians had settled in the area as early as the ninth century. Explorer Alonso De León apparently came through the village while on a mission in 1690 to discover how far the French had encroached on Spanish territory.1 In 1713 the French, intent on both Christianizing the Indians and establishing trade with them, sent Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, an inveterate adventurer, from Biloxi, Mississippi, through Louisiana to East Texas, with a load of merchandise, about two dozen white men, and “as many Indians as necessary.”2 Ostensibly, his mission was to find a Franciscan friar named Francisco Hidalgo, who had turned to France after Spain had spurned his efforts to establish missions deep in East Texas.3 St. Denis followed one narrow trail after another—trails already blazed by Indians and animals—through Nacogdoches and all the way to the Rio Grande on what later became known as the Camino Real or King’s Highway (also known as the Old San Antonio Road). The trail that St. Denis followed, created in part by Indians and animals, had been expanded by three previous expeditions: Alonso De León in 1690, Domingo Terán de los Ríos in 1691, and Gregorio de Salinas Varona in 1693 had built on earlier attempts to establish missions in East Texas, traveling from Monclova, Mexico (the first colonial capital of Texas). As one historian noted, it is more accurate to consider the Camino Real as a “network of trails.”4 As he traveled southwest from Nacogdoches, St. Denis visited a number of the abandoned missions that had been established by Father Damian Massanet in the late seventeenth century.5 A City with a Long Past { 7 After crossing the Sabine River, St. Denis and his party trekked for more than three weeks before reaching the first Tejas village, where some modest trading took place. But St. Denis vowed to push on, justifying his incursion into Spanish territory by the quest for Father Hidalgo and his desire to tell authorities that the Tejas Indians wanted the Spanish missionaries to return.6 St. Denis and his party arrived at the presidio of San Juan Bautista del Río Grande, near present-day Eagle Pass, in 1714, causing some consternation among government officials that a party of Frenchmen had traveled so deeply into New Spain. The commandant, Diego Ramón, concluded that St. Denis had violated the viceroy’s prohibition against foreign traders or merchandise entering the colony. Ramón put St. Denis under “arrest” in his own home and wrote the viceroy for instructions. While in such commodious custody, St. Denis fell in love with and received a promise of marriage from Manuela Sánchez, Ramón’s beautiful granddaughter.7 Ramón finally sent St. Denis under guard to Mexico City, where he again used his considerable powers of charm, this time on the viceroy, who not only freed St. Denis, but also appointed him commissary officer and guide for a new expedition into Texas. Thus, besides finding a new love, St. Denis found a new nation. He began working for the Spanish. As one writer put it, “St. Denis played an active part in establishing Spanish presence in East Texas, and his skill in Indian relations and willing cooperation with the padres made a favorable and lasting impression on them.”8 St. Denis returned to East Texas three years later with Domingo Ramón, a son of the commandant of San Juan Bautista, under orders to counteract attempts by the French to encroach into Texas from Louisiana . He eventually helped reestablish six missions along the Camino Real, including one at Nacogdoches, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Nacogdoches.9 That mission operated more or less continuously until 1772, when the Spanish decided to abandon all the East Texas missions and evict the settlers living near them. Few Indians were being converted, and...

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