Texas as an Administrative Unit - The First Lawsuit in Texas - A Boundary Line of Contention - A Cordonof Strongholds, Texas to California, Early Educational Efforts in San Fernando.

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     Texas as an administrative unit was a part of New Spain.  In civil and military affairs the province was subject directly to the viceroy and the Audiencia  of Mexico, and in ecclesiastical matters, to the archbishop of Guadalajara.  The government, apart from the missions, was almost wholly military, the center and defense of the western settlements being the presidio of San Antonio de Bexar.
     The official head of the province was the governor, who as a rule, was a professional soldier as well as professional office-holder.  By a decree of 1727, separate governors were appointed for Texas, the capital being located at Los Adaes, a military post fifteen miles west of Red River and facing the French settle-

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ment at Natchitoches.  The governor exercised both civil and military authority, being gohernador and capitan general of the province, as well as captain of the presidio at Los Adaes.  In the half century between 1731 and 1780, Texas had thirteen governors and governors ad interim.  Their contemporary renown depended much upon the views of partisan writers.  When Governor Manuel de Sandoval took office in 1734, he removed his official residence from Los Adaes to San Fernando and strengthened the garrison at that place, both steps being necessary because of the depredations of the Apaches.
     In 1736 commenced the famous litigation case of Franquis versus Sandoval, wherein Don Carlos Franquis having been appointed to supersede Governor Sandoval, a captain and veteran office-holder, proceeded to have the latter arrested on various charges, among them that he had removed his capital to San Fernando, apparently, however, through official instructions; that he was irregular in his accounts with the San Antonio garrison, and that he had discharged certain missionaries and appropriated their stipends.  Another charge, the beginning of a long controversy between France and Spain relative to the eastern boundary of Texas, accused Sandoval of culpability in the matter of changing the accepted boundary between Natchitoches and Los Adaes.  These latter discussions were all local or within the respective governments, no attempts being made between

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the home governments of Spain and France to settle the matter.  After much litigation and several reversed decisions, Sandoval was finally acquitted of all charges and Franquis enjoined from proceeding further against him.
     The documents transmitted to Spain relative to the proceedings of this first law suit in the history of Texas, filled thirty volumes of manuscript.  In them San Antonio is called San Antonio de Yejar o Valero; the name San Antonio de Bexar seems to have become attached particularly to the presidio, the mission and pueblo being called San Antonio de Valero, while the villa was known as San Fernando.
     The original Texas was the territory of the Hasinai  (Texas) Indians, between the Trinity and Ked Rivers, and included much of what is now Louisiana.  Early in the eighteenth century the boundaries were extended westward to include the settlements on the San Antonio River and Matagorda Bay.  With the founding of the Province of Nueva Santander in 1746, the western boundary of Texas was officially fixed at the lower Medina, the interior limits being indefinite.  Later in the century, the Nueces, in part of its extent, became regarded as the boundary.
     In 1767, Governor Hugo Oconor strengthened the garrison at the capital.  So bad were Indian hostilities there that when Baron Juan Maria Ripperda arrived as governor in 1770, some of the citizens had abandoned the place and others were about to follow.

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In 1773, the Spanish government, having decided it would be a wise policy to give back to nature and the Indians some of its imaginary possessions and make more secure its real ones, the defenses of San Antonio de Bexar, among others, were strengthened under orders to Ripperda; under him also, the northeastern frontier was ordered depopulated, and the exiles to be removed to Bexar.
     Through the same decree the frontier presidios were rearranged in such a way as to form a cordon of strongholds, placed forty leagues apart in an irregular line between Bahia del Espirito Santo on the San Antonio River in Texas, and Alta, near the head of the Gulf of California, El Paso del Norte on the route, with San Antonio de Bexar and Santa Fe as outposts.  In spite of their venerable antiquity and relative propinquity, no direct avenue of communication had been possible between San Antonio and Santa Fe, because of the hostilities of the intervening Indian tribes, but with the establishment of peace with the Comanches the execution of such a project was made practical.  It was Pedro (Pierre) Vial, a Frenchman commissioned by Governor Domingo Cabello of Texas, who explored in 1786, the first route between these two places.
     Meanwhile San Fernando, the official capital of Texas, still isolated on the dangerous frontier, was retarded in growth by Indian depredations on the outside and by poverty and oppression within.  Not

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Rear view of original San Fernando Cathedral

until 1789 was there any sign of an educational awakening.  At this time the cahildo showed a willingness to promote the establishment of a school, which Don Jose Francisco de la Mata in a petition says he had opened a few years before, "being led by pity for the ignorance of the youth of the villa;" but, as continued the case during the remainder of the century, little or no energy was displayed in keeping up the same.  A school once established, the salary of the teachers was left unpaid in default of funds, and success further hampered by the failure of parents to support teachers in the matter of discipline or to cease the withdrawal of their children from school.  Such was the miserable condition of the villa that it was doubtful

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if the citizens could pay the expenses of a teacher from Mexico and they had none in their midst - even if they could prevail upon a teacher to stay in such a decadent country.*
     The expeditions of Vial, of which there were four, may be said to close the half century of Texas history following the founding of San Fernando de Bexar and to bring to an end the first series of readjustments of the Texas frontier resulting directly from the Louisiana cession of 1762.
     The end of the century found the Indian question still being agitated through missions and through wars, with little apparent benefit to either race, and the province as a whole having advanced but little over its condition of seventy-five years before.
     But at least Texas had in San Fernando one permanent settlement, a capital and a municipality, which served as headquarters and a place of refuge for any and all of her settlers.

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     * "Educational Efforts in San Fernando," by I. J. Cox - Texas Historical Association Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 1.

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