How do you? Howdy and welcome to Wise about Texas, the podcast about Texas history, culture and everything

Texan.

I'm your host, Ken Wise, and it's time for episode 3.

Today we're going to cover one of the earliest battles of the Texas Revolution.

So let's go back to 1835 and get wise about Texas. Now here in Texas we consider the first

battle of the Texas Revolution to have occurred on October 2nd 1835 when the citizens of the town of Gonzales rejected Mexican Army efforts

to take back a cannon that the army had given to the settlers for defense against the Indians. The defiant settlers drew a picture of the

cannon on a tattered piece of cloth along with the famous words come and take it.

When confronted by the Mexican troops the settlers fired not only the cannon, but also some rifles,

killing two Mexican soldiers and sending the troops back to their camp.

That skirmish is considered the first engagement of the Texas Revolution,

but today we're going to talk about one of the first larger battles known as the Battle of Concepcion.

First, we need to set the scene and discuss the Spanish missions in Texas.

In the 1700s, the Spanish attempted to convert the Indians living in Texas to

Christianity and make proper Spanish citizens out of them.

To accomplish this goal, they built a series of missions in the territory.

The earliest missions were begun in the 1600s, and some of the more famous ones around San Antonio

were built in the 1700s. Now a Spanish mission is often thought of as a church

but it's really much more than that. It's a village. The purpose was to get the Indians of the area to gather and live at the mission.

The priests would teach them Christianity. They taught them agriculture and a generally more settled way to live.

Usually soldiers were also stationed in a nearby Presidio or Fort to protect the mission.

The mission in our story today was originally called La Purisma Concepcion de la Saisani when it was founded in 1716.

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