The mission site highlights Spanish difficulties convincing American Indian populations to adopt Christianity and a sedentary lifestyle--traits that many Europeans considered essential parts of "civilized" life.
This National Register property was established in November 1754 in an attempt to make peace with various Karankawan tribes, who did not get along with the other Indians at existing missions. Frustratingly for the Spaniards, the Indians arrived in the winter but departed in the spring (when food was more widely available outside the mission grounds). The site was virtually abandoned by 1781, reopened in 1789, abandoned again in 1804, and formally closed in 1807. In 1935 the mission, by then a ruin, was given to the Goliad State Park Commission; it was transferred to the state in 1971. It is currently managed as a state archeological monument.
The mission's ruins sit atop a small rise in the San Antonio River valley. Although we cannot know for sure, archeologists think that the site consisted of a chapel, bell tower, sacristy, and residence.
