DESCENDANTS OF PRESIDIO
Real Presidio de San Saba offers clues to a fascinating history of the clash of cultures on the Texas frontier in the 1700s.
Written by Kippra D. Hopper
What is buried at Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas, later called Real Presidio de San Saba, offers clues to a fascinating history of the clash of cultures on the Texas frontier in the 1700s. During a Texas Tech University archeological excavation, several seventh-generation descendants of that conflict between Spaniards and Native Americans came together to see for themselves the sacred site of their ancestors' encounter with one another.
During the summer of 2000, Grant Hall, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at Texas Tech, led his 10th archeological field school at Presidio San Saba. Hall and his 22 students surveyed the military post that was established by the Spaniards in 1757 along the banks of the San Saba River near present-day Menard in the Hill Country of Texas, built to protect a mission four miles down river.
The presidio and the Mission Santa Cruz de San Saba were constructed as an attempt to pacify the Lipan Apaches who had been troublesome to the Spaniards in the unsettled region. Within 10 months of its settlement, in 1758, a force of more than 2,000 Comanches, Tejas, Bidais and Tonkawas attacked the mission. The Native Americans killed two of the Catholic priests and six other Spaniards before completely burning down all of the mission's structures. In the violent episode, 17 Native Americans also were killed. In 1994, Hall and other researchers discovered the site of what had been called the "missing mission of Texas" in an alfalfa field outside Menard (See "The Mission of Juan Leal," VISTAS, Spring 1994). The researchers say a predominant theory about the assault maintains that the Comanches and their band of allies were retaliating against the Apaches and believed the Spaniards were protecting their longtime enemies.
Both the presidio and the mission sites are especially important because the presidio was the largest in Texas and served as a base for exploration of the surrounding unknown territory. The Spaniards believed that valuable mineral deposits lay in the hills along the nearby Llano River. The establishment of the mission and the presidio were the farthest north the Spanish ventured in Central Texas, due to the strength of the Comanche in that direction. King Charles III ordered the presidio closed in his decree of reorganization of the frontier in 1772. The massacre at the mission on the San Saba and the subsequent Spanish defeat in a retaliatory expedition at the Red River marked the end to Spain's dreams of conquest and conversion on their northern frontier in the New World.
"Presidio San Saba is the only Spanish Colonial-era fort on the Texas Forts Trail and has a lot more color and drama to it than a lot of other Texas forts do. These people were literally on the frontier, deep in Apache and Comanche territory. The Spanish had closed down missions and forts in East Texas and were retreating to this presidio. A lot of the equipment and personnel that were in East Texas came back to San Saba, so we've got fascinating material. We have found an amalgam of cooking ware and personal possessions that those people had," Hall said.
An inventory of what Hall and his students have found so far includes a stone maul, used for pounding; gun flints, used to make the spark for a musket; a knife blade; musket balls; a horse bit and bridle parts made of iron; shards of Majolica; a small ceramic cross; animal bones; an arrowpoint made of glass; a lead seal to mark a shipment of goods; and a metal decoration for the wooden part of a musket.
Hall hopes for further investigation and eventual reconstruction of the presidio. The Works Progress Administration restored the crumbling remains of the presidio in 1936, though not exactly to the specifications of the original structure. After more than 60 years, the WPA buildings have themselves now fallen into partial ruin. Future Texas Tech field schools will be focused on further excavation of the site. Hall said the students, who camped for five weeks in primitive sites on a private ranch on the San Saba River, not only learned archeological knowledge, skills, methods and techniques, they also gained self-confidence from living in a camp with one another.
Contributing to important archeological scholarship, Hall and his students also were privileged to witness an historical meeting of seventh-generation descendants of the Spaniards and Lipan Apaches. Mark Wolf, an architect from San Antonio who was involved previously in the discovery of the mission, is related to a Spaniard named Juan Leal who survived the massacre and who was a civilian servant for Father Alonso Giraldo de Terreros, one of the priests killed at the mission. An interest in the site and history itself reunited Wolf and another descendant of the massacre, Juan Terreros, currently the minister for cultural affairs for the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C. Terreros is related to Father Terreros and to Don Pedro Romero de Terreros, the industrialist from Mexico City who funded the establishment of the mission. Daniel Castro Romero, a Lipan Apache representative, also visited the site, bringing an ancient peace pipe with him to honor the occasion.
The excavation and the meeting of the descendants were very symbolic, Castro Romero said. "We're all looking forward to the day where the true history of this area will come to light. The excavation adds to the richness of our people. It brings a lot of happiness to us and to our people, knowing that things are coming full circle. Today we had a combination of seven generations of representatives of the Spanish and the Lipans."
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