Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 42

Although settlers on the frontier planted a number of crops, in Texas, farming did not flourish. Most grantees intending to farm received relatively meager parcels of land, usually as a labor–approximately 177 acres–and too many other factors worked against farming at this time to make it a major means of support. The setbacks included the Tejanos’ reliance on ranching and commerce in livestock; the lack of available workers to undertake the labor‐intensive tasks of clearing land, digging irrigation ditches, and tending crops; the scarcity of farm equipment and the difficulties in transporting it to the frontier; the threat of Indian raids on standing crops; the constant battling of insect infestation; the worry brought on by bad weather conditions; and, perhaps most important, the absence of accessible markets that might have fostered commercial agriculture. Ordinarily, then, farms in colonial Texas were of a hardscrabble, subsistence type that enabled their owners to eke out a living.

In the San Antonio settlements, farmers used the waters of the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek to irrigate their fields. They raised cotton, pumpkins, melons, corn, beans, and peppers–crops raised by the Béxar mission Indians as well. Whereas some in the East Texas community of Los Adaes undertook farming, early settlers there constantly faced natural disasters, usually in the form of crop‐destroying floods, so that they often called on the nearby French settlements in Louisiana or the Caddos for needed provisions. In Nacogdoches, farmers nurtured small town lots or harvested a variety of vegetable products from nearby fields. La Bahía was located in an infertile area before 1749; and its permanent site in modern Goliad (to which it was moved) did not lend itself to farming–the local garrison was forced to rely on San Antonio for its grain supplies.