The Bosque-Larios Expedition

A Spanish record says Native leaders asked for the Mass on the Nueces. In 1675 Fernando del Bosque and Fray Juan Larios led an expedition from Coahuila, where Native people had resisted Spanish efforts to enslave them. About twenty Bobole and a hundred Guyquechale joined along the way. North of the Rio Grande, several chiefs met the party and asked the friars to teach and baptize their people; an oath of allegiance to the king was administered and Mass was celebrated at a portable altar. Hostilities and a jurisdictional dispute delayed the planned missions for over a decade.

What the plaque says

The Bosque-Larios Expedition (April 30 - June 12, 1675) In the 16th century, northern Mexico was torn by strife as the Indian inhabitants resisted Spanish efforts to enslave them. A century later, wealthy humanitarian Antonio Balcarcel set out to invoke justice and help missionaries Christianize the land. In the spring of 1675, Balcarcel sent out an armed expedition under Fernando del Bosque to accompany Fray Juan de Larios on a mission north of the Rio Grande. Also in the party was Fray Dionisio de San Buenventura, an army chaplain. Entering Texas at a site near present Eagle Pass, the expedition marched almost to the present site of San Antonio. Three days after entering Texas, when they were in camp on the Nueces, about nine miles southwest of present Uvalde, they set up a portable altar. The expeditionaries gathered with some 1,172 Indians to hear Fray Larios chant the Mass. Later Fray Larios baptized 55 infants and instructed the adult Indians so that they might be baptized at a future time. The celebration at the Nueces on May 16, 1675, is known as the earliest recorded occasion of a high (sung) Mass in Texas. Missionary activity that began on that day eventually brought about the founding of the Texas mission system. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Inge Historical Site — 8.8 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 10 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 10 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.

More markers nearby

• Site of Fort Inge — 8.7 mi
• Site of Fort Inge — 8.7 mi
• John Nance Garner — 9.0 mi
• Reading Wood Black — 9.2 mi