Welcome to the Hidden History of Texas I’m Hank Wilson, and I’m talking about the presidios (or forts) the Spanish established alongside the missions.  I’ll also talk about how the French became involved with Texas and their influence on the Spanish expansion of both missions and presidios. Before I go further, please if you don’t mind subscribing to the podcast, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Once the Spanish decided to expand their territory northward from its base in central Mexico, they knew that in order to be successful, they needed to send more than just missionaries, and so they created the  missions.  They also understood that they needed to send soldiers to protect the missions and they needed civilians to build towns.  The combination of presidio, the mission, and the civil settlement became the major foundation the Spanish used for colonization. Martín Enríquez, who was the fourth viceroy of New Spain (1568–80), is generally given credit with being the first to build presidios in the Southwest. He ordered the construction along the main road from Mexico City northward to Zacatecas of casas fuertes (which is translated to "fortified houses"). Over time the name was changed to presidio (from Latin praesidium, "garrisoned place"). The pattern of the early presidios was learned from the Moors and by the early eighteenth century, when Spaniards settled Texas, the patterns had not changed much.