During our school's fall break, I visited San Antonio, Texas. There, I noticed that the city had a rich cultural heritage deeply rooted in history and was intrigued by the brief history presented to me when I visited the Alamo or Mission San Antonio de Valero, a popular tourist attraction and famous Spanish mission. As I examined the complex history of the Alamo, I discovered that there were five different missions preserved across San Antonio, each with their own unique history and architecture. I decided to visit the four other missions in the area and in doing so discovered an ethnic group known as the Tejanos whose ancestors were both Spanish from Europe and Native Americans from Texas. Their culture developed in an unusual way due to intermarriage between two very different groups. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Tejano people of South Texas originated as early hunter-gatherers, or Native Americans who worked the fields. At this time, the Native Americans of South Texas were known as the Coahuiltecs. The Coahuiltecs moved throughout southern Texas and northeastern Mexico depending on the season in search of food. As a result, they found it difficult to engage in agriculture and have a stable source of food, so many died of starvation or disease. For food, they rarely ate game and, for the most part, consumed nuts, fruits and seeds, and survived nomadically by moving through the surrounding regions. By the 1700s, the Spanish had migrated across the New World to South Texas in order to spread Catholicism. In South Texas, the Spanish built numerous missions, many of which were in present-day San Antonio. These missions, located approximately three miles apart, are known as the Alamo or San Antonio de Valero, Concepción, San José, San Juan and Espada. The Spanish gathered the tribes of Native Americans they found in the surrounding area and placed them in the missions. The Spanish would convert the Coahuiltecs and then teach them how to farm and farm in a controlled manner as well as other skills with European tools. Some Native Americans were forced to go on missions, while most others went of their own accord due to starvation, lack of protection, or disease brought by Europeans. Coahuiltecs were often willing to convert and provide labor because of the hardships they faced outside of the missions and saw the missions as a gateway to a better life (National Park Service). Despite all these advances, many Coahuiltecs felt displaced and confined within the walls of the missions. They escaped the missions and continued living their old lives because they lacked the life they were used to. However, other Coahuiltecs conformed to Spanish forms of life and participated in Spanish society by pledging allegiance to the Spanish crown and learning to defend themselves against attackers using European weapons and methods. Seventy years later, European diseases brought by the Spanish had ravaged the region. Native Americans, and very few remained in the missions, even after each successive generation intermarried with the Spanish. As a result, the Spanish secularized their missions in order to ensure their future success. For the most part, the.