ZACATECAS. 
Zacatecas dates from 1548, when it became the centre of a rich mining 
district and the home of the Ofiates. By 1585 it was raised to the dignity of 
a ciudad. The district, usually called a province from the time of its occupa- 
tion, became a corregimiento in 1736 and an intendancy in the later eighteenth 
century. From our standpoint it is of interest as the starting-point of explor- 
ing and conquering expeditions into the far north, notably that of Juan de 
Ofiate into New Mexico, as the seat of the missionary province of San Fran- 
cisco de Zacatecas, and especially of the College of Guadalupe de Zacatecas. 
ARCHIVO DEL COLEGIO DE GUADALUPE DE ZACATECAS. 
(ARCHIVE OF THE COLLEGE OF GUADALUPE DE ZACATECAS. ) 
In the history of the frontier provinces, and especially of Texas, the ancient 
College de Propaganda Fide of Guadalupe de Zacatecas was only second in 
importance to that of the Holy Cross of Querétaro. It was founded in 1706. 
In 1716 it entered what is now eastern Texas and western Louisiana, and 
established three missions among the Nacogdoches, Ais, and Adaes Indians, 
which continued in existence till 1772. About 1720 two missions were founded 
by the college at San Antonio and near Matagorda Bay. In 1754 that of N. S. 
del Rosario was established near the San Antonio River, and some three 
years later mission N. S. de la Luz was planted on the lower Trinity. About 
1760 an effort was made to Christianize the Wichita tribes of northern and 
central Texas. In 1772 the Querétaran missions at San Antonio were turned 
over to the College of Guadalupe, which from that time to the end of the 
Spanish régime remained alone in the Texas field. Though the period was not 
one of great missionary success, it was one of far greater activity than has 
been supposed in default of records. In 1791 the mission of N. S. del 
Refugio was established near Copano Bay. During the later eighteenth and 
early nineteenth centuries several attempts were made to Christianize the 
Bidai, Orcoquiza, Lipan, and Wichita tribes, attempts whose history has been 
practically unknown, and which must be written if at all from the records of 
the college. For these reasons, for the half century after 1772 the archive 
of the college, in so far as it is preserved, is of primary importance for the 
history of Texas. 
Upon the establishment of the colony of Nuevo Santander, in the middle 
of the eighteenth century, the college founded a number of missions in the 
regions called Seno Mexicano and Sierra Gorda. Several of these were on or 
near the Rio Grande, while one was projected for the Nueces River. In 1767 
the Jesuit missions in Tarahumara were transferred to the college, and re- 
mained in their charge till well into the nineteenth century. To offset the 
burden entailed by this new field, that of Seno Mexicano and Sierra Gorda 
was now relinquished. In the later eighteenth century the college had close 
connection with the custodia of Sonora (which included a part of modern 
Arizona), and in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, with the mis- 
sions of California. Like the College of the Holy Cross, the College of 
Guadalupe was suppressed about 1908, and is now a convento subject to the 
provincial. 7 as | 
394 
