Lost Spanish Colonial Mission on Texas Frontier Is Rediscovered

The long-lost mission of Nuestra Señora del Espiritu Santo, one of the earliest outposts on the European colonial frontier in Texas, has been rediscovered.

An archeology team from Texas Tech University, working with Texas Historical Commission archaeologists, discovered the site on a private ranch near Presidio La Bahia and Fort San Luis in Jackson County, Texas. The mission was established in the 1680s by René-Robert Cavelier, the French explorer and trader Sieur de La Salle, who played an important role in France’s colonization of North America and American claims to Texas. Nuestra Señora del Espiritu Santo was one of the most successful efforts to convert the local Karankawa tribe. However, this adventure ultimately led to his failure: he was killed during an expedition to find the mouth of the Mississippi River, and the Karankawa destroyed the colony, leaving its members dead, scattered, or kidnapped.

The site was captured during the Spanish missions in North America. This rapprochement was short-lived, however, and when Spain began withdrawing troops from its eastern frontier in the 1700s due to territorial shifts between France, Spain, and England, the entire mission was lost. While generations of archaeologists have searched for the mission site that ended Lasalle’s story, it was lost but not forgotten.

A team led by Tamra Walter, assistant professor of archeology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, eventually found it. “There’s been a lot of help, people have been trying to find the site for a long time,” Walter told reporters. physical organization. “We couldn’t have done this without the cooperation of so many people.

Her team, which includes students from Texas Tech University, is preparing to conduct a magnetic survey of the site to determine its exact boundaries and excavate any remaining artifacts.

“Some of the mission areas have roughly the same history, but the problem is they’ve been occupied for almost 100 years,” Walter said. “Early occupations are overshadowed by later occupations. In this mission, activity dates from 1721 or 1722 to 1725 or 1726. We have a snapshot of what life was like on the Spanish frontier in Texas at that time.”