Mission San José and the Road to Secularization, Part 2: After 1794

In 1794 the temporal possessions of Mission San José in San Antonio — its lands and property — were distributed to the mission's Indigenous residents. What daily life looked like afterward is mostly unclear, but records reveal a mission whose population, social order and ownership were all changing, leading to full secularization in 1823. This is the second part of a National Park Service history from San Antonio Missions National Historical Park.

A changing population

Censuses recorded by Bernardino Vallejo, president of the Texas missions, show the shift:

• December 1804: 73 residents in all, 38 fewer Indigenous residents than in the 1794 census.
• 1815: 49 Indigenous residents and 60 citizens of New Spain — the first time citizens of New Spain outnumbered Indigenous residents at the mission.

Why is unclear. One possibility is that Indigenous residents sold their property to citizens of New Spain and moved away.

Changing roles

Social structures shifted too. In January 1818, Fray Francisco Frexes, the mission's missionary, complained to Texas Governor José Antonio Martinez that Indigenous residents were reluctant to take on their old roles as servants. According to Frexes, Antonio Huizar, the Spanish alcalde at the mission, had told an Indigenous resident who offered to gather wood for the missionary that he no longer had to serve the missionaries, and had ordered that residents' property not be used in the missionary's service. Huizar gave no reason, but he may have regarded the Indigenous residents as Spanish citizens — which was, after all, the mission's goal.

Secularization ordered, delayed and carried out

With its property already in Indigenous hands, the mission was headed toward full secularization.

• 1813: at the request of Bishop Don José Ventura Cabello, the Spanish crown ordered on September 13 that all missions in the Americas operating for more than ten years be turned over to local clergy.
• 1814–1821: Ferdinand VII halted the decree on returning to the throne in 1814, then reinstated it under political pressure on January 20, 1821.
• 1821: the Mexican War of Independence briefly stalled secularization of the Texas missions; Mexico won its independence that fall.
• September 15, 1823: Mexico's Secretary of State told the local government in San Antonio that the Mexican government would carry out the 1813 decree.

Fray Diaz de Leon, president of the San Antonio missions, acknowledged the decree in October and November but argued that he could not complete it without orders from his superiors at the College of Zacatecas. Mexico's National Congress refused to let him wait and ordered him to proceed. Mission San José was fully secularized at the end of 1823.

A scramble for land

Secularization raised questions about the 1794 distribution. The 1823 inventory shows that missionaries still counted farmland and dwellings as church property, suggesting that Indigenous residents had no deeds or other documents to prove their claims. Even so, a detailed inventory was made so the property could be distributed to Indigenous residents and to others seeking vacant mission land.

What followed resembled a land grab, as Hispanic and other non-Indigenous residents of greater San Antonio moved in and acquired property. Some Indigenous residents left their homes and the mission. Researchers have found family names tied to Mission San José in counties south of Bexar County after 1824, but the dispersal of the mission's Indigenous residents after secularization has never been studied in depth.

The records for these years are thin, but they show a mission transformed, in the words of the park, "from a symbol of Spanish colonization into a diverse community."

Sources

• National Park Service, "Mission San José and the Road to Secularization, Part 2: Post-1794" (San Antonio Missions National Historical Park): https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/mission-san-jos%C3%A9-and-the-road-to-secularization-part-2-post-1794.htm
• The NPS article cites Vallejo's reports of 1804 and 1815, Frexes's 1818 letter, Diaz de Leon's 1823 letter (from the San José Papers) and Ivey, Of Various Magnificence.
• The source dates Diaz de Leon's response to 1813 in its text but to 1823 in its footnote; this page gives no year for it.