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Tuesday, December 30, 1997

Small East Texas town strives to learn more about Spanish roots

By CATHY FRYE Beaumont Enterprise

SAN AUGUSTINE - There is more mystery than fact surrounding the Franciscan mission established here in 1717.

But residents of this small town, reputed to be the oldest Anglo city in Texas, are stubbornly intent on learning more about the Spaniards' long-ago foray into deep East Texas.

The city has embarked on a $2.5 million endeavor to open up the site of the former Mission Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de los Ais - not only to archaeologists, but to tourists as well.

Opening in the spring of 1998 are an archive, a museum filled with artifacts found at the site and a working laboratory for archaeologists excavating there. The city also is building an RV park and marking off campsites for tourists.

Those visiting the mission site eventually will be allowed to participate in supervised digs. They also will be able to watch the archaeologists on staff clean and examine artifacts in the lab.

It is a project that has been decades - generations, actually - in the making.

"This mission is going to represent all East Texas missions," said Julia Wade, a member of the Mission Dolores Site Advisory Committee. "And that period of history needs to be recognized."

It's been hundreds of years since the Franciscans arrived here with hopes of converting Indians and waylaying any of the French who might be tempted to stray across the Louisiana border.

But lingering legends about the priests' frustration with uncooperative Indians and colorful accounts of skirmishes with France have long fascinated those who grew up in San Augustine.

Much is still unknown, however, about the six Spanish missions established in the Piney Woods, including San Augustine's Mission Dolores. No one has yet been able to determine exactly how these East Texas missions were constructed or who lived within their walls.

"In terms of what they looked like, we have only the sketchiest of descriptions," said historian Adan Benavides, who has been hired to research the Mission Dolores. Even rummaging through Spain's archives has revealed little.

But frustrating as the unsolved puzzle is, that's exactly what will bring people to the site, said City Manager Alton Shaw, who managed to attain the state funding needed to preserve and eventually reconstruct the mission.

The city already has heard from several organizations interested in coming here to study the mission once the project is finished, Shaw said. And officials are hoping that the tourists already coming here to see the city's historic churches and sprawling homes might linger a bit longer if there's something else to see and do.

The work has begun to attract the attention of locals, Shaw said. "When you start digging out there, people come like bees to honey."

The Mission Nuestra de los Dolores - "Our Lady of Sorrows" - was established in 1717 on the banks of the Ayish Bayou on what is now known as Mission Hill.

It was one of six missions built along the Louisiana border to serve as a buffer against the French, who were trading heavily with Indians living in Spain's territory.

The site today is cut in two by Texas 147, which runs along the same path once traveled by the missionaries. The El Camino Real, also called The King's Highway and later, the Old San Antonio Road, was the primary transportation corridor for more than 300 years. In the days of the Franciscans' East Texas efforts, San Antonio - known now for its own missions' spectacular architecture - was simply a way station for those headed to small, struggling establishments located deep in the Piney Woods.

Like all East Texas missions, San Augustine's Mission Dolores was quite small, composed of a church, rooms for the priest and his assistants, and fields for crops, according to research done by Nancy Kenmotsu, an archaeologist for the Texas Historical Commission.

It was built near villages belonging to the Ais Indians, a division of the Caddo Indians. Mission Dolores was abandoned in 1719 when French invasions became an imminent threat. When Spain's missionaries returned in 1722, they built a second mission on El Camino Real. It remained open for 51 years.

The site currently being excavated is located south of downtown San Augustine. On one side of Texas 147, the city is building the library, museum and lab. On the other side, an RV park and campsites are being created.

The state has dictated on which portions of the mission site the city can build to ensure artifacts are unharmed and future excavation efforts unhampered.

Most of the Spanish, French and Indian artifacts found so far are being kept at Stephen F. Austin University. Once the project is finished, they will be moved back to Mission Hill.

So far, archaeologists have found wall trenches, postmolds, trash pits and a well. They also uncovered a portion of El Camino Real in its 18th-century location, according to Kenmotsu's report.

But given how long ago the mission crumbled, the city also is relying on historians to find out more about the Franciscans and Indians who once lived here.

The going has been rough for Benavides, who said there is little documentation of the East Texas missions.

"I have uncovered very little new information, with the exception of the man who claims to have built the mission," Benavides said, describing a recent trip to Spain during which he found this small tidbit of information on the Mission Dolores.

"This was a major find. There's so little documentation on that mission from the Franciscans. I don't believe there's one inventory for the mission, per se."

Residents here, however, have been thrilled with Benavides' efforts. They have been trying since the early 1900s to do something with the old site, Wade said.

Even early Anglo settlers were intrigued by the fleeting existence of the Mission Dolores, she said. "All these many 275 years, people have been mining that place for Indian arrowheads and artifacts."

In 1967, the town celebrated the mission's 250th anniversary. U.S. senators and more than 300 people descended on San Augustine, Wade said. "And the whole town came in on wagons to raise money for this mission."

But those eager to do something with the mission site kept bumping into one immovable obstacle - a lack of money.

City Manager Shaw's first efforts involved getting all of the property that was once part of the mission under the city's governance. Some of the land was bought from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The other two tracts, which belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and the San Augustine Historical Society, were given to the city in 1992.

In August 1993, a master plan describing what the city wanted to do with the Mission Dolores site was put together by an archaeologist and an Austin architect. And shortly after it was completed, Shaw learned that state money for these types of projects was available. San Augustine eagerly submitted its plan and received 80 percent of the funding. The other 20 percent is expected to come from RV park revenues.

The Texas Department of Commerce estimates the city will get at least $1.3 million from visitors to the area. Because San Augustine has several other historic features - several houses and some of the oldest churches in the state - residents are expecting an explosion of tourism.

The city hopes to one day reconstruct the Mission Dolores, should archaeologists and historians ever be able to figure out what it would have looked like.

All anyone knows at the moment is that vertical log construction, called jacal, was used in building the second mission.

Missions here looked radically different than the well-known ones of San Antonio or El Paso, Benavides said. These apparently were smaller, wooden structures, quite crude when compared with their counterparts elsewhere in the state.

The missions of East Texas weren't built to last in the way that the Alamo was. "They're not the same thing," Benavides said. "They're all missions but they were serving different communities in different time periods. They just had to be different because of the nature of the environment and the Indians they were dealing with."

The Franciscans never had much luck with the Ais Indians, who had no desire to abandon their villages and move into the Mission Dolores. Nor were they interested in converting.

But that doesn't mean the East Texas missions didn't serve a purpose, Benavides said. They were needed more to deter the French than to attract the Indians.

"Was it successful? Compared to El Paso, maybe not. But then, there were different types of missions," Benavides said.

"It was there 50 years and ended only because the Spanish crown ran out of money and France obtained Louisiana," he said. It was no longer needed as a buffer. "That's its importance."

Wade believes some sort of authentic reconstruction will one day be possible. But even if it isn't, the site still offers the most revealing glimpse into a past about which little is known, she said.

"This is the only one where there is this possibility of doing a real memorial to this period." Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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