Spanish colonialism was at times exploitative. Yet compared with some nations it was also decidedly humanitarian. The Franciscans who directed the mission effort among the Indians of South Texas introduced an enlightened doctrine. A mendicant order of friars who prefered practical application of their beliefs to theological debate, the Franciscans served the Church as protectors of the Indians. They also assisted the king as explorers, cartographers, diplomats, scientific observers, and chroniclers. But their primary task in the New World was to extend Spanish culture to whatever lands the Crown had claimed.

The mission system sought to bring Indians into Spanish society by concentrating scattered tribes into self-sufficient, church-oriented communities. Under the direction of the Franciscans, Indians built their own communities, erecting stone churches and developing stable economies.

With the assistance of two or three soldiers from the nearby presidio, who taught some of the Indians to use European arms, the San Antonio missions also served to defend the king's dominions. Enclosed within massive stone walls, each protected compound offered its residents security against Apache and Comanche aggression. Nearly every army in enlisted a strong complement of mission Indian auxiliaries.

Still, the missions functioned primarily as religious centers and training grounds for the rudiments of Spanish citizenship. Indians were taught obedience to the Crown along with the vocational skills needed for economic self-sufficiency

The neophytes' days were highly structured. At sunrise, bells called them to morning Mass, singing, prayers, and religious instruction, after which they returned to their quarters for the morning meal, usually a corn dish. Some men headed for the fields, orchards, gardens, or quarries. Others stayed behind to tan leather and to forge iron in the workshops. A few spent long stretches tending livestock at the distant ranches. the women learned to cook, sew, spin, weave, garden, fashion candles and make pottery. Fishing and arrow making were the specialties of the older residents, while children over five practiced their catechism, usually in the Spanish language. The success of vocational training in the missions was apparent in the imposing structures the Indians built, the fertile farms they tilled, and the growing herds of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and other livestock they tended.

The ringing of the noon Angelus called everyone the midday meal, typically consisting of a basic corn dish with a daily ration of beef, garden vegetables, and fresh fruit. After a brief rest work resumed until the bells summoned every. home at sunset. The Indians were led in a mass recitation of the rosary, accompanied by chanting and singing. After the evening meal of, beans, and corn, curfew ended the day

The Native Americans who lived in the San Antonio missions came from a number of hunting and gathering bands, whom historians collectively call Coahuiltecans (kwa-weel-tekens). Their strictly regulated mission life represented a profound change for people who had followed the rhythms of nature. Ranging throughout South Texas and northeastern Mexico, their movements were dictated by the seasonal availability of food. Distinct dialects and religious practices were found among these bands, but of society were extended families, which joined others in larger bands when food was abundant. The men brought home an occasional bison, deer, rabbit, or snake. However, fruits, nuts, beans, roots and seeds gathered by women and children provided the bulk of the diet. When time permitted, they fashioned brush huts and slept on woven mats. Dressed in skins and woven sandals, they used bows and arrows, fishing nets, digging sticks, and grinding stones to obtain and prepare food. They produced some simple pottery, but were finer basket makers, using them to store and transport food. They practiced rites of passage and seasonal ceremonies common to many hunter-gatherer cultures.

Even before the missions altered their living habits the Coahuiltecans were being pressed by nomadic tribes encroaching from the north. With the arrival of the Spanish, a more ominous threat was the introduction and spread of European diseases, which, in time decimated their population. Struggling under such hardships, the Coahuiltecans proved to be relatively willing recruits for the friars. The Indians sought food and refuge in the missions in exchange for labor and submission to religious conversion.

The essence of the mission system was discipline: religious, social and moral. The physical arrangement of the compound was based on the idea of social unification, with the village as the central feature of every successful mission. This concentration of Indians into manageable units distinguished the successful mission effort in San Antonio from the aborted attempts in East Texas. Though some Coahuiltecans fled the missions to revert to nomadic life many accepted the dogmas of Catholicism and became active participants in Spanish society.

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