||Letter of Fray Damián Massanet to Don Carlos de Sigüenza
||Bolton, Herbert Eugene (editor). Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916). Pages 347-387.
||44 / 1
Father Damián Massanet was a member of the College of the
Holy Cross of Querétaro. He arrived in Mexico in 1683 and went to
the Coahuila frontier a few years later as a missionary. In 1684,
Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle and a group of French settlers
landed at Matagorda Bay, Texas, and established a fort at Garcitas
Creek (see AJ-114 and AJ-121 for French accounts). Alarmed by this
intrusion into Spanish territory, the viceroy of New Spain authorized
several expeditions to find and destroy the La Salle settlement
and to identify sites for Spanish missions. In 1689, Fray Massanet
traveled with Alonso de León to Matagorda Bay and was made comisario
of the new missions in eastern Texas, the first Hispanic settlements
in Texas. Massanet returned with León in 1690 and supervised the
founding of the missions on the Neches. In 1691, Massanet again
returned to Texas with the Terán expedition.
León-Massanet Expeditions, 1689-1690
The first of the two expeditions set forth March 23, 1689,
from Monclova, Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande, and continued
east-northeast to the Rio Guadalupe near modern Victoria, Texas.
The party found the remains of Fort Saint Louis, La Salle’s
settlement on Garcitas Creek about five miles above its mouth.
From there, they continued to Matagorda Bay. The 1689 expedition
then arrived back at Coahuila in May 1689.
The second expedition began March 1690 heading northeast from
Matagorda Bay to the Neches River. Father Massanet selected a
site there for the first Texas mission before the expedition
party returned to Monclova in July 1690. The Texas missions were
abandoned in 1693 and Massanet disappeared from the historical
record. It was more than two decades before the settlement was
In this letter, Massanet tells how he came to join León on two
expeditions into Texas and provides a detailed record of the expeditions
in 1689 and 1690. He describes the routes of the expeditions, how
they went about tracking down the French settlement, what remained
of the settlement, incidents during the journeys, the Spaniards’
encounters with Native Americans, the establishment of the mission
among the Tejas Indians, and Native American housing, clothing,
food, and customs. In 1899, the Texas State Historical Association
published Lilia M. Casís’ translation of this letter in its Quarterly.
The document here is a revised version of the 1899 translation,
first printed in 1911 and later appearing in Herbert Eugene Bolton,
ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916).
Other Internet and Reference Sources
Blake, Robert Bruce. "Terán de los Ríos, Domingo."
"The Handbook of Texas Online."
Chipman, Donald E. "De León, Alonso." "The Handbook of
Murphy Givens. “Exploring Texas. Part 2 of 3. New Spain Begins
Search for the French.” Corpus Christi Caller-Times (December 11,
Bannon, John Francis. The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513-1821
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).