The Junior Historian, Volume 15, Number 1, September 1954 Page: 2
32 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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THE JUNIOR HISTORIAN
The settlement grew rapidly, grow-
ing from the original thirteen families
in 1750 to twenty-five in 1755, when
Escand6n made his first detailed re-
port on Dolores, and to thirty in 1757,
when Tienda de Cuervo made his in-
spection. Escand6n mentioned in his re-
port that there were, in addition to the
twenty-five Spanish families, twenty-
seven Indian families with a total of
one hundred and fifteen persons. Cuer-
vo's report merely stated that there were
over a hundred persons living at the
settlement. Cuervo emphasized the con-
dition of the ranch rather than the peo-
ple, saying that it was far from being
a true settlement or hacienda, for the
twenty jacales, or ranch huts, were made
of brush, plastered with mud and
thatched with grass. There was no
church and no priest was assigned to
the ranch.
Under the terms of his contract with
Escand6n, Borrego was to maintain a
ferry at the river crossing. Two boats
were maintained from the beginning,
and in 1753 Borrego was rewarded with
fifty more sitios of land. At first Bor-
rego received no remuneration from the
ferry service; the boats were free to all
royal officials and couriers, missionaries,
travelers, convoys, and herds. Escand6n
decreed that ". . . out of consideration
for the maintenance of four peones at
the crossing of the river to assist traf-
fic, he be allowed to charge a reason-
able fee for the services rendered to
those using the ferry."
In 1755 most of the traffic to La
Bahia, San Antonio, and Los Adaes
was through the Dolores crossing; the
older route through San Juan Bautista
was seldom used because of the frequent
Indian raids. Prospering from the in-
creased traffic of the crossing and the
safety offered by Borrego, Dolores
served as an example and stimulus to
the other Rio Grande settlements of
Revilla, Mier, Camargo, and Reynosa
to start occupying their lands north of
the river. This in turn delighted Escan-
d6n, who declared that this occupationwould eventually end in the settling
of the land all the way north to the
Nueces and the presidio of La Bahia.
In 1758 Agustin L6pez de la Camara
Alta in his report described Dolores as
being located on high, level ground on
the north bank of the Rio Grande, about
ten leagues from Laredo. He described
the surrounding country as being roll-
ing, covered with sparse timber, abun-
dant grass, and little water. He thought
the country ideal for cattle raising and
called it a "cattle and stockmen's para-
dise." At that time there were four
hundred horses, sixteen hundred mules,
three thousand mares, more than a thou-
sand donkeys, and three thousand head
of cattle in the area.
The families were supported by Bor-
rego, who fed and clothed them.
Since there was so little water with
which to grow crops, most of their food,
except meat, was brought in from Bor-
rego's hacienda in Coahuila, which he
had kept as a headquarters and a farm.
There most of the crops which sup-
ported the Dolores settlement were
raised, and there Borrego had left his
family and records. Only rarely did
Borrego leave Coahuila to go to Dolores,
where one of his sons was. foreman,
and it was not until the Comanche
raids began to occur in force that he
stayed at the settlement for any length
of time.
Under the terms of the contract with
Escand6n, Borrego was to provide for
the spiritual care of the settlers and to
attempt to convert Indians who lived
on the grant or visited it regularly. No
mission was allotted to the settlement,
therefore, and Fray Miguel de Santa
Maria de los Dolores, the padre at Re-
villa, visited the settlement once a year,
shortly after Easter, for about a month.
While he was there, the priest per-
formed all the christenings, marriages,
confessions, and assigning of pen-
ances. For this he was paid by Bor-
rego, although during the rest of the
year when he was needed to tend the
sick and perform the sacraments he was
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Texas State Historical Association. The Junior Historian, Volume 15, Number 1, September 1954, periodical, September 1954; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth391347/m1/4/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Texas State Historical Association.