If you are a Southwesterner, born or naturalized, returning from a visit “back East,” your spirits rise with a jump when the trainmen call out “San Antone!” For this is the frontier of your own dear country, and you feel the thrill that goes with getting home again and being among your own people. Dusty and a bit down at the heel in spots is San Antonio, you think? Yes, son, but it is picturesque; and there are adobes and Mexicans, Stetson hats and cart-wheel dollars once more, and it is where the Southwest begins, if you are westbound on the S. P.
San Antonio more than anywhere else in Texas has an Old World atmosphere. The former Spanish capital of the province, there are parts of it that impart to the visitor much the same feeling that Monterey, that other Spanish capital, gives him in California—the feeling that may be this is the United States, but it needs to be demonstrated. Of course, being a city of 100,000 people and commercially important, it has its well-groomed, American side, but unless you are in San Antonio merely in quest of health and comfort,[86] it is not that spick-and-span side that appeals to your traveler’s taste. You will prefer those streets, irregular and even unpaved (often their Spanish names still clinging to them), of the older quarters, where cracked one-storied adobes in open sunshine, elbow stately old tree-embowered mansions, whose tangled gardens seem to hide in their unkempt corners untold romances. You will like the Mexican quarter with its queer little shops, and the market square with its picturesque crowds of swarthy peones, donkeys and country teams of odd sorts, its squatting street venders of tortillas, cakes, dulces, songbooks, religious pictures and shoe-strings. You will like, too, the bridges over the little river that winds cosily about through the midst of the town, and the waterside lawns where trees cast a comfortable shade and summer houses invite to tea al fresco. There are literally dozens of those bridges, with railings at a convenient height to lean your elbows on and dream away an idle half-hour. Moreover, you will like the many charming parks and plazas, where you may sit under a palm tree and enjoy the passing tide of open-air life and make more acquaintances in half an hour than you would in New York in a year.
The Main Plaza is dominated by the cathedral of San Fernando, which dates from 1738, though little of the original structure remains—most of the present building having been constructed about half a century ago. What is left of the original church is in the rear, backing on another and larger square, the old Plaza de Armas, or Military Plaza as it is now called.
Modern San Antonio has risen out of the consolidation of the presidio of San Antonio de BÉjar, the Mission of Antonio de Valero (both mission and presidio founded in 1718) and the villa—a form of Spanish municipality—of San Fernando, founded in 1730. The Mission, after abandonment as a religious institution, was turned into a fortress and barracks, and acquired the name of Alamo.[87] The Church of the Mission and what is left of the main building of the Fort are the most famous historical buildings in the city. They face on the Alamo Plaza, and are of such unique interest as to draw, in themselves, many visitors to San Antonio; for they are in a sense to Texas what Faneuil Hall is to New England, the cradle of its liberty. Late in 1835, when Texas was still a part of Mexico, San Antonio was stormed and captured by a band of insurgent American-Texans under the leadership of “Old Ben” Milam, who was killed in the fight. (You will see his statue in Milam Square, if you are interested enough to look it up). The Alamo, which was well outside the San Antonio of those days, was surrendered with the city. Here the Texans later entrenched themselves, and in February and March of the following year were besieged for 12 days by 4000 Mexicans under General Santa Ana. Of the Texans, there were less than 200, including some women and children. Refusing to surrender, every man of them was killed in the final assault upon the place, the only survivors (according to H. H. Bancroft) being 3 women, 2 children and one negro boy servant. “Remember the Alamo” became the war-cry of the Texans in the subsequent struggle that ended in the independence of the province.
The little Alamo Church and part of the main building that we see to-day, form only a small portion of the establishment that existed in 1836 and was occupied by the Texan defenders. Besides this church part (now maintained as a public monument) there was the large two-story convento-fortress divided into rooms and used as armory and barracks, part of which now exists and is cared for by the State of Texas; also a prison building and courtyard; the whole covering between 2 and 3 acres. Prominent among the Alamo defenders was that picturesque character and popular Southwestern hero, Davy Crockett. Another was James Bowie, to whom many authorities attribute the invention of the famous knife that bears the Bowie name, but Bancroft says it was Rezin Bowie, a brother of James, who originated it. These and others of the participants in the Texan war of independence are commemorated in the names of streets, parks and public houses throughout the city. As for the Alamo, it is bait in all sorts of business ventures—giving name to saloons, suspenders, grocery stores, restaurants, lodging houses and what not.
Next to the Alamo, the sightseer (unless an enthusiasm for matters military takes him straight to San Antonio’s famous army post, Sam Houston), will find worth while a visit to the old Franciscan Missions, now in ruins, that are strung along the San Antonio River to the south of the city. There are four of these, the first about 2 miles from the Alamo, the rest at similar intervals of a couple of miles. Americans have got in the way of calling them, in numerical fashion, First, Second, Third and Fourth Missions, respectively, to the neglect of their fine old Spanish names. The First, which is on the southern outskirts of the city, and may be reached by a moderate walk from a street car line, is the Mission Nuestra SeÑora de la PurÍsima Concepcion de AcuÑa (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, of AcuÑa). From quite a distance one catches sight of its twin square towers with pyramidal tops and its high dome peeping above a tangle of mesquite, chinnaberry and pecan trees, and sprawling juisache bushes. A Mexican family lives in an end of the ruined convento part, and a small fee is charged for showing the inside of the church and permitting you to climb the belfry for a fine view over the country. The faÇade is interesting with much curious sculpturing. The knotted cord of St. Francis winds above the austere polygonal “arch” of the doorway, upon which is this Spanish inscription: A su patrono y princessa con estas armas atiende esta mission y defiende el punto de su pureza. (With these arms this Mission attends her Patroness and Princess and defends the state of her immaculateness.) This is an obvious allusion to the controversy long maintained among old-time theologians concerning the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception—a doctrine defended and preached by the Franciscans from the first. In the corners immediately above the arch are two medallions, the one bearing an unusual form of the Franciscan Order’s coat-of-arms—the Saviour’s naked arm and the sleeved arm of St. Francis nailed together to the Cross; the other carved in the semblance of five blood-drops, to symbolize perhaps the stigmata of St. Francis. Upon the keystone is another elaborate embellishment now much worn by the elements. The central figure of this is plainly representative of the consecrated elements in the Lord’s Supper—a slender Spanish chalice surmounted by the Sacred Host. Worn figures at the sides of the chalice may have represented clouds or adoring angels. The whole carving of the keystone obviously typifies the Church’s missionary purpose. The front was once gaily frescoed in red, yellow, blue and orange; but Time’s remorseless hand has fallen heavily on that. Begun in 1731, the building was not completed until 1752. After Mexican independence from Spain was accomplished, this Mission as well as the others, was abandoned and was not infrequently used by both Mexican and United States troops for barracks and stables. Some 30 years ago Bishop Neraz of San Antonio had La PurÍsima Concepcion cleared of rubbish and re-dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.[88]
SAN JOSÉ DE AGUAYO
The sculptured window of this old Franciscan Mission near San Antonio, Texas, is widely famed for its refined beauty.
SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, ARIZONA.
Though largely restored, this survival of early 17th-century missionary effort, is one of the most interesting antiquities of its class in the United States.
The Second Mission, properly called San JosÉ de Aguayo, was the first founded of the four, dating from 1720. It was 11 years a-building, and the date of its completion, March 5, 1731, seems to have determined the beginning of the remaining three Missions in the chain, all of which were founded on their present sites in that same year.[89] It was in its day the most flourishing of the Texas Missions, as, in its ruins, it is the most beautiful. The builder indulged to the uttermost his love of florid carving, and the broken faÇade of the roofless church is a marvel of ornate sculpturing—of saints, life size or in bust, cherubs’ heads and flaming hearts, volutes and arabesques and conchoids innumerable. But it is good sculpture and an amazing thing that it should have been wrought to the glory of God in that wilderness of what was Northern Mexico, near two centuries ago. Doubtless it was the work of some artisan (I have read that his name was Juan Huisar) brought up from Old Mexico where such ecclesiastical art was encouraged from the beginning of the Spanish occupation; and for assistants Indians were employed. Around the corner from this front is a window in the baptistry that makes you exclaim for the beauty of it, so exquisite is it in its sculptured setting, so delicate and of so simple loveliness is its reja, or grating of wrought iron. And about it in the broken chinks of crumbling masonry is a fern garden of Nature’s own sowing, of a sort that thrives in the sunshine and aridity of the Southwest and nowhere else, a species that botanists call Notholaena sinuata. The Mission is quite abandoned now save for an occasional service at a modest little altar in one room. A neighboring Mexican family has the key and supplies a guide.
These two Missions are usually all the hurrying tourist sees; but an hour more, if you are in an automobile, is enough to afford a glance at the other two, which, if less interesting, are still a pleasant adventure. The Third (6 miles from San Antonio) is Mission San Juan Capistrano (Saint John of Capistrano, in Italy), and the Fourth is San Francisco de la Espada (Saint Francis of the Sword). The last has undergone some restoration to fit it for the resident priest, who ministers to a Mexican flock quartered roundabout. The entire round of the Missions can be easily done by motor car in half a day; but take a day to it, if you can spare the time, picnic somewhere by the river, and do the beautiful old places with leisure and reverence. Surely one can do worse things, to quote Sidney Lanier, “than to steal out here from town ... and dream back the century and a half of strange, lonesome, devout, hymn-haunted and Indian-haunted years that have trailed past these walls.”
Annually during the last week of April, there is held in San Antonio an open air carnival called the Fiesta San Jacinto. The name commemorates the decisive battle of San Jacinto, fought April 21, 1836, between Mexicans and Texans, and ending the War of Texan Independence. Elaborate celebrations mark the festival, which is almost as well known in the Southwest as the New Orleans Mardi Gras.
NOTE: Readers interested in particulars of the history of the San Antonio Missions will be repaid by consulting the valuable work of Miss Adina DeZavala, entitled: “History and Legends of The Alamo and Other Missions in and Around San Antonio.”
