The Misplacement of Mission San Francisco de los Tejas in Eastern Texas and Its Actual Location at San Pedro de los Nabedaches

1930s reconstruction of Mission San Francisco de los Tejas near Weches, Texas. This photograph was taken October 27, 1958, by Robert M. Utley. Image retrieved from the Portal to Texas History, University of North Texas Libraries (http://texashistory.unt.edu/) and used by permission of the Texas Historical Commission.

Twenty miles northeast of Crockett on State Highway 21, a route that roughly parallels the Camino Real of late colonial Texas, a sign directs the traveler toward a short road to Mission Tejas State Park. A representative structure there, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and dedicated in July 1935, was long purported to be the location of Mission San Francisco de los Tejas.¹

This research note offers archival evidence that the actual site for the first Spanish mission in Texas was about five miles west of the state park amidst a large Indian settlement named San Pedro de los Nabedaches by Spaniards in the early eighteenth century. The mission and Nabedache town were located thirteen to fourteen leagues (approximately thirty-four to thirty-six miles) east of the Trinity River and some four leagues (about ten miles) west of the Neches River in northeastern present-day Houston County.²

The Nabedache settlement entered recorded history in the early 1540s when a large company of Spaniards under the leadership of Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, having failed to find a path from the Mississippi River to Mexico, found sustenance there. The Spaniards were survivors of the ill-fated Hernando de Soto expedition. They, along with their Indian slaves loaded with ears of corn taken from the Nabedaches, were retracing their route to the Mississippi.³

A century and a half later at that same site, the Nabedaches—the western-most of the Hasinai of the Southern Caddos—provided succor to a small party of Frenchmen from René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle’s colony near the Texas coast, which had stopped at the Indian settlement before continuing on in search of the Mississippi River. By then, La Salle had been killed along with several of his partisans, but that did not end the violence of Frenchman toward Frenchman. Near the Nabedache town, two others were shot dead due to festering animosities and buried together. Their grave lies in close proximity to what would become the site of Mission San Francisco de los Tejas.⁴

As a direct response to the French intrusion into Texas, General Alonso de León and fray Damián Massanet led the 1690 expedition that founded Mission San Francisco. Their undertaking was hastened by a highly inaccurate account carried into Coahuila by a Mescal Indian returning from Hasinai country, who reported that eighteen Frenchmen had entered Caddo lands from the east.⁵ En route, the León-Massanet entrada encountered two French youths, survivors from La Salle’s Texas colony, who led them to the Nabedache villa, as labeled by Spaniards, near the Neches River.⁶ Instead of pursuing possible French intruders to the east, León thought it prudent to establish a mission outpost, which would lay Spanish claim to the region and begin the religious conversion of the Nabedaches. The search for a mission site began immediately.

On Friday, May 26, 1690, León recorded, “I set out with the missionary fathers, some soldiers and others, and the said Indian governor, toward the northeast, to find the most suitable place to put the mission, and after seeing two small valleys, we came to where they told us two Frenchmen had died … and we saw the graves.” The troop then crossed a stream, later named San Pedro Creek, at or near the Indian villa, having traveled six leagues. From May 27 to May 31, work continued on the chapel and dwelling for the three Franciscan friars and three soldiers who would remain at Mission San Francisco de los Tejas. On the following afternoon...