Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 43

As the eighteenth century waned, only four civilian settlements dotted the ranching province. In East Texas, Nacogdoches held 350 settlers as of 1783. South toward La Bahía, approximately 450 pobladores lived in and around the mission and presidio that year (Figure 2.2). San Antonio, meanwhile, counted 1248 inhabitants. On the Rio Grande, the population of Laredo comprised 700 residents as of 1789. Attempts to establish other civilian units in the early nineteenth century faltered.

Figure 2.2 The pobladores turned to the environment for materials with which to build homes in the Texas frontera.

Source: Mexicans in San Antonio, Texas, 1887 series E. K Sturdevant, photographer, Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library (SC9995.4.15).

These (relatively) urban sites acted in concert with the other frontier institutions, but they were civilian settlements. Townsfolk included the families of presidial soldiers, Indian neophytes, and even persons on the dodge or those engaged in contraband commerce. Those in charge of town government came from the civilian sector; the alcalde (mayor) cared for the many needs of a municipio (the settlement proper plus outlying areas) through the ayuntamiento. The ayuntamiento further held responsibility for executing imperial directives, building government structures, protecting the urbanites’ property, maintaining law and order, boosting town growth, enforcing morality, and organizing community functions. Like other administrative bodies on the frontier, the ayuntamiento often interpreted royal directives loosely, bending them to meet local and immediate considerations.

Townspeople made a living in a variety of ways. Artisans served presidios and missions, vaqueros did seasonal work on ranches, teamsters transported goods and materials on carts pulled by livestock (horses, mules, donkeys, or oxen), and day laborers performed a range of unspecialized tasks. Merchants, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and barbers met the needs of an urban populace. But rancheros also took residence in towns, diversifying and changing the economy. In Béxar, some ranchers used their livestock to produce essential commodities–soap and candles, but also hides, from which leathered body armor and shields were fashioned. In Laredo, rancheros exchanged livestock products and horses for tools and garments brought in from the interior of New Spain. People in other Rio Grande settlements also exported south a wide selection of products native to the area, from fish to mutton to hides. Money remained scarce throughout the province, but urban‐based economic activity, like that on the ranchos, contributed to the nascent Texas economy.

Town living posed numerous problems, but the pobladores managed a crude survival. To make homes, they took advantage of materials readily available in wilderness areas, their domiciles ranging from the undistinguished to the attractive. Masons quarried stone for use in the construction of important buildings. Common people living around San Antonio and southern Texas constructed homes of mud, the type of soil essential for adobe found locally. Mesquite trees, grass, and other natural products were used to build jacales (huts): slender mesquite posts placed in vertical rows served as walls, thatched coverings as roofs. Waterworks to serve a town and its adjacent fields had to be constructed communally. In Béxar, citizens contributed their tools and materials to this end. By their own labor, they built the dams, acequias (irrigation canals), and aqueducts for the town and the neighboring network of missions. As time progressed, even the Canary Islanders, who had once sought to remain aloof from the rest of Béxar society, came to terms with fellow residents; community and family ties impelled them to pull their own weight and deal cooperatively with the adversities of life on the frontier.

Although town living was in some ways safer than life in a rural setting, numerous blights plagued the urbanites. Lack of proper sewage facilities and the concentration of rotting animal waste and carcasses and other litter contributed to the spread of deadly epidemics (such as smallpox and cholera), as did muddy streets (good breeding grounds for mosquitoes during rainy weather). Doctors, drugs, and hospitals rarely made their way to the Far North (the only hospital, which operated for less than ten years, was founded in San Antonio in 1805). Crime committed by vagrants, smugglers, prostitutes, and other social nonconformists became an undeniable aspect of urban life. Finally, attacks by Comanches and other Plains Tribes remained ever possible.

Despite such difficulties, townspeople managed to live reasonably well. Diversions, often in the way of cultural traditions brought from the interior of New Spain, took several forms. In leisure time, family members gathered to tell folktales or sing corridos (story‐telling ballads). Religious holidays were observed with a combination of Catholic solemnity and frontier‐charged enthusiasm, and they afforded welcome opportunities for entertainment. These and other special occasions might see the holding of a fandango (festive dance), those with a talent for playing the guitar or the fiddle providing the music. In a ranching culture, favorite amusements included horseracing and the carrera del gallo, a contest that took several forms; in one, mounted vaqueros raced at full gallop to be the first to reach down and pull off the head of a rooster buried up to its neck in the ground.

Though sparse, intellectual life existed on the frontier. A few books made their way there, though only the well‐to‐do could afford them. Writing was the domain of the literate, which certainly included government officials and the clergy, but most communities comprised a few settlers and soldiers with the necessary skills. Indeed, much of the earliest knowledge of the Texas landscape and its original inhabitants comes from the diaries and chronicles of the conquistadores. Missionaries also told their accounts of working with the neophytes and left to posterity careful records of early Native American civilizations. Historians have used these writings to enhance their knowledge of the colonial era. Especially valuable for this is Father Juan Agustín Morfi’s History of Texas, 1673–1779, written by the clergyman after an official visit to Texas.

Some of the province’s leaders sought out, albeit with mixed success, good teachers within the community to instruct the young. Factors such as poverty, the uncertainty of frontier life, a belief in the general “uselessness” of an education in the hinterlands, and the dearth of books partly account for the absence of an educational system. But by the early nineteenth century, all the urban settlements had established some type of rudimentary educational facility.

Communications, however crude, connected Texas with Mexico over the Camino Real (the King’s Highway, also called the San Antonio Road). This artery traversed the province from San Juan Bautista, on the Rio Grande, to Béxar, and up to the East Texas settlements. A second route extended from Laredo to La Bahía, then connected to the Camino Real at the Trinity River. Mounted couriers regularly carried mail from throughout New Spain to Texas towns.