Community Life at Mission Espada

Members of hunting and gathering tribes known collectively as Coahuiltecans found food and protection at Mission Espada in the 1700s. Daily life for those who chose to live there included instruction in language, religion, agriculture, building skills, milling, and weaving. Residents also cared for livestock and raised crops outside the protected compound. Many mission inhabitants eventually adopted the Spanish lifestyle and intermarried with the broader local population. When Espada's buildings and lands were distributed among the residents beginning in the 1790s, some families stayed to live and farm there. A tight-knit community developed around the mission during the 1800s, and while many families later sold their houses and fields, others passed them to successive generations. After Mission Espada was restored beginning in the 1880s, descendants of these early families continued to worship there and educate their children at the mission school. Though the school and small businesses that served the Espada community have now closed, the church remains an active parish and gathering place as it has for almost three hundred years.

San Antonio, Texas · United States