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Before battle, a mission era
By Elaine Ayala / email@example.com : March 3, 2011 : Updated: March 3, 2011 11:36pm
Long before Texian and Tejano revolutionaries made it famous, the site now known throughout the world as the Alamo was Misión San Antonio de Valero.
Its mission was to convert Indians to Christianity and colonize New Spain.
The unfinished church, now an iconic symbol of Texas history, was one of several structures that stood just east of the San Antonio River on a compound that stretched out to fertile fields eastward and farther to two bustling cattle ranches 20 miles away.
Valero, which had earlier starts before being established in its current spot in 1724, enjoyed an almost 70-year run.
Historians have varying views of the 13-day siege in 1836 but agree on this:
The hard work of building Valero was done by indigenous hunter-gatherers who had roamed the region for up to 12,000 years. Ruled by Spanish missionaries and Tejano soldier-settlers, they populated the early towns of the frontier.
“By the 1700s,” said historian Gilberto Hinojosa of the University of the Incarnate Word, “they had created a system of building what I call missionary-led Indian towns.”
Before the Spanish arrival, they lived in hundreds of small groups of extended families and spoke dialects of the Coahuiltecan language, said Richard Garay, a researcher of indigenous peoples. Among them were the Payaya, Tacame and Xarame, generally viewed now as Coahuiltecan.
Historians agree on another point: Valero’s indios worked and lived under the control of Franciscans, regarded as exceptional planners and developers.
“They knew exactly how to do it,” said anthropologist Antonio N. Zavaleta of the University of Texas-Brownsville. They had experience in converting groups in Central Mexico and had interacted with local indios since the 1600s.
Missionaries, backed by Tejano soldier-settlers, offered Indians protection from hostile Apaches and Comanches and taught them to farm. Mission Indians were assigned Spanish names at baptism, what Garay called the beginning of the end of their cultural identities.
“To the Spaniards, Indians were barbarians until converted,” he said.
To gain buy-in, the Valero mission appointed an Indian “town chief,” or gobernador, who helped missionaries govern. “They received better food, better clothing and symbols of authority,” Hinojosa said. “Today, we call them middle managers.”
Indians worked as cowboys, farmers, blacksmiths, potters, weavers and stonemasons. Along with Tejanos, they built roads. A few, the youngest and brightest, were taught to sing, read, write, play musical instruments and serve at Masses.
“Contrary to popular belief, the missionaries did not teach the Indians all the various skills. Hispanic civilian residents at the missions along with soldiers from the presidio ... acted as guards, as trainers, foremen and taskmasters,” said historian Jesus F. de la Teja of Texas State University.
Valero sold extra crops to locals and took them to Saltillo markets. In the 1770s, Valero had 3,000 to 5,000 head of cattle, said historian Raúl Ramos of the University of Houston.
As its indigenous population dwindled, missionaries became more dependent on civilian Tejano families to farm and ranch, de la Teja said. More civilians moved into the mission.
By 1793, the Spanish secularized Valero, awarding land, houses, farms and ranches to converts and Tejanos. By the early 1800s, the remaining Indians were intermarrying and becoming part of the Tejano community.
Many Indians were swindled out of their land by Anglo American immigrants and Tejanos, historians said. Later still, Tejanos lost them to Anglo American spectators and ranchers.
By 1807, the old Valero mission was a fort used by La Segunda Compañía Volante (The Second Flying Company) de San Carlos de Parras in Coahuila, near a town named Alamo.