Economic beginnings of the Far West: how we won the land beyond the Mississippi . against theirhereditary foes, the Lipan Apaches, were incited bythe latter to turn their arms against the settlements were attacked, priests and civilianskilled, and cattle driven off, in spite of the punitiveexpeditions organized by the commandante at SanAntonio. The pusillanimity of the troops onlyserved to incite farther raids, and the settlers indespair abandoned all cultivation. The village ofSan Fernando was in a wretched state. There wereonly one hundred and forty houses in the town,more than
Economic beginnings of the Far West: how we won the land beyond the Mississippi . against theirhereditary foes, the Lipan Apaches, were incited bythe latter to turn their arms against the settlements were attacked, priests and civilianskilled, and cattle driven off, in spite of the punitiveexpeditions organized by the commandante at SanAntonio. The pusillanimity of the troops onlyserved to incite farther raids, and the settlers indespair abandoned all cultivation. The village ofSan Fernando was in a wretched state. There wereonly one hundred and forty houses in the town,more than half of them mere wooden shacks. Thedescendants of the Canary Island immigrants, bothcivilians and officials, were lazy and vicious. Theywould do no work, but impressed the labor of themission Indians and stole the mission cattle forslaughter and for sale. De Morfi, who visitedTexas in 1778, says of San Fernando: This villa costthe king more than 80,000 pesos and to-day, if sold,would not bring in 80 pesos. 57 According to deMorns estimate, the total white population of Texas. THE COLONIZERS 103 did not amount to three thousand souls (2600).The settlements at Nacogdoches and Bahia num-bered three hundred each, that at San Antonio, onethousand. At the beginning of the nineteenth cen-tury the civilized population of this vast territory— Spanish and French Creoles, mission Indians, andhalf-breeds58 — was but seven thousand, or one toeach square league. The town at San Antonioreckoned two thousand people, Bahia (Goliad), four-teen hundred, Nacogdoches, five hundred. The re-maining three thousand were gathered about thesmaller missions and presidios, while a few greatlandowners dwelt in feudal isolation on their ranchos,or cattle ranges. The rancheros were a reckless, improvident racewhose wealth consisted in cattle and horses. Theyspent the better part of their lives in the saddle,and their devotion to the buffalo hunt was a ruinouspassion. Governor Cordero (1806) undertook to
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmormons, bookyear1912
