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SAN ANTONIO-HER TRADE,

neighboring cities, that they look upon their achieved success as a national
inheritance, with little thought to the terrible struggles of a particular sec-
tion of her lands as the originating forces which brought this freedom,
and that they owe to the blood of San Antonio's patriots and heroes every
iota of their present opulence and success.
The constant revolutions in Mexico, which lent the fire of war to
naturally savage instincts, penetrated into our—at one time—peaceful
domain, more through the barbarous desire for plunder and gain than
from any wish to force freedom and prosperity, as plainly proven by bar-
barous actions of those whose eyes were constantly upon San Antonio as
an objective point from which to sway the sceptre of despotism and
oppression.
San Antonio, first found by the Spaniards, after gaining supremacy
over Mexico, seems, from the broken chain of historic evidence, to have been
peopled by a tribe of Indians differing to quite a degree from those natural
to our present comprehension of the name; and, indeed, the recent discover-
ies made by those interested in archaeological research tend to a date of
possession long before the civilized history of America began, and the ex-
istence of utensils necessary to a half-civilized condition, together with
weapons as much calculated for the purposes of hunting as for war-like
designs, must couple their names with the Toltecs of prehistoric reign in
the now populous republic of Mexico, whose presence in this country has
been vaguely traced to a position many miles northward, from relics that
seem to stand as a constant reminder of their degree of civilization,
until tinged with the warlike and bloodier customs of the Aztecs.
The worship was evidently that of a supreme creator, for all things,
denying the divinity seated in idols, which either descended to or was ever
the creed of the Aztecs succeeding them. To this sect may properly be
attributed the founding of a city destined in after years to be the envy of
all sections surrounding. The date of domination is, and will probably
always be, shrouded in that mystery made grand by the human reverence
for what has been, and a subject ever of interest to the science wrestling
with cause from effect.
The name of Texas was then unknown to the world; and not until
the year 1689 do we find any authentic history of its having been pene-
trated by beings at that time known to the civilized world. Adventurers
under the leadership of French and Spanish officers, or solely induced by
the desire for adventure and discovery, crossed from Mexico into this un-
known region; and those who ever returned at all gave happy accounts of
a territory rich in minerals and a field for harvest, only inhabited by the
Indian, of whose modes of life and habitation the last two centuries of
American history have taught us more than could be detailed in these
pages.
The reports, which could be more properly called the yarns of adven-
turers, excited both the Spanish and French governments to action, and