Brief History of Francisco Hidalgo
Francisco Hidalgo is a missionary who has been an outspoken supporter of the cause in East Texas. He was born is 1659, and he was raised in the Spanish capital of Madrid. According to circumstantial evidence, he may have been orphaned when he was a little child. When he was fifteen years old, he was granted the Franciscan order. In 1683, after gaining his ordination, he embarked on a voyage across the Atlantic with 23 of his colleagues to aid in the establishment of the Santa Cruz de Queretaro missionary seminary in the New World. Hidalgo was just 24 years old when he began his ministry as a young priest. In 1684, he and two other companions embarked on a missionary journey that took them to the Saltillo region, the Monclova estate, and a mining town known as Boca de Leones, among other places. A French colony has been formed on the northern Gulf coast, somewhere in the United States. It wasn’t until the next year that Hidalgo made his way into Texas, after the Tejas Indians had discovered Fort St. Louis and begun building missions among them in 1689.
Francisco Hidalgo Expedition and what he did?
Franciscan priest Francisco Hidalgo was a missionary to the American Indians in what is now northern Mexico and east Texas. Because of him, Texas was occupied by Spain for a long time. The college of Santa Cruz de Querétaro was founded by him and some of his colleagues in the Spanish colonies of North America in 1683 after he was ordained as a priest. When it opened in what is now central Mexico, the college was the first Spanish-run school to focus exclusively on the promotion of Catholicism throughout the Americas. Following this, Hidalgo went on to preach in nearby towns, where his fiery tirades against vice were supposedly well received.
When Hidalgo began his missionary work in 1688, he was hoping to convert the local Indians to Christianity at the Northern frontier of the Spanish possessions, in what is now North Eastern Mexico. Domingo Terán de los Ros and the Franciscan priest Damián Massanet led a Spanish expedition into East Texas in 1691, and he was one of the first Europeans to set foot in the region. Massanet established the San Francisco de los Tejas mission, which Hidalgo joined, located in what is now Augusta, Texas. The Franciscans had to return to the college in Querétaro in 1693 after being forced to quit their mission due to animosity from the indigenous Hasinai (Tejas) Indians.
As a Hasinai missionary, Hidalgo was determined to return to East Texas. As a result, in 1698, he was transported to what is now the North Eastern part of Mexico. In 1699, he helped construct San Juan Bautista on the Ro de Sabinas (in Nuevo León) as one of the first missions in the region. The following year, the mission was relocated to Guerrero, Coahuila, a town on the banks of the Rio Grande. San Juan Bautista functioned as an important outpost and gateway for Spanish expeditions to Texas in the years after the conquest of Texas.
Missions in East Texas
It was in 1690 that the focus shifted to East Texas. Towards Louisiana, the missionaries travelled down El Camino Real, a major thoroughfare that runs through Central Texas. They established San Francisco de los Tejas deep in the Piney Woods, just west of the Neches River. Recently conducted study has determined that the site is located along San Pedro Creek, east of the present-day town of August, and a few miles west of Mission Tejas State Park, which is located near Weches in Houston County. A replica of a log church, which was erected in 1934, may be found in the park.
Only a few months after the founding of San Francisco de los Tejas, the mission of Santsima Nombre de Mara was erected closer to the banks of the Neches River. Four miles east of Weches on Texas. There is a historical marker in Houston County commemorating the town. Santisma Nombre de Mara was destroyed by water in 1692, and the friars were forced to return to San Francisco de los Tejas, which was abandoned in 1693 due to illness and aggressive Indians.
Francisco Hidalgo collaboration with French authorities in Louisiana
Hidalgo had wished to return to Texas for a long time, but his Spanish superiors refused to grant him permission. He finally took the courageous and startling step of writing to the French governor in Louisiana in 1711, pleading for assistance in re-establishing missions in the region’s easternmost regions. Hidalgo was discovered by the French Canadian adventurer Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, who was dispatched by the governor in order to enhance French economic interests in the area. In 1714, St. Denis travelled through Texas and arrived in San Juan Bautista. The French were rivals of the Spanish in their attempts to govern the region between French Louisiana and Spanish Mexico, and they were defeated by the latter (New Spain). As a result of St. Denis’s provocative voyage into Texas, the Spaniards were compelled to respond, as they did not want France to gain control of the territory. In 1716, the Spaniards began a long-term colonization of East Texas, where they established a number of new mission communities. They included Nuestro Padre San Francisco de los Tejas, which was established as the successor mission to the first San Francisco de los Tejas mission, with Hidalgo appointed as its leader. He was finally allowed to resume missionary work among the Hasinai Indians after a long period of time.
Francisco Hidalgo Last Days
As a result of their fears of a French invasion in East Texas in 1719, the Franciscans were forced to temporarily leave the area. When Hidalgo arrived in San Antonio, he chose to live at Mission San Antonio de Valero (eventually known as the Alamo) (Texas). During his time in Spain, he requested permission to travel to the Apache Indians of Texas in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. His Spanish authorities denied his request. As a result of his return to San Juan Bautista where he died in September 1726.
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