Colonization and Spreading Agriculture

Texas contains the sites of a number of old Spanish Missions.  Many of those Missions were also a Presidio, or Fort, in which troops were housed.  The photo above, is a portion of the housing which formed the walls of the enclosure at Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo in what is now San Antonio, taken when we took a trip there a few years ago.

In my mind I hear the rattle of gear and the sounds of conversation as the troops lounged during their few leisure hours.  Most were probably in the shade of the large oak trees during this time of year due to the oppressive heat of the summer.  Their job was to protect the Mission which served as a frontier outpost of the Spanish Empire as they sought to consolidate their claims to vast stretches of North America in their quest for riches.

The Missions were the first sites of European-style agriculture to find its way into the Plains.  Most of the tribes they encountered were hunter-gatherers.  The Missions also introduced cattle, horses, burros and mules. Texas Longhorns are descended from early stock brought to the Americas by the Spaniards.  Escaped draft animals, milk cows and cattle for beef intermixed in the wilds of what is now Mexico and Texas to become what we know as the Longhorn.  The wild Mustangs of the American Southwest are descendants of escaped horses used by early explorers and settlers moving into the region from the south.

The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest learned much of their agriculture, blanket-making and other arts from the Spaniards who introduced sheep and goats to the Continent.  Prior to Spanish Colonization, most of those groups relied heavily on hunting, or gathering seeds.  Corn, beans and squash were likely already grown by some of those tribes, but the knowledge of South American Indians was also brought north by the Spaniards as they carried their slaves, captured from tribes far to the south, along with them.

It is difficult for me to fully imagine the hardships faced by those earliest pioneers into the wilderness of the American Southwest.  They left some mighty tracks across the land, but they are mostly invisible to us today because they are hidden within the commonness of our everyday life -- like ranching, cattle, horses, irrigation, corn, beans, sheep and goats.  Yes, corn and beans were domesticated and utilized first in the Americas by "first Americans", but their utilization on such a wide scale should be attributed to the Spaniards who saw them for what they were -- the true gold of the Americas.  That legacy lives today as American farmers and ranchers feed the world.