A Spanish Borderlands Community

A Spanish Borderlands Community: San Antonio
Jesús F. de la Teja
Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History14 (Summer 2000). ISSN 0882-228XCopyright (c) 2000, Organization of American Historians

Far more significant for the development of the community were two other actions resulting from Rivera's inspection. The brigadier found that the plentiful agricultural and grazing land in the vicinity of San Antonio would prosper under more intensive cultivation, and he proposed to send twenty-five families to the area to start a civilian settlement. He also recommended that another Texas presidio, located in East Texas among the Tejas Indians (for whom the province was named), should be closed. Over the complaints of Franciscans, who rightly argued that without Presidio de los Tejas the local Indians would abandon the nearby missions, Rivera's recommendation was carried out in 1729. By 1731 three of those missions had relocated to the San Antonio River valley below the original settlement. Missions Purísima Concepción, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada, were the last missionary establishments on the upper San Antonio River and to this day remain, along with Mission San José, the most visible reminders of the Spanish presence in Texas.