Key words: Utopian socialism, Cabet, Considerant, Gouhenant, Texas Communes, Phalansteres, American Romantic Socialists, Icaria, La Reunion, History of Dallas, Texas Pioneers, Sabinal River, Utopia Texas

The Sabinal River near the town of Utopia, Texas

IN THE RIVER OF SOLITUDE

A meditation on the impact of Utopian Socialism in Texas.

The Sabinal River valley is one of my favorite spots in the Texas Hill Country. During early colonial times the river was called River of Solitude (Rio de la Soledad) for its quiet natural beauty. It was Comanche hunting land. Clear and cool water springs from the ground near Lost Maples State Park and flows a forty-mile course all the way into Rio Frio (Cold River). Their joint slow-moving currents swell with underground artesian aquifers as they enter the main Rio de Las Nueces. Ancient, tall, and beautiful bald cypress trees, called “sabinos” in Spanish, line the banks of these streams.  

 

If you are surprised by the Spanish names, it so happens that down here we recognize that long before Jamestown (1609) and Plymouth (1615), the Spanish had founded in 1565 the city of San Agustin in Florida, its Jesuit priests had established Mission Santa Maria de Ajacan in Chesapeake Bay in 1570,  Don Juan de Oñate had crossed the Rio Grande in 1598 at El Paso del Norte, and his settlers went on to establish the city of Santa Fe in 1610.

 

 The Texas Hill Country is a beautiful but fragile land that marks the southern end of the Great Plains of North America. It was almost ruined over a century ago by later settlers that substituted the prairie grasses. They protected a thin layer of soil that hid the limestone bedrock. The land is slowly being returned to its original state by a new generation of ranchers who are restoring the nature of its wilderness. They discovered a private way to protect rare African species that are now extinct in their places of origin. The beasts are flourishing in the Hill Country but are gone forever in their original habitats. Those species are thriving in private ranches only because their controlled harvest by hunting funds their survival, as well as saving the owners. The hunting ranches of Texas are a great lesson in stewardship of the land when property rights are promoted, defined, and protected. It has not always been the case.

 

The Sabinal River, north of highway 127

Hundreds of projects that elevated communitarianism-communism as a theological or secular religion came or were founded in the United States, some during colonial times. Their cornerstone was the elimination of property rights over resources. Historians now even include the first years of the pious Pilgrims among the first group. A few of the better known are the Shakers (Shaking Quakers), the Perfectionists of Oneida, the German Rappists, the Amana communes of Iowa, the Transcendentalists of Brook Farm in Massachusetts, and the Fruitlands experiment near Harvard. These were accompanied by secular or political projects, such as the New Harmony Owenites, Cabet´s Icarians, and Fourier´s Phalansteres. Texas was not exempt from these immigrants that promoted doing away with property rights and personal stewardship.

In the Texas early years as the new 28^th State, at least three groups of socialist commune organizers came from France.

True heirs of the new religion of reason-science without God, they were ostracized or persecuted in their country, and suspect all over Europe. By then, their first, second and third revolutions of terror had failed. Looking for a new place, they thought the successful American revolution across the ocean had created better conditions for their socialist utopias. The umbrella of freedom offered to immigrants by the U. S. Constitution that is blind to religious or political biases gave them a chance. They secured land to build their experiments in social engineering on the foundations of centralized direction and communal ownership. Almost forgotten, and without a physical trace to remind us, their path to oblivion should be a warning to those newcomers from failed states who have similar ideas, whether they are from California or Venezuela. They all failed, for no other reason but their essential collectivist vision that is alien to the human spirit of self-direction.

 

Words have lives of their own. Utopia is a good example. It was the name of an imaginary island idealized in a book by Tomas More in 1516. It was never meant to be a proposal for the future; its Greek roots mean “no place”. It was a socio-political satire of Tudor England where More later served as Lord High Chancellor to King Henry VIII, until his beheading. Now, utopian is an adjective that describes the vision of a perfect egalitarian state governed by pious reasoning. In a way, it follows Plato’s Republic and Augustine’s City of God. In a different way in the XVIII and XIX centuries, it opened the floodgates to many ideologues during The Illustration who thought of it as a roadmap for planning perfect societies. It also generated an entire literary genre of fiction, which is where most of those plans are archived now. One such project was the island of Icaria. 

        

Etienne Cabet  

Voyage to Icaria was a best-selling utopian romance published in 1839 by the former communist French parliamentarian Etienne Cabet (1788-1856). He had been exiled to London in 1834 after the failure of the second French Revolution. Hiding in the library of the British Museum, he was inspired after discovering More’s Utopia. During the five years spent in England, he also befriended Robert Owen who had established New Harmony in Indiana in 1825. Ominously, the Icarian movement was born in a period of great agitation throughout Europe. Under intense persecution, the emerging socialist and communist movements went underground, took arms, or began a massive exodus to America by 1848. Hordes of newcomers began to move farther west from the Atlantic coast. At the same time, Texas had become known in Europe for offers of cheap land sold by companies that promoted commercial immigration. The Icarians came first to Texas. 

     

Adolphe Gouhenant (1804-1871), a follower of Cabet’s Icarian ideas, was commissioned in 1848 to travel in advance of the colonists and secure land in Denton County, south of the Red River. What they obtained were many separate parcels and not suitable for their plans. It turned out to be closer to the new settlement of Dallas, then with a population of 500, and far from the river which they wanted to use for transportation. The commune failed to get established, Gouhenant was accused of fraud, and gradually the 75 settlers that gave it a try moved to Illinois. But Gouhenant caught the spirit of Texas and stayed.

 

He survived by hunting deer. He later began buying deer hides for processing and selling. With his profits he managed to buy twelve parcels of land in the growing town of Dallas. He set up shop as a photographer. The Icarian paradise in Texas was over.

 When the famous socialist revolutionary Victor Considerant (1808-1893), of the third French Revolution everybody forgets, visited him in 1853, he found a prosperous Texan who owned a saloon, an art gallery, a photography studio, and a meeting hall that operated alternately as church, Masonic Lodge, dance hall, and a court of law. Considerant was also the advance promoter of another utopia inspired by the ideas of Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He should have learned the lesson from the Icarian experience but did not.

 Fourier had been another French socialist ideologue who imagined he would bring social harmony to the world through voluntary "phalanxes" (Phalansteres). These planned agro-industrial cities were a combination of monastery and factory. More than 30 of these socialist communes were eventually established in the north-east. Considerant, already a celebrity in exile, had been Fourier’s disciple and right-hand heir. Around this time, the Texas legislature had halted the free land grants to colonization companies giving priority to the introduction of railroads. He arrived in Texas with plans to bring 200 Swiss, Belgian and French farmers to a new socialist “phalanx”. The group bought land near Dallas. They purchased a chunky promontory of land unsuitable for farming called La Reunion (The Meeting Place).  It failed too and a few years later there was nobody left, including Considerant. By 1860, most settlers had gone back to Europe, some dispersed into the new country being built and the founder escaped further south. Just across downtown, south of the Trinity River, the place is now a premium shopping-office district where free enterprise is booming. It is still identified with the same name. The Texas socialist phalanstere was over.

Adolphe Gouhenant, Texas entrepreneur

As La Reunion was floundering and discontent grew louder, Considerant managed to extricate himself from the colony. He travelled in northern Mexico and the south Texas plains around San Antonio. He found another location for a new project in Uvalde Canyon. There he met people easy to deal with and more tolerant, as he reported, “Here already we find in one place a population consisting of five different elements: Mexican, American, German, French and Polish.” He added, “…under the same political and legal regime…they were in fact much freer socially.” He re-settled in San Antonio in 1856. With fresh funds from very reluctant French and Belgian patrons of the colonization society, he was able to buy several parcels of land along the Sabinal River totaling more than 50,000 acres to build his last utopia. But times had changed in Europe and in Texas. Investors sought to recover from the losses of La Reunion and his plans were nebulous at best. After fifteen years, the project failed to materialize; its land was gradually sold, and it was soon forgotten. Considerant went back to France.

                    Victor Considerant                           

The River of Solitude remains quiet to this day. I understand why Considerant thought it was paradise. I love the area too. During one of my wanderings through the countryside of Texas, I visited Lost Maples Park and later had a swim in the cool waters of the Sabinal as I fell out of my kayak. I ended up at a café on the main street of the tiny town that is a few miles down the river. It used to be a Masonic Lodge.

 

As I was enjoying my black coffee and buttermilk pie, I had the opportunity to chat with an old, old-timer who everyone seemed to know. I asked him if he had ever heard of Victor Considerant, and he clearly said no. It did not ring a bell. He also mentioned there were more rattlesnakes than sheep in the countryside, and the population had just dropped to 219 because one of his buddies had just passed. He was enjoying an order of lamb meat sliders, a specialty of the place. 

I did not know where we were going with the conversation, but I asked him if he had ever heard of the French socialists. He indicated the only French people he knew lived down the Medina River, in the next valley, in Castroville. They haven’t been French for more than a century and a half. He thought they were nice and hardworking people. As to the socialists, he did not know any of them in person, but he knew of a few d*** socialists that hung around Austin. Everybody in the café had been listening and they all laughed. Austin is where the House of Representatives of Texas meets, and the town now is full of Texafornian refugees looking for a free paradise. I know what he meant. The pie was good and the coffee strong. “Don’t mess with Texas” refers not only to garbage.

I became a bit concerned as I was wearing sandals and a politically incorrect t-shirt. My red kayak was sitting outside the windows on top of my small economy car, sandwiched between two gigantic Texas edition trucks. Sam, the old timer, did not seem to care. He talked to me about the Comanches, the lost silver mine of Jim Bowie, and some bits about the history of the area. I finally had the courage to ask again as he downed the last of his lamb sliders.

I wanted to know who had named the town and why. He did not know, but he added that it had to be somebody with a sour sense of humor that left after selling the land. Laughter exploded again. He turned around to ask the other regular patrons of the Lost Maples Cafe if anybody knew. No one did. I bought a whole buttermilk pie to go after enjoying a slice of coconut. No Perrier here; just ask for Texas Spring Water.

The name of the town is Utopia.

Chris Jennings, author of “The Story of American Utopianism” (Random House, 2016) has this conclusion, which I endorse and share: 

“Ultimately, the decline of American communal utopianism was less about the defeat of one idea than it was about the triumph of another. As the Republic surged westward, the dream of a transformed, egalitarian social order burned off like mist under the hot rising sun of American Prosperity.”

 

Xuan Quen Santos

Key Words: Texas Pioneers, Texas colonial history, biography of Fray Margil de Jesus, founding of San Antonio Texas, the Franciscan Missions in America, San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, Native Americans, Natchitoches, Nacogdoches, The Colleges for Missionaries

 

AGAPITO’S MISSION

__________________________________________

 

Legends and History of Fray Margil

Missionary and Texas Pioneer 

 

 

Xuan Quen Santos

 

 

 

Ediciones Escondidas

Paxil Tinamit

2023

AGAPITO’S MISSION: Legends and History of Fray Margil, Missionary and Texas Pioneer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Copyright reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, archived or copied by any means, physical or electronic, without the prior authorization of the publisher, except as provided in the laws and international agreements for the protection of intellectual rights.

EDICIONES ESCONDIDAS

       1415 S. Voss Road, Suite 110 No. 427, Houston, TX 77057                                                              XQS2021@gmail.com

AN INVITATION 

            This is not an academic history book of facts and famous people, although the information it contains is true. It is not a biography either, although it centers on the life of one person. It is not fiction, at least most of it. This is the story of a boy with a mission and how his choices and actions as a man of virtue shaped the future of many of us with his contributions to our own stories of today.

            The history of Texas and the Southwest of the United States does not begin with the English-speaking settlers that arrived in the XIX century. By then, three centuries of European culture had already infused the aboriginal groups with its institutions and left its imprint on the land with developed settlements.  Twenty of the fifty states of the United States of America have a significant trace to the Spanish expansion into the New World as part of their history.

            When the westward-moving English speaking settlers came to Texas in the 1800s they travelled through Louisiana, a territory bought at a bargain price from Napoleon, but that had been Spanish for the previous forty years. Most of what we see in the colonial part of New Orleans is from its Spanish days, not from its earlier French period. The newcomers travelled into the Texas heartland on the Spanish Camino Real, a road marked by the buffalo migrations at places they could ford the rivers that cut through the prairies. It had also been a major Indian trading route.  Parts of Texas Highway 21 follow it today through the Pineywoods and the plains. The new settlers had Spanish maps, titles or contracts to their land written in Spanish, and had made an oath to follow their ancient laws. Most of the places already had Spanish names. The newcomers were not pioneers in unexplored territory. Some of them were legal immigrants; many were illegal that had simply crossed the Red and Sabine rivers seeking a better life for them and their families, or just escaping from debts or the law.

Indians inhabited only the remote wilderness, barely touched by the Spanish colonial administration and who the recent settlers never bothered to understand. In the developed areas, they found towns, farms and large open range haciendas filled with cattle. They also found the missions; some abandoned and in ruins, others turned into active parish churches. They found few Spaniards from Spain. What they found was an ethnically mixed society they were not accustomed to. The Christianized Indians were not considered Indians anymore and came from many distant places; the former slaves who had escaped from the U. S. were free; people had come in all shades; a few were white.  How did all this come about? The Hispanic people of the northern borderlands of New Spain were the product of the “mestizaje” that was the end result of the Spanish contribution to the western hemisphere.  

The missions had been the force driving the change.  In fact, change was their mission. They had accepted the challenge of bringing the Christian faith to the aboriginal people of America in the areas where the Spanish civil and military authorities had little interest. This is how the story of Agapito begins. 

 

I 

INTRODUCTION  

The period of history after the discovery of the West Indies in 1492, is full of seafaring explorers, captains, conquistadors and “adelantados” whose adventures were full of excitement and danger.  The three centuries of Spanish colonial development that followed were dominated by viceroys, marquises, counts, governors, archbishops, bishops and a few university doctors. The excitement during this period came with the pirates, corsairs, buccaneers, filibusters, smugglers and a few rebels. All these were in search of fame and fortune in the vast new lands and wealth of the New World. They were also the writers of history as they wanted it told.

 These lists of historical characters do not include one category that was present from the beginning, but with no interest in glory or wealth. Nevertheless, their contribution to history was more profound and lasting than all the others.  The first of them arrived with Cristopher Columbus, not bearing swords, but holding high their wooden crosses. The missionaries were an ever present force in the history of the whole hemisphere since the monarchs of Spain assumed the duty to bring Christianity to the aboriginal peoples of America.

This is the story of Agapito Margil, a Spanish boy who heard about the mysterious natives of the New World, their ancient cultures and their needs and rights as creatures of God and subjects of the King. Under the laws and customs of the times, the baptized Indians who spoke Spanish and had a skill or trade to offer would be considered free subjects of the realm. Near the end of the XVII century, young Father Margil chose to become a missionary in the borderlands of the Spanish territories of North America. He devoted his life to convert to Christianity the most primitive and isolated groups of natives that were still living in the remote jungles, mountains, deserts and swamps of New Spain.

 His missionary activities took Friar Margil on trails and mountain paths, completely barefoot, a distance greater than the circumference of the Earth. The missions he founded are today cities, towns, universities, hospitals, schools and churches. In Texas, his accomplished mission is the Hispanic legacy that flows with the bloodlines of aboriginal ethnic groups, mixed with those of the many races of Spain and its empire.

Friar Margil left his imprint from Louisiana to Panama. He deserves a place among the founders of the United States of America, on equal standing with other pioneers, like his contemporary Father Eusebio Kino, Apostle of Arizona, and his follower from the college of missionaries, Saint Junipero Serra, Apostle of California. 

Fray Margil is without a doubt a Texas Pioneer.

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LESSON PLANS FOR TEXAS 4^TH AND 7^TH

SOCIAL STUDIES 

4.1 B, 4.1 C                          Regions, Indians and culture before Europeans

(7.1 A and B)

4.2 A, 4.2 B, 4.2 C              The Spanish Colony, the Missions, explorers

(7. 1 A and B)

4.7 A, 4.7 B, 4.7 C              Regions, landforms, resources and habitat

4.10 A                                    Economic activities of Indian groups

4.14 A                                    Government and beliefs of Caddo people 

ELAR AND READING

4. 9 A                                     Multiple genres, fiction, legend, anecdote, history

4. 10 A to D                          Author’s purpose and craft, imagery, voice, point of view, fact vs opinion

GEOGRAPHY:  Use maps of North America and Texas to follow the routes of Friar Margil establishing his missions.

EXTENSION:  Learn about Saint Junipero Serra and the California Missions. Serra was a fellow Franciscan and a disciple of Fr. Margil.  Many of the graduates of the Colleges of Queretaro and Zacatecas went on with Serra to establish the 21 missions of California, many are  important cities today.

VISIT:  San Antonio Missions National Historic Park:

https://www.nps.gov/saan/index.htm            General website

https://www.nps.gov/saan/learn/photosmultimedia/video-gallery.htm   Videos

 

    TEXAS TEACHERS:  REQUEST A COPY OF THE 102 PAGE ILLUSTRATED BOOK AT  XQS2021@gmail.com.  Limit: one per teacher. Offer valid until edition is exhausted. 

 

 

A MINI BUTTERFLY GARDEN FOR TEXAS SUMMER

KEYWORDS:  Butterflies, butterfly garden, garden in a half-barrel, flowers for Texas summer heat, milkweed, salvias, Indian Blanket, lantanas, verbena, coleus, wine barrel recycled

A MINI BUTTERFLY GARDEN

FOR TEXAS HEAT

A butterfly friendly mini-garden in Texas receiving 8 hrs. a day of sunlight during the summer heat

Building a butterfly friendly garden can be as simple as choosing flowering plants that will invite adult butterflies to your garden to feed.  But if you want to create a butterfly garden that will act as a sanctuary, attracting a wide variety of butterflies while also providing a place where butterflies can grow and multiply, you will first need some planning and space.  You will also have a diversity of pollinators and caterpillars.

This neglected corner of  an established garden receives 8 hrs.
of sunlight per day. An opportunity waiting!

If you have limited space, such as shown in the photograph, you can create a minigarden in a large container, such as a recycled half-barrel of oak for whisky or wine.  Butterflies need flowering plants.  Flowers need lots of sun, good soil and water.  In Texas the problem may be too much heat with too much sun, and occasional spells of drought.  Choosing a variety of hardy flowering plants friendly to butterflies requires some planning.

THE CONTAINER


A recycled half-barrel is made of oak, charred inside and worn outside. By cutting the barrel in the middle, its structural integrity is lost. The half barrel may fall apart in transit, after some years of use, or by any of the planks coming loose, or by the metal belts/rings sliding out of place. Once wet and filled with dirt, it will be OK. If you want to be sure, glue the edge of the bottom to the planks and add some screws to hold the metal rings in place.

The half-barrel will be watertight (It used to hold wine). Drill some holes for proper drainage.  I drilled five, half inch holes on the bottom. To extend the life of the container, raise it from the ground with supporting planks that can be hidden in the mulch.  To prevent the soil from seeping out, place geotextile or mosquito mesh. For filtration, the bottom of the barrel is filled with
pebbles or  pea gravel.  One bag is enough for about 2 inches depth.

 WARNING!!!!

 The half-barrel will weigh empty about 30 lbs. Completely finished and wet, the mini-garden will reach over 150 lbs.  PLACE THE EMPTY CONTAINER IN ITS FINAL PLACE BEFORE BUILDING THE GARDEN. 

I bought the barrel at Tractor Supply for $ 40, the bag of pebbles at Home Depot for $ 4.50, the two foundation planks for $ 1.00, and the 2' x 2' geotextile for $ 1.00.

Total container cost:   $ 46.50.

SOIL

Premium potting mix, such as Miracle Gro is expensive, but it is worth it. Stays moist, loose, and promotes growth of flowering plants for at least three months for an early start. It has been sterilized and fertilized.  The half-barrel container will hold 4 cubic feet of soil on top of the gravel.  That is roughly four medium bags of soil, as shown.  To promote deep growth of the roots of the larger plants, I mixed one bag of peat moss mix with one bag of natural manure and humus. This mix filled the bottom layer of soil.  Then I added the first bag of Miracle Gro to serve as the base of the potted plants. As I planted them, from front to back, I filled the surrounding spaces and leveled with the dirt from the second bag.

Sago palm removed with roots and all. Getting ready, set....gooo!   Began at 9:00, finished at 11:00

COST OF SOIL:  Organic humus and manure  $ 1.65, peat moss topsoil  $ 2.47, 2 bags of Miracle Gro Potting Mix $ 19.94.  TOTAL $ 24.06  at Home Depot

PLANTS

Thrillers:

2  Milkweed (8") Asclepias *

2  Mystic Spites Blue Salvia (6") *

1  Salvia Blue By You (8") *

Fillers:

2 Coleus: purple, and red/yellow mix (6")

1 Persian Shield Strobilanthes (6")

1 Indian Blanket Gallardia Grandiflora (8") *

Spillers:

2 Homestead Purple Vervain, 

   Canadian Verbena  (6") *

2 New Gold Lantana (4") *

*  BUTTERFLIES LOVE THEM

Total Cost of plants $ 61.47 at Houston Garden Center

Finished butterfly mini-garden in the shadow cast 
by the wall,  at 11 am.  Milkweed and salvias in the back
Coleus in the center, Indian Blanket, lantanas 
and verbenas spilling on the front

Butterfly mini-garden in a half-barrel of wine at 11:20 am, under full sun

THE FULL COLORS OF SUMMER WAITING FOR MONARCHS

Within 24 hours, the first Monarch arrives!

KEYWORDS: FACE MASKS, MILK JUG RECYCLING, ART AND SCIENCE 4TH GRADE, DISTANCE EDUCATION LESSON 

“COVID DEFEATED” 

MASK COMPETITION

APRIL-MAY 2020

CREATE YOUR OWN FACE MASK TO GO OUTSIDE

I. Materials:  One empty 1-gal. milk jug (Rinsed at least 3 times), scissors to cut, one small Philips screwdriver or hole puncher, rubber bands or elastic, water based marker, and paper and pencil to create first a basic design. 

Web Research: images face masks out of milk jugs

II.  After you have created a basic mask, you will need art materials to decorate it and turn it into a work of art: glues, paint, plastic straws, glitter, feathers, color tissue paper, Easter grass, permanent color markers, string, wool, whatever you can think of…Be creative.  Your imagination is the limit!

III.  Rules: 1) If parents want to make a mask, they have to make one of their own. You can ask for help only in the initial cutting and shaping. 

                

2) Recycle, reuse a discarded milk jug. 3) The finished mask has to be “wearable” and “breathable”, for real.  Its purpose is to comply with the public health authorities that have required the wearing of a “face mask” while out and about. A filter may be added in the mouth of the jug. Its purposes are: A) to prevent people with a possible respiratory disease from contaminating others if they cough or sneeze, and B) for healthy people to avoid breathing directly air that may have contaminants carrying respiratory diseases. Masks are to be worn in addition to maintaining a social distance of 6 feet.

IV) PRIZES:  Masks submitted in photographs by May 8, with a complete portfolio, will enter an Art Judgement.  Judges to be announced later.  First Prize will win a Certificate and a $ 50.00 gift card. Other prizes to be announced.