My Incredible Journey Through Mission Espada

My 2007 Humanities Class, along with our teacher Mariana Ornelas, visited Mission Espada on Friday September 7, 2007. This beautiful southernmost mission is located along the river in San Antonio, Texas and was first transferred in 1731. Mission Espada was founded in 1690 as San Francisco de los Tejas near a place called Weches, and was the first mission in Texas. This old stoned mission is very rural and it was built to where it is hard to be seen because of all of the pastures that surround it. A friary was built at the mission in 1745 and the church, which is now restored, was completed in 1756. The mission’s church had large stone towers which looked as if they had outlined the sky with their enormous bells that had stood out in mid air.

The main purpose of the mission was used for “conversion”, for local Native Indians to Christianity. The word espada means “sword”. At Mission Espada, the Indians had received both training as artisans, and weaving skills were needed to help clothe them. Many of the friars strove to make life in the mission communities because they had wanted to resemble many of the Spanish villages. As mission buildings became more elaborate, Indian occupants learned the skills of masonry and carpentry with the help of many craftsmen.

The Franciscan missionaries and their Indian followers built a dam, irrigation ditch, and aqueduct. The main ditch or what is also known to have been called the “acequia madre” carries the water to the mission and its neighboring farm lands. The dam was approximately 270 feet, and has been known to have "curved the wrong way," was built across the San Antonio River. This water is still used by today's residents who are either living on former mission lands or surrounding areas. In order to distribute the water to the missions along the San Antonio River, missionaries had overlooked the building by the natives of seven gravity-flow ditches, dams, and at least one aqueduct, which is approximately 3,500 acres of land. According to the Historic Bridge Foundation, it can be concluded that "precious lime salts in the water gradually cemented the dam's layers of brush, gravel, and rocks. Even so, the dam, ditch, and aqueduct survived a century of Indian attacks, ravaging floods, and controversy before it had been repaired in 1895".