Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory

6. “Countless Heathens”: Native Americans and the Spanish Missions of Southern Texas and Northeastern Coahuila

93 6 “Countless Heathens” Native Americans and the Spanish Missions of Southern Texas and Northeastern Coahuila Tamra L. Walter and Thomas R. Hester As the Spanish frontier advanced into the region of South Texas and northeastern Mexico, Franciscan missionaries encountered nomadic hunter and gatherer bands that they were eager to convert. Already feeling the effects of European-introduced diseases, Native groups were also coping with the additional pressure of displacement as Apachean groups moved in from the north and west. The establishment of missions near present-day Guerrero, Mexico , and the South Texas coastal plain resulted in sustained interaction between the Spanish and aboriginal groups. These missions were not only physically intrusive within the Native landscape but also culturally disruptive. The missions of northeastern Mexico, including San Juan Bautista, San Francisco Solano, and San Bernardo (figure 6.1), were strategically situated on the northern frontier where expeditions could easily cross into Spanish Texas. Representing access to the north, the Guerrero missions are known as the “Gateway Missions” (Eaton 1989; Weddle 1968). In addition to Spanish missions established in central and eastern Texas since the late seventeenth century (see chapter 4, this volume), several were also founded in South Texas. Among them, the San Antonio de Valero, San Juan Capistrano, San José, Concepción, Espíritu Santo, and Rosario missions were each built for the indigenous communities of the region (see figure 6.1). In the following discussion , however, particular attention is paid to the mission sites of San Bernardo and San Juan Bautista in northeastern Mexico and the final two locations of Espíritu Santo in South Texas. Extensive archaeological investigations were carried out in both areas, contributing to a better understanding of Spanish 94 External Connections and indigenous interactions. Ethnohistorical accounts of many of the groups residing at San Bernardo and San Juan Bautista also provide insight into the disruption of Native cultural patterns in the centuries after conquest. Just as chapter 5 in this volume notes the importance of acknowledging the dynamic and complex nature of contact and change for the Guale, we also attempt to examine the diverse South Texas groups through a similar lens. Specifically, attention is paid to the motivations that both attracted and repelled indigenous groups to the missions and how these motivations helped to define the mission experience. While numerous indigenous bands roamed South Texas and northeastern Mexico, we focus mainly on those groups affiliated with the Figure 6.1. Southern Texas in the Spanish colonial era (after Fox 1979): locations for most of the Spanish missions and presidios in Texas. The Gateway Missions, San Juan Bautista de Norte presidio, and the locations of Espíritu Santo de Zuñiga (41VT11) have darker shading. Map by Tsim D. Schneider. “Countless Heathens” 95 San Juan Bautista, San Bernardo, and Espíritu Santo missions. These groups reflect the unique and varied experiences that characterized mission life for many of the nomadic bands of the region. The Gateway Missions of San Juan Bautista and San Bernardo The middle Rio Grande region of the Texas-Mexico border and Coahuila is marked by a semiarid climate, broken from time to time by rainy periods and flash flooding. Today’s vegetation pattern of mesquite, acacia and other thorn brush, and prickly pear cactus is perhaps a bit thicker across the landscape than it was three hundred years ago, though the patterns are obscured by brush clearance and cattle grazing on the Texas side and by heavy overgrazing by goats on the Coahuila side. The terrain had an impressive array of dietary resources, though often discounted by present-day scholars. A variety of berries, nuts, seeds, roots, and tubers could be supplemented by whitetail deer, rabbits, snakes, turtles and terrapins, turkey, and occasionally bison, pronghorn, and black bear. Generations of Native American hunter-gatherers lived quite successfully in the region, organized as dozens of small bands with no broad tribal organization, and speaking one of the six or seven different languages recorded for the area (Hester 1998). The Spanish entered the middle Rio Grande in the 1680s to 1690s as expeditions led by Alonso De Leon looked for La Salle’s French colony on the Texas coast about 240 miles (349kilometers) to the east. The Spanish had established settlements, and a scattering of missions, to the west by the late 1570s. The missions were of variable accomplishment, some with success and others abandoned due to drought and raids...