While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Southwest of the Hainai village, nearly straight west of the Nacogdoche, was
the Neche village, near the east bank of the Neches River, and near the crossing
of the Camino Real. The diaries usually represent the distance from the Neche to
the Hainai as about the same as that from the Hainai to the Nacogdoche some
eight or nine leagues.1 The air line distance was
evidently somewhat less in the former case than in the latter, but the route was
less direct, since between the Neches and the Angelina Rivers the road bowed
quite decidedly to the north. The usual crossing of this highway at the Neches,
as now identified, was at Williams's Ferry, below the mouth of San Pedro Creek.2
Archaeological remains help us to identify this crossing and give certainty to
the approximate correctness of our conclusions. These remains are the Indian
mounds east of the Neches River. The first mention of them that I have seen is
that by Mezières, in 1779. His record is important. Passing along the Camino
Real on his way to the Nabedache, he noted the large mound near the Neches
River, raised, he said, by the ancestors of the natives of the locality "in
order to build on its top a temple, which overlooked the pueblo near by, and in
which they worshiped their gods a monument rather to their great numbers than to
the industry of their individuals."3 This mound and
its two less conspicuous companions still stand in Cherokee County about a mile
and a half from the river and five miles southwest of Alto, in a plain known to
some as Mound Prairie, undoubtedly the true Mound Prairie whose whereabouts has
been debated. They are on land now the property of the Morrill Orchard Company,
once a part of the original grant made to the romantic Pedro Ellis Bean. The Old
San Antonio Road, as identified in the' oldest surveys, ran about three hundred
yards north of the largest, which is also the northern most mound.4
This mound, standing by the old highway, is an important western landmark for
the location of the early tribes and missions, just as the site of Nacogdoches
is an important eastern landmark. With the evidence of these mounds, the name
San Pedro attached to the creek joining the Neches just above the crossing, and
the early maps of the Camino Real, there is no doubt as to the approximate
location of the old crossing, and, consequently, of the sites of the Neche and
the Nabedache villages, with their respective missions, on opposite sides of the
river.
The mission of San Francisco de los Texas, reestablished in 1716 at the Neche
village,5 appears from the diaries to have been some
one or two leagues from two to four miles from the crossing. Peña's diary puts
it at two leagues. The entry in his diary for August 3, 1721, is as follows:
"The bridge [over the Neches] having been completed, all the people, the
equipage, and the drove, crossed in good order, taking the direction of
east-northeast, and camp was made near the mission of San Francisco, where the
presidio was placed the second time it was moved in 1716. The march was only two
leagues."6 Rivera gives the distance from the
crossing as more than a league.7 The other diaries
are indefinite on this point, but the conclusion is plain that the mission and
the Neche village were close to the mounds, the mission, at least, being
apparently farther from the river.
1. Espinosa tells us that
the mission was near a spring and also near
an arroyo that flowed from the northeast. He
gave the distance from the mission from the
camp near the Neches River as one league,
and that to the mission of Concepci6n, east
of the Angelina, eight leagues, going
northeast by east, then east (Diario,
entries for July 2 and 6). Ram6n gave the
distance to the mission of Concepción, from
the camp near the Neches apparently, but
possibly from the mission, as nine leagues
east-northeast (Derrotero, in Mem. de Nueva
España, XXVII, 157-158).
2. See maps cited above, and
also the Map of Houston County, copied from
a map by Geo. Aldrich, by H. S. Upshur,
Draughtsman in the General Land Office,
1841.
3. Letter to Croix, August
16, 1779, MS., in the Archivo General y
Pãblico, Mexico. This letter was written at
the "Village of Sn. Pedro de los
Navedaehos," just after Mezières passed the
mounds. The Memorias copy of the letter
gives the name of the place, erroneously,
San Pedro Nevadachos" (Vol. XXVIII, 241).
4. Information furnished by
Dr. J. -E. Mayfield, of N'acogdoches. The
original Austin map (1829) in the Secretaría
de Fomento, Mexico, shows the mound on the
north side of the road.
5. On the authority of the
corrupt copy of Ram6n's itinerary in the
Memorias (XXVII, 157) it has been stated
that this mission was founded at the
"Nacoches" village, a tribal name nowhere
else encountered. The original of the
itinerary, however, gives the name
"N'aiches," thus agreeing with the other
original reports and clearing up a
troublesome uncertainty. The official name
of the mission was San Francisco de los
Texas, but, because of its location at the
Neche village, it came to be called,
popularly, San Francisco de los Neches.
6. Diary, in Mem. de Nueva
España, XXVTII, 38. The presidio had been
temporarily placed in 1716 on the west side
of the Neches, near a small lake, and then
moved across the river.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
The Native Tribes About The East Texas Mission's, Quarterly of the Texas
State Historical Association, By Herbert E. Bolton, April 1908
