Spain used missions, presidios, and settlements to strengthen its control of the land that is now Texas. Missions could be established only with approval from Spanish authorities, and Franciscan friars operated most of them. Presidios, or military forts, were often built nearby to protect missions, settlements, roads, livestock, and Spanish territory.
Spanish missions were religious and colonial communities. Missionaries worked to convert Indigenous peoples to Catholicism and encouraged them to live at the missions, farm, raise livestock, and learn trades. Missions often included fields, workshops, churches, and ranches that produced food and materials such as meat, wool, leather, and cheese. Indigenous people provided much of the labor that supported mission life.
Life at the missions varied. Some Indigenous people chose to live at missions for periods of time, while others left, resisted Spanish control, or continued living in their own communities. Some combined Catholic practices with their own traditions. Mission life could also bring major changes to Indigenous languages, beliefs, work, and family life. Spanish officials expected missions eventually to be secularized, meaning control would pass from the Franciscan religious orders to local church and civil authorities. Mission lands were also supposed to be distributed to Indigenous residents. By 1830, the remaining missions in Texas had been secularized.
Presidios housed Spanish soldiers and supported Spain’s military presence in the region. Soldiers protected missions and settlements, escorted travelers and supplies, guarded livestock, and defended Spanish territorial claims. Relationships between soldiers, missionaries, and Indigenous communities were sometimes tense. Soldiers and friars could disagree about how missions should operate, and conflicts between Spanish soldiers and Indigenous peoples sometimes increased tensions rather than reducing them.