74 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Buix. 137 



turned again; French parties on the Mississippi River suffered sev- 

 eral severe defeats, and their red foes proved veritable thorns in their 

 flesh until at last treaties in 1762 and 1763 gave Mobile to England 

 and Louisiana to Spain.' 



Spanish expansion northward from Mexico had been keeping pace 

 with that from the West Indies through Florida but had farther to 

 go to reach the region under discussion. After the survivors of the 

 Narvaez expedition had been cast ashore on Galveston Island in 

 1528, four of them, including their annalist, Cabeza de Vaca, lived 

 for some time among the wild and wandering tribes of Texas, and 

 finally reached Mexico City, which they entered on Sunday, July 

 24, 1536. Meantime, the very year in which they were cast ashore, 

 two expeditions traced the coast northward from Panuco, advancing 

 beyond the Rio Grande. In 1541 Francisco de Coronado, disap- 

 pointed as to the gold, silver, and other treasures he had hoped to 

 find among the Pueblos, and intrigued by the tales of a Plains 

 Indian probably belonging to the Pawnee, crossed the northwestern 

 part of Texas, visited the Wichita Indians then living on the Ar- 

 kansas, and learned something of the tribes beyond. In 1544 Father 

 Olmos is credited with the conversion of a south Texas tribe which 

 came to live near Panuco and were known as Olive. In 1650 Cap- 

 tains Hernan Martin and Diego del Castillo reached the borders of 

 the Hasinai country but did not enter it, and from this time on 

 Texas was frequently entered by Spanish expeditions, particularly 

 after the founding of Monclova, in the province of Coahuila. 

 Coahuila has given its name to an Indian linguistic family which for- 

 merly covered parts of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and southwestern Texas, 

 and may have extended more widely still. 



The Spaniards were finally roused to a definite attempt to occupy 

 Texas by the colony La Salle had inadvertently planted near Mata- 

 gorda Bay, just as their final settlement of Florida had been pro- 

 voked by the French Huguenot colonial efforts more than a hundred 

 years before. In 1689 an expedition under Alonso de Leon was dis- 

 patched to uproot La Salle's colony, only to find that its work had 

 been done for it by surrounding tribes of Indians. In 1690 De Leon, 

 accompanied by Father Damian Massanet, traversed the entire 

 breadth of Texas as far as the Adai beyond the Sabine, and Massanet 

 established a mission in the Nabedache tribe under Father Jesus 

 Maria Casanas. This prelate founded a second station during the 

 winter and found time for an extensive report on the manners and 

 customs of the Hasinai Indians which is one of our most valued 

 sources of information regarding them. The missions were aban- 

 doned in 1693 but in 1716-17 five missions were begun in east Texas 



* A sketch of this development Is given In Swanton, 1911. 



