About 300 years ago, Spanish missionaries abandoned a site in what’s now Jackson County, in the middle of Texas’ Coastal Bend.
Mission Nuestra Señora del Espiritu Santo was part of a struggle between the French and Spanish for control of the region, as well as the hearts and minds of native peoples. It’s a key part of the state’s colonial history. But for years, no one’s been able to pinpoint its exact location – until now.
Tamra Walter is an associate professor of archeology at Texas Tech University who led the team that located the mission. She spoke to the Texas Standard about the discovery.
Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below:
Texas Standard: You led a team that discovered the site of this 18th century Spanish mission. How did you know when you’d found it?
Tamra Walter: Well, we’ve been looking for this for a long time. It’s been lost since the Spanish left, more or less. And we had a general idea of where the location was. We had archival records that gave us a general sense of where it was in relationship to the associated military outpost of Presidio La Bahia, but we’d yet to find it.
Brass trade rings top row; middle row lead balls; bottom row scissor half and a copper kettle handle. Courtesy of Tamra Walter
So one of the first indications was finding some artifacts from the 18th century, and that included some pieces of lead shot. We found some of that in April. We’d been out to the area in the spring, but when we returned a few weeks ago, we were able to clear a large area and do a survey, walking over the surface and also using some metal detectors in order to find metal artifacts that might be related to the colonial period.
We found more lead and then we started to find domestic-related artifacts along with some fired clay and daub indicative of some of the structures that would have been used by these missionaries. And that’s when we really knew, “oh my goodness, you’ve got it. We have the site.”
I mean, we knew a general idea of where this was. Why was it so difficult to find the exact resting place, so to speak?
Well there are a lot of reasons why it was difficult. Part of that has to do with the documentary records. You get Spanish records that give you some idea about the distance between now what is the known side of La Bahia that would say “well, it’s about a three-quarters of a league from the Presidio to the Mission” and those directions aren’t always exact.
Another really big problem for us is that in the century since the Spanish have left, it’s been overgrazed. And as a result of that, there’s a lot of vegetation that covered the area. So clearing that area was essential for helping us find the artifacts underneath.
Those are really some of the reasons, the main reasons why it’s been so difficult to locate the site.
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Can you tell us a little more about the story and context behind this mission? I understand it’s been something you’ve studied for a long time.
The story is obviously an interesting one and tied to an important part of Texas history.
The explorer LaSalle, the French explorer La Salle, he misnavigates, so the story goes, and ends up in Texas. He was looking for the mouth of the Mississippi, but he ends up in what is today an area near Victoria.
And soon as the Spanish find out that he’s there, they’re very concerned about finding this colony. They suspected, and they weren’t wrong, that France had a plan to make inroads into their rich silver mines in northern Mexico. And Texas was serving as a buffer zone, but Spain hadn’t paid much attention to Texas.
So as soon as they hear about this colony that La Salle has established, they really start to think about, well, “we need to colonize this and fast, and we need to protect the frontier so that we can protect our assets in northern Mexico in these silver mines.” So they set out to find the La Salle colony, but it took them a while.
When they finally arrived, the colonists had either perished at the hands of some of the local Indigenous groups or had been captured. LaSalle had previously left the colony trying to find his way to the mouth of the Mississippi River, and he was killed by his own men.
But as a result of this, this was a catalyst for Spain to make a concerted effort to actually colonize Texas.
