Freestone County, Texas
Reflections


Other problems affecting Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Bucareli
By Bill Young


When Gov. Ripperda of Spanish-held Texas was living in San Antonio, he told the settlers from 
Nacogdoches they could move part of the way back home but were forbidden to cross the Trinity 
River. There is some speculation as to why he allowed them to leave San Antonio. He and Gil 
Ibardo, the leader of the Nacogdoches group, may have conspired to try to establish their own trade 
network with the Native American populations living along the middle Trinity basin plus the 
possibility of trading with some of the East Texas tribes. Speculation says this was done as a 
personal benefit for the two people involved and not a policy of the Spanish government. Whether 
this trade network was ever established is not known and there would be no written documents 
mentioning the two people in any of the archives in Mexico. 
 
We do know the town of Bucareli was established on the western bank of the Trinity River but the 
exact location has never been found. One document states the town was laid out according to the 
Laws of the Indies. This rule meant they must first establish a plaza and then construct other 
buildings and houses around the plaza.  
 
In 1775, one paper states there were 20 houses of hewn wood, grouped around the plaza, a 
wooden church, and a guardhouse and stocks. Later in 1776, the church had been replaced with a 
much larger structure and the number of houses had increased to 50. One of the other 
requirements of the Laws of the Indies required the homes of more prominent people were to be 
built next to the plaza while the houses of other people of lower status were placed farther away 
from the plaza. The town was considered to be self sufficient and should be able to produce extra 
food which could supply other settlements later on. They also decided to bring in armament for 
protection. Four brass and two iron cannons along with a number of cannon balls were strategically 
placed around the perimeter of the settlement. 
 
Last week I wrote about how the Trinity River wiped out their first year’s corn crop which in turn 
created a very severe hardship on the earlier settlers in Bucareli. However when the Bidias Indians 
told them of a spring-fed area on the west side of the river where they could plant their corn 
without any fear of the river’s periodical floods, food was fairly plentiful for the few years they 
remained at the site. 
 
But the Trinity River was not the only major problem affecting the settlers of Bucareli. On May 5, 
1778, a group of about 30 Comanche Indians was sighted in the area. The Spanish attacked the 
Comanches inflicting a number of causalities and succeeded in driving them off. In October of the 
same year, another band of Comanches retaliated by raiding Bucareli, escaping with approximately 
500 horses and cattle. The Spaniards gave chase and were successful in recovering most of their 
livestock. However, fear of more hostilities associated with the Comanches and the Trinity River 
brought about a lot of paranoia. Fear of the Comanches was so great the settlers stopped farming 
and hunting any distance from the settlement, lest they be caught away from the protection of their 
houses and weapons. 
 
In January 1779 in the middle of winter, they decided enough was enough and abandoned the 
entire settlement, moving the entire population back to Nacogdoches. Even during the 
abandonment, another incident occurred. A fire got started and approximately half of the town was 
destroyed by the fire and not long after the fire, the Trinity River covered the remains with four feet 
of flood water. With the resettlement of Nacogdoches in 1779, the settlers had achieved their 
original goal of returning to the homes and farms of six years previous, without the permission of 
the Crown. The reoccupation of Nacogdoches subsequently was approved by the Crown and was to 
be of major importance to the later history of Texas. 
 
Dr. Jim Corbin, the head of the archeology department at Stephen F. Austin University in 
Nacogdoches did a lot of research about the location and history of the settlement of Nuestra 
Senora del Pilar de Bucareli for many years. Dr. Corbin who was a good friend of mine loved to 
research and work on what we refer to as contact sites which are Native American sites containing 
trade artifacts or Spanish mission or presidio localities. He also did a lot of excavation work in and 
around Nacogdoches where some of the earliest settlers had built there homes. The Adolphus Stern 
home in eastern downtown Nacogdoches was one of his projects and the search for the location of 
Bucareli was another. Over the years he made a number of trips from Nacogdoches to the Trinity 
River in an effort to try to locate the town site. He was not successful in his work during his life but 
he eliminated a number of locations. Last year, Dr. Corbin passed away due to brain cancer but 
hopefully someone else will follow in his footsteps. 
 
Finding the location of Bucareli is just like looking for a “needle in the haystack.” Since the town was 
only occupied for about five years, there would not be a lot of occupational debris left on the 
ground. Another fact of importance was the desire of the Spanish to bury all trash in small trash pits 
dug around their settlements. This has been proven time and time again at all of the excavated 
mission and presidio sites. Whether they did this for health reasons or just as a good way to keep 
their homes neat and clean is not known but I would venture a guess; both reasons would apply. So 
if the settlers of Bucareli buried their trash, what might we expect to find on the surface if we could 
locate the site? Very little if anything! We know the entire town was subjected to a flood in 1779. 
How many other floods have covered the site since then? If we estimate one flood every five years, 
there would have been four flooding episodes during the remainder of the 1700s, another 20 floods 
during the 1800s followed by another 20 floods in the 1900s and at least one in this century. That 
makes a total of 45 floods covering the site and with each flood, a new layer of silt would have been 
deposited on top of the remains of the town. We know from the Richland/Chambers Lake project, 
silt has been deposited in the creek bottoms with an average depth of four and a half feet just in 
the past 150 years. Bucareli was not located within the main floodplain of the Trinity River but it 
was low enough to be occasionally covered with water and silt. Quite possibly two to three feet of 
sediments may be covering the location of this lost town. 
 
Next week: Another early Spanish town on the Trinity River