The Mission Period

This region was inhabited from early times by native peoples including the Payayas, who lived along a river they called Yanaguana. On June 13, 1691, Franciscan Father Damián Massanet arrived and named the river San Antonio de Padua in honor of St. Anthony. In 1716, Captain Domingo Ramón and several missionaries camped at a nearby spring-fed creek he named San Pedro. On Ramón's recommendation, Spanish governor Martín de Alarcón and Franciscan Father Antonio Olivares, aided by friendly Xarame Indians, founded Mission San Antonio de Valero as a mud hut near San Pedro Springs on May 1, 1718, and four days later established the presidio San Antonio de Béjar and the town of Villa de Béjar along San Pedro Creek. The mission moved to the east bank of the San Antonio River in 1719, where a stone tower was later destroyed in a storm, and its present site was chosen in 1724. Spain's drive to establish permanent settlements in Texas followed French exploration and La Salle's claim to the Mississippi River Valley in 1682 and later attempt to found a French colony in Texas. Mission San Antonio de Valero was named for the Viceroy of New Spain, while Béjar honored the Viceroy's brother, the Duque de Béjar. In 1720, Father Antonio Margil established Mission San José south of Villa de Béjar, and Spain went on to establish five missions, a presidio, and a town in the San Antonio river valley to convert Coahuiltecans and other native Texas Indians. Families from the Canary Islands later established the Villa de San Fernando de Béjar. Indian labor dug acequias from the San Antonio River over four years to irrigate mission fields through a gravity-flow system. By 1745, Mission San Antonio de Valero had become an organized community of skilled Coahuiltecan Indians living in adobe huts beside a two-story stone convento, with workshops, a granary, a textile shop, and a blacksmith shop. Stones for the first church had been laid on May 8, 1744, but the poorly built structure collapsed completely by 1756, when work began on the second stone church, the present historic Alamo Shrine. Although never completed during the mission period, San Antonio de Valero continued to grow in size and importance, but a 1778 decree by Teodoro de Croix appropriating unbranded cattle and charging fees on livestock dealings badly damaged mission wealth. By 1793, secularization had begun, San Antonio de Valero eventually ceased to function as a mission, its archives were transferred to San Fernando parish, and much of its property was distributed to Indians who continued to live nearby.

San Antonio, Texas · United States