New Light on Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas [San Sabá]

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• New Light on Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas [San Sabá]
• Allan J. Kuethe (bio) and José Manuel Serrano Álvarez (bio)

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Location of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas based on the map produced by Nicolas de Laffora, August 12, 1767. Courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias [Mapas y Planos, Mexico 05]

With the collapse of the Second Family Compact during the reign of Ferdinand VI (1746–1759), Spain’s frontier policy in its North American empire acquired an aggressive, militarized character, especially where French interests were involved. An important manifestation of this new orientation appeared in the Governorship of Texas with the establishment of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas on the remote San Saba River in 1757. Designed to counter supposed French adventurism, this post represented an ambitious, perhaps misguided, thrust into the far northwest, which would continue into the early years of Charles III (1759–1788). Taking a view with a broader strategic perspective, the present authors believe that Presidio San Luis, often popularly referred to as Presidio San Sabá, was far more significant than many historians have generally supposed. Indeed, during its apogee from 1758–1763, San Luis ranked as the most important presidio in Texas in terms of size, garrison, and costs, all of which far exceeded those of other strongpoints.¹ Although abandoned during the far-reaching reorganization [End Page 393] of the northern frontier that the Marqués de Rubí initiated in 1766, and then largely forgotten, the origins of Presidio San Luis, its purpose, and its fate reveal much about royal priorities in Texas during the years before, during, and immediately after Spain’s entry into the Seven Years’ War.

The story of Captain Felipe de Rábago y Terán, who commanded Presidio San Luis, is inseparable from its history. Events that occurred during his early years, particularly when he commanded San Luis’s predecessor at San Xavier, have earned Rábago the universal disdain of historians ranging from Fray Juan Agustín Morfi in the eighteenth century to Robert S. Weddle, Donald E. Chipman, and Luis López Elizondo in recent times.² Rábago certainly ranks as one of the most puzzling officials who served in Bourbon Texas. Yet, new information and a fresh assessment of the evidence against him raise questions that place Rábago in a new light. An uncommonly prominent appointee for remote Texas, the captain enjoyed powerful connections in both Spain and Mexico, but his destiny closely reflected the ups and downs of that influence in the torturous politics that pervaded Madrid and Mexico City. There was far more to this man than historians have heretofore appreciated.

When seen from a broader perspective, both the character of the San Sabá advance and the Rábago controversy reflected the changing relationship between church and state as the growing influence of the Enlightenment imposed a secular, regalist agenda on colonial policy. This process reached a definitive moment diplomatically when, in 1753, Spain negotiated “a totally regalist concordat” with the Papacy, which in effect increased dramatically the crowńs administrative power over the Spanish church. Significantly, the kinǵs Jesuit confessor and a relative of Captain Rábago, Francisco de Rábago, managed most of the negotiations for that treaty.³ Although Texas was a remote frontier colony, the regalist transformation in Spanish administration had a significant influence on its political culture. As the co-equal status of the Catholic Church eroded, Captain Rábago and several colonial governors not surprisingly refused to accept missionaries as equal partners, regarding them instead as subordinates and treating them accordingly. And the San Sabá undertaking itself, although far from entirely neglecting missionary concerns, would assume a decidedly secular personality. In effect, it and Rábago’s actions were different sides of the same coin.

It should be remembered that David J. Weber, in his highly influential Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages during the Age of Enlightenment, documented the widespread transformation of frontier policy under Charles III toward a decidedly secular, militarized approach. Weber wrote, “In contrast to the Habsburgs, who gave missionaries a privileged position on the frontier...