Frenchman Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, arrived on Garcitas Creek in 1685 and established the first European settlement in Texas, but within four years all of his settlers were dead or scattered. News of the French incursion into Spanish territory set off a manhunt of eleven expeditions by land and sea to find and destroy the settlement. In April 1689 Alonzo De Leon found it, buried the settlers' skeletal remains, buried eight French cannons, sketched the site, and returned to New Spain, then came back a year later and burned all evidence of the French presence. In 1721 the first Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía Presidio was built atop the burned remains of La Salle's settlement, and the first Mission Nuestra Senora del Espíritu Santo de Zuniga was built across Garcitas Creek nearby. The presidio served as a fort where soldiers lived, patrolled the frontier, and protected the mission, while the mission was where priests lived, farmed, and converted local Indians to Catholicism. By 1725 both had moved to Tonkawa Bank in present day Riverside Park, and the presidio soon moved six miles up the east bank of the Guadalupe River. On Tonkawa Bank, where timber, stone, and water were more abundant, priests pursued plans to convert local Native Americans and raise crops, a stone mission complex was built, an earthen dam thirty feet high and ninety feet wide retained rainwater draining toward the river, and water from Spring Creek was diverted to irrigate crops planted along the river. The Aranamas were accommodating to the missionaries and the Catholic religion, and the Indians and Spanish Padres coexisted happily there, while soldiers at the presidio faced a hard ten-year commitment of daily patrols, monitoring Indian activity away from the mission, escorting supply caravans, and maintaining, enlarging, and repairing the mission complex, often with late pay. It soon became clear that more land was needed for the Padres' goals, and in 1726 the site was abandoned in favor of land near Mission Creek where more extensive farming could be done; that same year the mission moved eight miles above Victoria on the west side of the Guadalupe River, where it remained for the next twenty-three years.