Welcome to a new history of Old San Antonio.

Episode 2, Missionary San Antonio.

I'm Brandon Seal.

I'm a city, San Antonio. Tonight I'm looking at your love. Neither the sole Neither the sole Franciscan

Neither the sole Franciscan friar

nor the sole Spanish soldier manning the mission

San Miguel delineres de los Adais

had any idea what they were doing there

Though only a few miles away from the French border town of Nacadish, Louisiana,

they were forbidden to interact or trade with that post,

and thus relied on a nearly 600-mile-long supply line back to Monclova

that rarely made it to their modest little outpost.

They were constantly shorter provisions,

and after two and a half years, they'd been reduced to a state of nature,

little improved over that of the local Indians they were supposed to win over with their demonstrations

of Spanish superiority. And what in the world could the Spanish king want with this godforsaken

patch of forest anyway? There was no gold here, no discernible wealth of any kind. The woods

around them could swallow in just a few years what it would take a man a decade to clear. The Indians bore them no love, particularly by comparison to the French, who had an uncanny

knack for getting along with the same Indians that were happy to watch the Spaniards starve.

The Spanish friar couldn't be sure, but it actually seemed like the local Indians had grown

increasingly hostile to late, such that the friar and the soldier feared now to leave sight of the pathetic compound in which they lived. Indeed, two and a half years in, all the malnourished Spaniards had

to show for their occupation of this site was a log storeroom, a chapel, a food plot, and a

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