The Colonization Of North America Part 25

Meanwhile French traders had invaded the coast tribes and monopolized the Indian trade of northern Texas. In 1750 the military strength of Louisiana was considerably augmented, and it was reported in Mexico that the new arrivals were for the western Louisiana frontier. These conditions again brought forward the quiescent boundary question, which was inconclusively discussed in Spanish circles for several years. While the higher authorities debated, residents on the frontier generally agreed on the Arroyo Hondo. In 1754 the King of Spain declared that "boundaries between the Spaniards and the French in that region have never been a subject of treaty nor is it best at present that they should be."

The New Mexico border.--By this time renewed French intrusions into New Mexico were becoming alarming. The return of the Mallet party (1739) and the peace between the Comanches and their eastern enemies (ca. 1746) were followed by the arrival in New Mexico of trading parties from Canada and Louisiana under Febre, Chapuis, and others. A more vigorous policy was now adopted and the recent comers were arrested and sent to Spain. The intrusion into New Mexico found an echo in far western Sonora, where in 1751 the French advance was given by a prominent official as a reason for Spanish haste to occupy the Colorado of the West.

The lower Trinity fortified.--The more stringent policy toward intruders was extended to Texas, where a new outpost was established to ward off French aggression. In the fall of 1754 traders on the lower Trinity were arrested and sent to Mexico, and in 1756-1757 the region was defended by a presidio (San Agustin) and a mission east of the stream among the Orcoquiza Indians. Thus another point on the Texas-Louisiana frontier was occupied and defended by Spain. The site was disputed by Governor Kerlerec, of Louisiana, who proposed a joint boundary commission. The offer was rejected and the viceroy of Mexico, on the contrary, proposed a Spanish post on the Mississippi "to protect the boundaries." With his proposal he sent to Spain a map showing Texas as extending to the Mississippi. Thus the region in dispute extended from the Trinity to the Mississippi, at least.

PIMERiA ALTA

The Jesuits.--The occupation of Texas was contemporaneous with the advance into Pimeria Alta (northern Sonora and southern Arizona) and Lower California. The work of the indefatigable Jesuits on the northern frontier of New Spain is admirably ill.u.s.trated by that of Father Kino and his companions in this region.

Kino.--After the failure of Atondo's enterprise in California in 1685, Father Eusebio Kino entered northern Sonora, arriving in March, 1687, just at the time of La Salle's death in Texas. Mission Dolores, founded by him in the upper Sonora Valley, became his headquarters for twenty-four years of exploration, ranching, and missionary work among the upper Pimas, between the Altar and Gila Rivers.

Explorations in Arizona.--In the Altar Valley Kino and his companions founded a number of missions, which were destroyed during the revolt in 1695 and then rebuilt. In 1691, accompanied by Father Salvatierra, who later went to California, Kino descended the Santa Cruz River to the village of Tumacacori. Three years later, by the same route, he reached the Casa Grande on the Gila. In 1697, with a military escort from Fronteras (Corodeguachi), he again went to the Casa Grande, this time by way of the San Pedro River. In the following year he was again on the Gila, whence he returned across the Papagueria (the country of the Papagos) by way of Sonoita, Caborca, and the Altar Valley. In 1699 he went to the Gila by way of Sonoita and the Gila Range, and then ascended the Gila.

A land route to California.--The current view still was that California was an island, but during the last journey Kino returned to the peninsular theory. If this were true, he reasoned, it would be possible to find a land route over which to send supplies to Salvatierra's struggling missions just established in Lower California. To test his views he made several more journeys, crossing the lower Colorado in 1701 and reaching its mouth in 1702. He was now convinced that California was a peninsula. In 1705 was published his map of Pimeria Alta, setting forth this view.

Missions and ranches in Arizona.--Meanwhile Kino and his companions had pushed the missionary frontier to the Gila and the Colorado. Kino's exploring tours were also itinerant missions, in the course of which he baptized and taught in numerous villages. During his career in Pimeria Alta he alone baptized 4000 Indians. In 1700 he founded the mission of San Xavier del Bac, and within the next two years those of Guebavi and Tumacacori, all in the valley of the Santa Cruz River, and within the present Arizona. To support his missions, near them he established flouris.h.i.+ng stock ranches, thus making the beginnings of stock raising in at least twenty places still existing in northern Sonora and southern Arizona.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Father Kino's Map of Pimeria Alta (Bancroft, Arizona and New Mexico, p. 360).]

Decline of the missions.--The power of Spain was now at its lowest ebb, funds were scarce, and Kino's last days were to him a time of stagnation and disappointment. To a certain extent royal support was transferred for the time being to the missions in Lower California. After Kino's death in 1711 stagnation became decline, few new missionaries were sent, and northern tours became infrequent or ceased altogether. Officials and frontier leaders often planned to advance the frontier of settlement to the Colorado River, but other interests interfered.

Revival after 1732.--A visit by the bishop of Durango in 1725, the military inspection of that frontier by Rivera in 1726, and a royal decree of 1728 gave new life to the moribund missions. New missionaries arrived in 1732, the northern missions were reoccupied, and journeys to the Gila were renewed after 1736 by Fathers Keller and Sedelmayr.

The Arizonac mines.--Interest in the northern frontier was accentuated at this time by a temporary mining excitement at Arizonac in the upper Altar Valley, where in 1736 silver nuggets of astonis.h.i.+ng size were discovered. There was a "rush" to the place, and considerable wealth was found, but in 1741 the surface veins were exhausted and the camp was abandoned. The mining incident furnished an occasion for new plans to advance to the Gila. But Indian troubles in Sinaloa and Sonora interfered. These troubles, on the other hand, served to advance the military frontier by the founding of two presidios at Pitiqui (Hermosillo) and Terrenate in 1741.

Keller and Sedelmayr.--After much discussion, in 1741 the Moqui district was a.s.signed to the Jesuits, who now tried to reach that region. In 1743 Keller crossed the Gila, but was driven back by the Apaches. In 1744 Sedelmayr ascended the Colorado to Bill Williams Fork. In the following year the Moquis were again a.s.signed to the Franciscans.

Plans to occupy the Gila and Colorado.--Sedelmayr now turned his attention to exploring the lower Gila and Colorado Rivers, and his Order, particularly Father Escobar, the provincial, urged the occupation of these valleys, both as a means of support for Lower California, and as a base for advance to Moqui and Alta California. In 1748 Father Consag of California explored the Gulf to its head in the interest of this plan. Royal interest was aroused also by the entry of the French of Louisiana into New Mexico and the need of protecting California. In 1744 and 1747, therefore, the king approved advancing to the Gila. Five years later, especially because of emphatic reports of the French advance toward the Pacific Ocean, the king seriously considered occupying the Bay of Monterey.

The Pima Revolt.--The new viceroy, Revillagigedo, was occupied with founding Nuevo Santander and other absorbing tasks, while new Indian wars in Sonora made advance impossible. In 1750 a war of extermination, led by Governor Diego Parrilla, was begun on the Seris and lasted several years. In 1751 a revolt occurred among the northern Pimas. At Caborca and Sonoita the missionaries were slain, over one hundred settlers were killed on the Arizona border, and missions and ranches were abandoned. The uprising was suppressed by Parrilla without great difficulty; most of the missions were reoccupied; and for greater security two new presidios were founded, at Altar, near Caborca, and at Tubac near San Xavier del Bac. Thus, each uprising helped to advance the military frontier.

Continued obstacles to advance.--For twenty years more the question of advance to the Colorado was subordinate to that of good order and settled conditions in Sonora, necessary preliminaries to advance. The Pima War was followed by a bitter quarrel between Governor Parrilla and the Jesuits. The Seris made constant trouble, and when attacked retreated safely to Cerro Prieto. Apache wars on the northern border were even more severe, and many settlements in Sonora and Nueva Vizcaya were destroyed by them. Nevertheless, within the protection of the presidios several small Spanish settlements grew up, as at Terrenate, Guebavi, Santa Barbara, Buenavista, Tubac, Saric, Altar, and San Ignacio. The Jesuits continued to appeal, and others, pointing out the danger from advancing Russians, English, and French, urged the settlement of Alta California. But Spain was occupied elsewhere.

The northwestern frontier in 1763.--Sinaloa and Sonora had been detached from Nueva Vizcaya in 1734, when the province of Sinaloa was erected.

Both were still within the diocese of Durango. By 1763 Sinaloa and Ostimuri (southern Sonora) had ceased to be frontier regions. Most of the missions had been secularized, the Indians had become a.s.similated, and there was a considerable white population. In Sinaloa there were six towns with white and mixed populations ranging from 1000 to 3500 each.

In Ostimuri, the part of Sonora south of Yaqui River, there were five towns with populations ranging from 300 to 3400. In the Sonora Valley there was a string of mining towns and small Spanish settlements extending as far north as Fronteras. In Pimeria Alta there were eight missions and several Spanish settlements, the latter aggregating, with the garrisons, nearly 1500 persons. In all of the frontier settlements there was a large element of mulattoes and mestizoes.

THE JESUITS IN LOWER CALIFORNIA

California a.s.signed to the Jesuits.--While Kino and his successors were struggling to advance the frontiers of Pimeria Alta, another band of Jesuits founded missions and opened trails nearly the whole length of the Peninsula of Lower California, and made explorations northward with a view to meeting the mainland group at the Colorado River. After repeated failures to occupy the Peninsula, the government of Spain turned it over to the Jesuits, with full military and civil authority, as in Paraguay. The missions depended at first mainly on private alms, and in a short time $47,000 were subscribed. This was the beginning of the famous Pious Fund of California.

Salvatierra and his companions.--In 1697 Juan Maria Salvatierra, who had been a missionary in Sinaloa, entered the Peninsula with a handful of soldiers, and began work at Loreto, opposite Guaymas, which became the supply base. Missionary work was attended by unusual difficulties, because of the sterility of the country. More than once the abandonment of California was prevented only by the aid of Father Kino, who drove cattle hundreds of miles to Guaymas and s.h.i.+pped them across the Gulf.

Transportation was difficult, and many precious cargoes were wrecked. By the time of Salvatierra's death in 1717 he, Picolo, Juan de Ugarte and their companions had planted five missions in the middle region of the Peninsula, and had made extensive explorations, north, south, and across California to the Pacific. In 1701 Salvatierra had explored with Kino in quest of a land route from Sonora. In 1721 Father Ugarte in the same interest explored the Gulf to its head.

Development in the South.--Salvatierra's death was followed by more liberal royal aid and private alms, and by more rapid mission extension, particularly in the South. The importance of this step was enhanced by making San Bernabe a stopping place for the Manila galleon.

By 1732 Fathers Guillen, Tamaral, and Taraval had explored the west coast as far as Cedros Island. A widespread Indian rebellion in 1734, attended by the martyrdom of Fathers Carranco and Tamaral, caused the founding of the presidio of San Jose del Cabo, which protected the Cape, but by 1748 Indian disturbances had greatly reduced the southern missions.

The Jesuits, fearful of interference in their work, as a rule opposed Spanish settlements, presidios, and the development of industries in the Peninsula. In 1716, 1719, 1723, and later, the government urged the founding of forts and colonies on the western coast, with a view to protecting and advancing the frontier, but the Jesuits usually objected, and the settlements were not founded. The Indian revolt, war with England in 1739, Anson's raid on the coast in 1742, and the westward advance of the French toward the Pacific Coast, increased the anxiety, and in 1744 new orders were given looking to the defence of the Peninsula, but nothing came of them.

By 1750 the exclusive policy of the Jesuits had given way to some extent, pearl fis.h.i.+ng was again permitted, private trading vessels came from time to time, and the Manila galleon stopped regularly at San Jose.

Mines were opened in the South, and around them a small Spanish and mixed breed population grew up, La Paz becoming the princ.i.p.al center.

Missions in the North.--The conditions which had stimulated efforts to advance to the Gila by the mainland after 1744, had a corresponding effect on California development. Sterile California needed overland communication with a mainland base. It was with this need in view that in 1746 the Jesuit provincial, Escobar, sent Father Consag to reexplore the Gulf, whose head he reached shortly before Sedelmayr descended the Colorado to the same point.

The Colorado-Gila base was not supplied, but with new private gifts and royal aid, the Jesuits on the Peninsula pushed northward. Santa Gertrudis (1752), San Francis...o...b..rja (1762), and Santa Maria (1767) were the last Jesuit foundations, while Father Link's land journey to the head of the Gulf in 1766 was the final step in Jesuit explorations.

READINGS

TEXAS

Arricivita, _Cronica Serafica y Apostolica_, 321-442; Bancroft, H.H., _North Mexican States and Texas_, I, 391-406, 600-617: Bolton, H.E., _Athanase De Mezieres_, I, 1-66; "The Native Tribes about the East Texas Missions," in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, XI, 249-276; "The Location of La Salle's Colony on the Gulf of Mexico," in _The Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, II, 165-182; Bolton, H.E., ed., _Spanish Exploration in the Southwest_, 281-422; Bonilla, Antonio, in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, XIII, 1-78; Buckley, E., "The Aguayo Expedition into Texas and Louisiana, 1721-1722," in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, XV, 1-65; Clark, R.C., _The Beginnings of Texas_; c.o.x, I.J.. "The Early Settlers of San Fernando," in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, V, 142-161; "The Louisiana-Texas Frontier,"

in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, X, 1-76; "The Southwestern Boundary of Texas," in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, VI. 81-103; De Leon, A., "Itinerary," in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, VIII, 199-224; _Historia de Nuevo Leon_, 310-348; Dunn, W.E.. "Apache Relations in Texas, 1718-1750," in Tex. State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, XIII, 198-274; "The Apache Mission on the San Saba," in _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, XVIII, 370-415; Espinosa, Isidro, _Chronica_, 1-10, 41-158, 206-227; Garrison, G.P., _Texas_, 20-96; Manzanet, in Tex.

State Hist. a.s.soc., _Quarterly_, III, 252-312; Parkman, Francis, _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_, chs. 20-29.

PIMERiA ALTA

Alegre, Xavier, _Historia de la Compania de Jesus_, III; Bancroft, H.H., Arizona and New Mexico, 344-407; _History of the North Mexican States_, I, 237-274, 548-580, 660-691; Bolton, H.E., Kino's _Historical Memoir of Pimeria Alta_, especially Vol. I, 27-65; Bolton, H.E., ed., _Spanish Exploration in the Southwest_, 425-463: Chapman, C.E., _The Founding of Spanish California_, 1-67; Ortega, Jose, _Apostolicos Afanes_, libros II-III; Richman, I.B., _California under Spain and Mexico_, 42-61.

LOWER CALIFORNIA

Alegre, Xavier, Historia de la Compania de Jesus, III, 91-309; Bancroft, H.H., History of the North Mexican States. I, 276-304, 407-466, 476-491; Bolton, H.E., Kind's Historical Memoir, consult Index under "California," "Picolo," and "Salvatierra"; Engelhardt, Fr. Zephyrin, Missions and Missionaries of California, I. 61-600: Hittell, T.E., History of California, I, 148-308; North, A.W., Mother of California, 1-78; Richman, I.B., California under Spain and Mexico, 1-41; Venegas, Migual, Natural and Croit History of California, I, 215-455, II, 1-213.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ENGLISH ADVANCE INTO THE PIEDMONT, 1715-1750

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT

The colonization of North America by the English was not complete with the founding of the seaboard settlements, but continued in a series of steps westward. At each step American society has returned to simple frontier conditions, under which it has been free to try out new experiments in democracy. Each stage of advance has made its special contribution to our inst.i.tutions.

In a broad way these steps in the westward movement have corresponded with great physiographic areas. The seventeenth century had witnessed the occupation of the Tidewater region, between the coast and the Fall Line. Within that area there had been established two types of society which now projected themselves westward. The New England type was democratic, corporate, theocratic, and industrial, and here the towns.h.i.+p became the unit of local government. The Southern type, based on a plantation system, staple crops, and dependent labor, was aristocratic, individualistic, and expansive. Here the county became the unit of local government. Intermediate between these types was the society of the middle Tidewater. In spite of these special characteristics, due chiefly to American environment, Tidewater society at the end of the century was still largely European in thought and feeling.

The first half of the eighteenth century witnessed the movement of settlement into the next great physiographic region, the Piedmont, or the area lying between the Fall Line and the Appalachian Mountains.

Here, under frontier conditions, was formed a society farther removed from that of Europe, and further modified by American conditions.

This westward movement was the resultant of numerous factors. To the frontier people were attracted by cheap land and unlimited opportunity.

From the Tidewater settlements emigrants were driven by increase of population, scarcity of good land, and cla.s.s conflicts. The less prosperous everywhere, and in the South indented servants who had served their rime, were glad to begin life anew on the frontier. Prosperous planters whose estates had been exhausted by tobacco sought the Piedmont, and left their former lands to become "old fields."

Speculation in frontier lands became a pa.s.sion, and while John Law floated his Mississippi Bubble in Louisiana, New England deacons and Virginia aristocrats alike built hopes of fortune on tracts purchased for a song on the border. The movement to the frontier was stimulated in some cases by intercolonial and international rivalry; thus the settlement of Georgia was at once a philanthropic experiment and a defensive movement against Spain. Of larger consequence than the emigrants from the Tidewater settlements were the new arrivals from Europe, who came in tens of thousands, attracted by cheap land and opportunity or driven by economic, political, or religious unrest.

Trails to the Piedmont had been opened by furtraders, who, even in the seventeenth century, had made their way into the wilderness in all directions: by official explorers, like Governor Spotswood; and by the Southern cattlemen who had established "cowpens" at long distances beyond the frontiers of settlement. The Indian barrier was removed at the turn of the century by a series of frontier wars, which either evicted the natives or broke their resistance. Of these the chief examples are King Philip's War in New England, the Susquehannah War in Virginia, the Tuscarora War in North Carolina, and the Yama.s.see War in South Carolina. The process of expansion, however, involved further struggles with the Indians, and border conflicts with French neighbors on the north and Spanish neighbors on the south.