La Bahía del Espíritu Santo: Texas Sojourns in the Vicinity of Matagorda Bay: 1519 – 1758

The first European explorer to skirt the coast of the northern Gulf of Mexico gave the name "Espíritu Santo" to the continent's greatest river whose fresh water discharge he observed on the Catholic Feast Day of the Holy Spirit in 1519. A century and a half later, both Spain and France recognized the strategic importance of a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi, but had only a vague idea of its location along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico known then as "La Florida." Cabeza de Vaca lived here as a slave of the local Indians in the 1530's. Events in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries associated with the lands and waters called Espíritu Santo shaped the history of North America. France moved first to establish a permanent presence in the area with an ill-fated expedition headed by La Salle in 1684 that only lasted four years before being destroyed by disease and Karankawa Indians. Spain responded quickly after learning of the French settlement, locating the abandoned site in 1689. A Spanish presidio and mission were established in 1722 near Lavaca Bay which moved inland four years later to the Guadalupe River north of Victoria, where it remained until 1749. The charter of the "La Bahía" mission and presidio complex was to monitor the coastal area and defend it against foreign encroachment while converting the Karankawa, Aranama and other local Indian tribes to Christianity. Victoria, Calhoun and adjacent counties along the central Texas coast constitute an area in which the earliest chapters of Texas history were experienced and recorded. Events in this region during the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century had a profound influence on the evolution of Texas, Mexico and the United States. "La Bahía del Espíritu Santo" was the name applied by the Spanish in the mid-1500's to this region - the name remains today in two places: the reconstructed La Bahía mission and presidio in Goliad, and in Espíritu Santo Bay on the coast.