Villasur Expedition Consequences

People living in Santa Fé evaluated danger differently than did officials in Mexico City. Ever since they first heard rumors of La Salle’s plans to found a colony on the gulf coast, the viceroy and his advisors had been strengthening the Empire’s position in Tejas.

During the 1719 war between France and Spain, Diego Ramón, comandante of the San Juan Bautista presidio in Nuevo León, passed on exaggerated reports of French activity to the viceroy. He, in turn, ordered the governor of Nuevo México, Antonio Valverde, to investigate.

Valverde demurred because he was planning a campaign against the Faraón Apache. As it was, he had to postpone that to punish Shoshone speakers for attacking settlers like Cristóbal de la Serna and Diego Romero.

In December, the Junta de Guerra in Mexico City ordered Valverde to establish a presidio on the northeastern border with the French at El Cuartelejo. He and his advisors balked at the idea of sending 25 soldiers from the presidio with their families into danger. Missionaries were no happier at the idea of sending two or three men to convert Apache.

People living in Taos argued it was better to have an outpost at Jicarilla that would protect them from Shoshone-speaking Utes and Comanche. Valverde suggested it would take at least 50 additional men to be effective The Athabascan-speaking bands probably agreed. The Apache living at Jicarilla were begging for help. Those at El Cuartelejo most likely didn’t wish to invite reprisals by the Pawnee.

The delay was fatal to the presidio in Santa Fé. In the year between the viceroy’s order and Valverde’s compliance, the French cemented the alliance Claude Charles du Tisné had made in September with the Pawnee by promising guns and presents in return for trading rights.

The viceroy sent a visador north to evaluate Mexico’s frontier defenses. Pedro de Rivera’s report on the ambush of Pedro de Villasur was forwarded to the Oidor de Guerra. Juan de Oliván y Rebolledo was a strong proponent of Tejas.

He faulted Villasur for incompetence rising from inexperience. He noted the circumstances "refutes the pretentions of the paper which is evidence of the commissions which he had held, but not of his abilities; it refutes the evidence of his honors - which are accustomed to be given ad honorem - but not that of the military practice which gives experience."

It was the first time since the Bourbons had ascended the throne of Spain that a weakness in bureaucratic governmental processes was exposed in Mexico City. Résumés were as vulnerable to manipulation as had been the earlier reliance on patronage and spoils.

Oliván responded by asserting a new precept, that a man was responsible for the consequences ensuing from appointing an incompetent subordinate. He felt the need to cite religious precedents for what, in fact, was a revolutionary concept. He recalled the bishop of Valladolid was fined when a vicar in his jurisdiction had not "executed an obligatory decree. As the vicar had no property, the bishop was fined because of having chosen him." He also noted the Duc de Béxar had been fined because an underling "failed to execute another such decree."

He did not acknowledge the internal weaknesses caused by Spain’s wars with France, which left México with limited funds. The increased demand for slaves in the sugar colonies in the Caribbean and Veracruz had led to slave raids on bands living just beyond the mining towns. They were responding, much as were the Comanche, with attacks on Spanish outposts. The state didn’t see the profits from slavery but it bore the costs when it couldn’t meet the frontier demands for more presidios.

Oliván also did not criticize the cumbersome means of mobilizing an army that don’t seem to have changed much since Juan de Oñate marched north with a herd of livestock. Juan Páez Hurtado’s expedition against the Faraón in 1715 began too late in the season, never found its quarry, and disappointed potential Apache allies. Valverde cut short his mission to the Apache because he ran out of food for his army and couldn’t provide for incoming refugees.

Presidio troops simply had no agility to engage mobile bands, and lacked the empathy needed to convert them to allies.

Notes: The viceroy in 1720 was Baltasar de Zúñiga y Guzman; the one in 1726 and 1727 was Juan de Acuña. Zúñiga then was president of the Consejo de Indias or Council of the Indies. Juan de Oliván Revolledo was the Oidor de Guerra or auditor of war.

John, Elizabeth A. H. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds, 1996 edition.

Johnson, John G. "Oliván Rebolledo, Juan Manuel de," Handbook of Texas Online.

Lewis, Anna. "Du Tisné’s Expedition into Oklahoma, 1719," Chronicles of Oklahoma 3:319-323:1925.

Oliván y Rebolledo, Juan de. Report to the viceroy, 29 May 1727, in Pichardo.

Pichardo, José Antonio. Manuscript, 1808-1812, translated and annotated by Charles Wilson Hackett in Pichardo’s Treatise of the Limits of Louisiana and Texas, volume 1, 1931.

Rivera, Pedro de. Report to the Oidor de Guerra, 1726, in Pichardo.