Franciscan Missions Along the Coahuila-Texas Corridor

Abstract

The introduction of frontier missions as humanitarian agencies for converting and assimilating indigenous cultures into the mainline society distinguished the Spanish colonial experience in North America from the historical record of other European nations. Among ecclesiastical communities of religious men, the Franciscan missionaries achieved notable distinction for their apostolic work in the Spanish Borderlands of North America. Their patient evangelization among the Coahuiltecan tribes of the Coahuila-Texas corridor represented a hallmark segment of an American saga. With the second wave of Spanish immigrants who followed Christopher Columbus to the Indies, Franciscan missionaries began their evangelization of indigenous cultures on the four principal islands in the Caribbean. Within one generation, Spanish explorers began probing Central America, culminating in 1521 with Hernan Cortes's conquest of Mexico. Shortly afterwards, twelve Franciscan friars arrived in the Valley of Mexico to convert the indigenous civilizations. In the first century of colonial experience, the missionaries applied the European model of conversion, namely the preaching of repentance and atonement through popular missions that did not require plazas and ancillary structures. The silver bonanza that began in earnest in 1549 in Zacatecas rapidly transformed the landscape of the central corridor of Mexico, leaving in its wake roads, mines, haciendas, towns, presidios, and missions. The success of silver mining and its attendant economic boom made possible the eventual occupation of New Mexico in 1598 at the northern end of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Meanwhile, along the eastern corridor, dominated by the Sierra Madre Oriental, frontier leaders and Franciscan missionaries in the second half of the 16th century gradually extended the line of colonization. Francisco de Urdinola the younger in 1576 settled sixty families at Saltillo, thus establishing a foundation for the subsequent development of Coahuila. Similarly, to the east, Luis de Carvajal founded Nuevo Leon in 1579, an enterprise that failed, causing government officials to appoint another leader, Luis de Montemayor, who renewed the colonial effort with the establishment of the town of Monterrey in 1596. In Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, Franciscan missionaries contributed to the eventual stability of the region. During the 17th century, Franciscans of the ecclesiastical Province of Jalisco (Guadalajara) joined military leaders in Coahuila in advancing the line of exploration to the Rio Grande. In 1675, a mutually supportive Bosque-Larios expedition traversed the Rio Grande in search of wilderness sites for future missions. By then, Coahuila emerged as a permanent frontier province. Concomitant with this