Global InformationPresidio San Luis de las Amarillas information
Site of Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas | |
U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
Texas State Antiquities Landmark | |
 Presidio de San Saba in 2013 | |
   | |
| Nearest city | Menard, Texas |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 30°55′21″N 99°48′6″W / 30.92250°N 99.80167°W |
| Area | 15.5 acres (6.3 ha) |
| Built | 1757 |
| NRHP reference No. | 72001369[1] |
| TSAL No. | 473 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | August 25, 1972 |
| Designated TSAL | 5/28/1981 |
Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas, now better known as Presidio of San Sabá, was founded in April 1757 near present-day Menard, Texas, United States to protect the Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, established at the same time. The presidio and mission were built to secure Spain's claim to the territory. They were part of the treaty recently reached with the Lipan Apaches of the area for mutual aid against enemies. The early functioning of the mission and presidio were undermined by Hasinai, also allied with the Spanish, attacking the Apaches.[2] The mission was located three miles downstream from the presidio by request of the monks at the mission to ensure that the Spanish soldiers would not be a corrupting influence on the Lipan Apaches the monks were trying to convert to Christianity. The original presidio and mission were built out of logs.
On March 16, 1758, am army of an estimated 2000 Comanche and Wichita Indians, bitter enemies of the Lipan Apache, attacked Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá. The presidio sent a small force to aid the mission, but the soldiers were driven back. Two of the three priests at the mission were killed and the mission was destroyed. The Indians did not attack the presidio.
More than a year later, a force of 600 men from the presidio set out to find and punish the Indians responsible for the attack on the mission. The Spanish force was repulsed with heavy losses and the presidio commander was relieved of command. The new commander replaced the log stockade with a stone compound and was renamed, Presidio de San Saba’. The post was abandoned in 1768, reoccupied briefly in 1770, then permanently abandoned.
A portion of the presidio was rebuilt as a Works Progress Administration project for the Texas Centennial in 1936.
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- ^ Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007) p. 179