Texas for hundreds of years prior.
Little is recorded about local life in 1725 Viceregal San Antonio. One inhabitant at Mission San Antonio de Valero in 1725, Father José González, argued with the captain of the Presidio of San Antonio de Bejár over the treatment of the Apaches. “…overcome by his desires of peace with the Apaches1”, González was recalled to Querétaro, but never made it; reports say he “perished on the road.2” Another inhabitant, Father Francisco Hidalgo “grieved to see the repeated slaughter which resulted from the war with the Apaches3” and sought permission to evangelize the Apaches. His request denied, he left San Antonio dejected only to die a year later, heartbroken.
1. Weddle, Robert S. San Juan Bautista; Gateway to Spanish Texas. University of Texas Press, 1968, 156-157.
2. Castañeda, Carlos Eduardo. The Mission Era …: by Carlos E. Castañeda, .. Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1936, 253.
3. Weddle, Robert S. The San Sabá Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas. Texas A&M University Press College Station, 1999, 3.
1726 Cody Vance
Deep bas relief depicting the story of forced interaction between the indigenous tribes of the area, Spaniard explorers and the beginning construction of the Catholic mission settlements.
1727 Mira Hnatyshyn
The year 1727 represented a lull in fighting between Native Americans and Spanish colonialists as they began construction of a 2 ½-mile irrigation canal that would one day feed San Antonio. The King of Spain offered free land to subjects willing to live in this harsh new world and several hundred answered the call, including a contingent of Canary Islanders. Once here, they either converted or enslaved Native Americans from several tribes, but were disappointed with both the quality and effort of their labors. Death and starvation were common, and some Islanders literally went native, “marrying” into the tribes and gradually forging a new identity. So, the circle of life repeated itself, with the unspoken struggles of women forming the beginning of an enduring community, which developed through cycles of boom and bust that persist to this day.
1728 Christopher Martinez
Christopher “Rooster” Martinez is a spoken word poet and educator from San Antonio, TX. He is a graduate student at OLLU’s MA/MFA program in Creative Writing, Literature and Social Justice. Christopher is an organizer with Fresh Ink Youth Slam and co-founded the Blah Poetry Spot. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Button Poetry, The Huffington Post Latino Voices, the Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pilgrimage Press, and Sagebrush Review.
Ten-Years-Young is a performance poem which interweaves the narrative of early, San Antonio history with the San Anto touchstone of blended cultural identities during those early years. The poem will address early-Spanish and Catholic influences, reference early settlements and construction that took place from the city’s inception, and present the Indigenous populations and the religious indoctrination which took place. The poem seeks to balance the early mestizaje historia of the city by being fair to both the light and dark cultural histories imbedded in blood and soul of San Antonio. Christopher believes poetry is the result of a thorough meditation of the light and heavy aspects of life, history, and culture, and where they intersect.
1729 Mari Hernandez
1730 Ervin Raska
1731 Henry Cardenas
Armed with a decree from Spain’s King Philip V, 56 settlers from the Canary Islands arrived in the Presidio de San Antonio on March 9, 1731. This band of exhausted immigrants traveled across the ocean to Havana, Veracruz, then onward to Texas to begin a new life. They joined the military community established in 1718. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Bexar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. These brave men and women brought their customs, dress, and foods. My painting depicts their traditional dress.
1732 Laura Mijangos
In 1732 there were several groups of people congregating in the San Antonio area-there was the native Caldoan tribe, who we