The Spanish Conquistadors and Padres continued. Texas was the third major area to be penetrated by the Spanish. Despite sporadic interest by Spanish officials, it received little attention until the founding of San Antonio, in During the next century, only a few sparse settlements were made, and a handful of missionaries, soldiers, and settlers sought to link the vast province with the rest of New Spain.
As in Florida, Spanish settlement in Texas was in response to a French threat. La Salle's next venture was an even more serious menace to Spain.
Sailing from France and planning to establish a permanent post at the mouth of the Mississippi, in he landed instead on the Texas coast at the mouth of the Lavaca River. How could such an experienced explorer have missed his destination so far?
Was his actual purpose, perhaps with the secret support of his inscrutable King, to move even nearer the Spanish mines of Nueva Viscaya, to the West? In any event, La Salle erected Fort St. Louis and set out in a westerly direction, allegedly to locate the Mississippi's estuary, before turning northeast and headed back to the Illinois country for provisions.
Some of his discouraged followers, however, assassinated him somewhere in east Texas. A few survivors made their way back up the Mississippi to Canada; the remainder of the complement at Fort St. Louis succumbed to disease, starvation, and the Indians. Spanish authorities, learning from coastal Indians of the threat to their northern outposts, began a frantic search by land and water. On his fourth overland expedition, in , Capt. Finding it deserted, he burned it to the ground to obliterate any trace of French occupancy on Spanish soil.
