Published: August 31, 2009 11:13 am      

John Watson: Fort San Saba home to Indians

Presidio San Luis de Las Amarillas, popularly known as Presidio San Saba, is located just west of Menard, on the north bank of the San Saba River.

The remains can be easily seen from U.S. 190 and, at first glance, resemble the remains of a European castle.

When you turn off the highway to go to the fort you find it is on the grounds of the Menard County Golf Course, situated in front of the clubhouse with the No. 4 tee on the north side of the fort.

The presidio was established in April 1757 as a support for the Santa Cruz de San Saba Mission located some four miles down the river.

The mission was established to convert the eastern Apache to Christianity, while the presidio was established to protect the mission.

The project of the presidio and mission was also undertaken to promote Spain’s presence in the area and serve as a deterrent to possible French claim.

The missions at San Antonio had included the mission within the presidio with the soldiers.

Some of the Indians had been reluctant to enter the presidio with the soldiers to attend the mission.

They decided to separate the mission from the presidio in hopes more Indians would attend the mission.

The Catholic priests who came to San Saba wanted to bring Christianity to American Indians.

The San Saba mission was intended specifically for the Lipan Apache Indians, who had asked that a mission be established in their area.

It is believed by some that the Lipan were really interested in obtaining the protection a Spanish presence would provide.

They were under continuous threat from Comanches and other Native American enemies who were trying to push them out of their territory, the southern Edwards Plateau area south and west of present-day Austin.

In addition to Christianizing the Indians, the Spanish were interested in developing the mineral resources of Central Texas.

Sometime before the San Saba mission and presidio were established, Spanish prospectors had discovered traces of gold and silver in the Llano Uplift, or central mineral region of Texas along the Llano River in Mason and Llano Counties.

To exploit the gold and silver, the Spaniards needed to befriend the Indians, partly so the Indians would not attack the miners, but also because they needed a labor force to work the mines.

If the priests could settle a large group of Indians in a mission and begin taking up European ways, then the Spaniards would have a ready source of laborers.

This was a pattern of development and exploitation the Spaniards had applied very effectively in Mexico and across Central and South America, where they found tremendous wealth in gold and silver.

In 1757, a caravan of carts and pack animals reached the location selected for the mission and presidio after coming up through Mexico by way of San Antonio.

Workers immediately began to build the structures that would house and protect the people. Because shelters were needed quickly, the buildings were made of wattle-and-daub.

Walls were made of upright logs set into shallow trenches.

Spaces between vertical logs were filled in with mud — daub — to form solid walls.

Roofs were thatched with a long, course grass native to the area.

Once the mission and presidio became established, these temporary buildings would be replaced with more permanent, stone masonry buildings.

On the morning of March 16, 1758, Mission Santa Cruz de San Saba, a small, hastily constructed compound enclosed by a wooden palisade, was surrounded by 2,000 hostile Indians including Wichita, Comanche and Caddo warriors.

The three Spanish priests in residence tried to placate the allied native force with gifts and offers of safe passage to the nearby presidio, but the palisade was soon overcome and Father Terreros, the mission leader, was killed along with several others.

A small group of people who survived the attack took refuge in the church, the mission’s largest structure.

In the meantime, the palisade and several buildings were set on fire as the Indians sacked the place and began celebrating victory.

Sporadic fighting continued as the Indians fired their French muskets at the church and tried to gain entry.

Four miles upstream, the 30 soldiers at the Presidio San Saba heard the commotion, saw the smoke from the fires, and were soon surrounded themselves.

While they were able to keep the Indians at bay, the soldiers could not come to the aide of the mission because two-thirds of the garrison was away on various duties.

As night fell, the victorious allied natives roasted several slaughtered oxen and feasted a short distance from the beleaguered missionaries.

While the victorious Indians were feasting, the survivors, led by Juan Leal, escaped the burning church under cover of darkness and made their way to the presidio, many of them badly wounded.

The arrival of the returning solders the next day possibly saved the presidio from the same fate as the mission.

The attack represented the first time the Spaniards had confronted large numbers of Indians with firearms acquired in trade with the French.

Burned and shattered, the abandoned San Saba mission passed into history and legend.

The temporary Presidio San Saba was replaced with a huge stone fort five years later and manned for another decade because of its strategic role in Spanish mining operations nearby.

It was abandoned in 1772 as the Spanish frontier retreated southward.

The ruins of the presidio remained as highly visible reminders of the Spanish presence.

But the remnants of the burned mission, never substantial to begin with, dwindled.

Picked over through the years by souvenir hunters, it disappeared as a known place shortly after 1900.

Historians and archaeologists began trying to relocate Mission San Saba in the mid 1960s, but it was not until 1993 that the search was successful.

A marker is located three miles east of Menard on Farm-to-Market 2092 next to the field where the final remains of the mission were located.

In the 1800s, as Anglo settlers began to arrive, the presidio buildings occasionally served as temporary refuge during Indian raids.

Some of the stones were later used as building material in Menard, and a portion of the presidio was reconstructed as a Texas Centennial project in 1936.

The Presidio is open year-round with self guided tours aided by exhibit signs at the site located two miles west of Menard on U.S. 190.

Turn left on Menard County Golf Course Road. Free admission.



John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.