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they were really attacked by the latter. The Marquis de San Miguel de Aguayo offered to make war against the French in Louisiana and prepared a considerable force for that purpose in 1721. Peace, however, was reëstablished between the Bourbons of France and of Spain, and Aguayo, who had been appointed governor of Nueva Estremadura and Nuevas Filipinas (Coahuila and Texas), had to limit his activities to establishing presidios or forts in order to strengthen the defense of the province. He built Fort Pilar near Adaes and one at Bahía, where had been La Salle's unfortunate settlement.

The French, under Bénard de La Harpe, made an unsuccessful expedition in 1721 to Espiritu Santo Bay to regain possession of the Gulf coast which had been occupied and lost by La Salle. In the vicinity of Natchitoches the French, on account of an inundation, advanced a little to the west, and this gave rise to an interesting correspondence between the Spanish authorities and Saint Denis. The commandant at Natchitoches expressed himself with great energy and refused to change the location of his fort. The matter was dropped by the Spaniards, and the trade, illegal though it was, continued on the frontier of Louisiana and Texas.

The founding of missions among the Tejas and Asinais was fairly successful, but all attempts to reduce the Apaches into pueblos failed, owing to the hostility of the fierce Comanches. Indeed, the settlements in Texas had been so unfortunate in their results that, in 1778, General Croix, commandant of the Provincias Internas, or North Mexican States, recommended that all establishments be concentrated at Béjar. This was not done, but the missions rapidly diminished in population in the latter part of the eighteenth century and were secularized in 1794. A few Indians lingered around them until they were dispersed in 1812 by the Spanish government. The Provincias Internas were divided into two districts by the Spanish and remained such until Mexico acquired its independence. Then in 1824,

one of the states of the Mexican Republic was composed of Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Texas. A little later Nuevo León became a separate state, and Coahuila and Texas remained united as one state until the Revolution of 1835. In 1827 the state had four departments: Saltillo, Monclova, and Texas, and afterwards Parras was taken from Saltillo.

The history of Spanish and Mexican Texas is not very interesting reading. From the time La Salle fell near the Trinity River to the establishment of the state of Coahuila and Texas there was little progress made in that immense territory. It required the invasion of Americans to develop the resources of Texas and to make it one of the foremost States in the American Union.

CHAPTER XVIII

INTRUDERS AND ADVENTURERS

THE Spanish government had endeavored to keep foreigners away from Texas and other Spanish territory by arresting and throwing into prison all persons unprovided with passports, but, nevertheless, intruders penetrated the country to the west of Louisiana by engaging in a contraband trade. One of these traders was Philip Nolan, an Irishman by birth, who had long carried on an illegal commerce between San Antonio and Natchez. In 1800 he started from the latter town with twenty adventurers with the avowed purpose of capturing wild horses. In 1797 he had gone to Texas and Mexico to buy horses for a Louisiana regiment and had obtained a passport from the Governor of Louisiana. It seems, however, that he was distrusted and watched. A patrol of fifty Spanish horsemen met him near Fort Washita but did not stop him, and he advanced with his men as far as the Brazos. There the party, reduced by desertion to eighteen, camped and penned about three hundred wild horses. Then they visited the Comanches, by invitation of their chief, and stayed a month with them. On their return to the camp a force of about one hundred men attacked them on March 21, 1801, and after a stubborn fight, in which Nolan was killed, the adventurers were captured. Lieutenant Musquiz, the commander of the Spanish force, gives the number of Nolan's band as twenty-four, fourteen Americans, one creole of Louisiana, seven Spaniards or Mexicans, and two negro slaves.

The prisoners were taken to Nacogdoches and then to San Antonio and San Luis Potosi, and finally to Chihuahua, where they were tried and ordered released. The commandant of the Internal Provinces, however, referred the matter to the king, and after five years the order came to hang one out of every five, to be chosen by lot. As there were only nine of the prisoners it was deemed sufficient to hang one man, and dice having been thrown by the captives, the lot fell on Ephraim Blackburn, who was hanged on November 11, 1807. The other prisoners were condemned to hard labor for ten years, but one of them, Ellis Bean, obtained his liberty and fought with Morelos for the independence of Mexico, and later with Jackson in the battle of New Orleans. Nolan's expedition and the fate of his companions is an interesting and curious incident in the history of Texas.

We now come to events in which persons of note took part, and in order to understand them we should remember that Louisiana to the west of the Mississippi, and the Island of Orleans were given to Charles III of Spain by Louis XV in 1762, and that this immense province was retroceded to France in 1800 and sold by Napoleon to the United States in 1803. The border line, which had given no trouble while Louisiana was Spanish, was again a subject of dispute when the Spaniards in Texas had Americans as neighbors. Spain claimed that the Arroyo Hondo was the boundary line and the United States had a vague claim on the whole country east of the Rio Grande.

The Spaniards prepared to resist encroachments from their powerful neighbors, and advanced to a short distance from Natchitoches, after a small Spanish force had been ejected by the Americans from the abandoned post of Adaes. Aaron Burr's reported scheme of an invasion of Mexico had rendered the Spanish authorities in Texas more active, and General Herrera had crossed the Sabine at the head of thirteen hundred men. Governor Claiborne called out the Louisiana militia and arrived at Natchitoches, where he was soon

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