Mapping Cross-Cultural Encounters in Early Texas:

On July 28, de Pagès' ship landed at New Orleans, which was controlled by the Spanish Empire from 1763-1803. He stayed in the area for some time to acquire supplies and give an account of the Indigenous groups in the area:

...I passed my time in admiring the beauty of the country about New Orleans; where I saw, for the first time in my life, the people we call savages: I could discover however, no reason for their having received this harsh appellation, except it be that their manners are more simple, and their occupations more bold and manly, than ours.

Heading northwest by canoe on the Mississippi and Red Rivers, the Frenchman traveled to the edge of Louisiana at Natchitoches. Next, heading up the Red River, he arrived at Los Adaes in the fall. Originally founded in 1717 as a mission to the local Caddo population and a defensive outpost to protect against French Louisiana, by de Pagès' visit in 1767 it had been designated the capital of Spanish Texas. Since it was positioned at the meeting ground between historically French and Spanish territory, the settlement had long served as a major smuggling hub.

In fact, the Spanish governor,  Ángel de Martos y Navarrete , had just been recalled to Mexico to answer charges including the involvement in the contraband trade at precisely the time of de Pagès' visit.  Aware of the heightened tension around the issue, de Pagès' Indigenous host concealed the travel supplies he had acquired at Natchitoches upon entering Los Adaes. 

Despite its capital status, de Pagès was highly unimpressed by Los Adaes, calling the houses "miserable" and the landscape "cheerless."  

From Los Adaes, de Pagès traveled west along the Camino Real towards Nacogdoches, ill and often fighting the elements. 

…Providence alone preserved me twenty times from breaking my neck, by falling from my horse, or by running against the branches of trees which project over the path.

Having heard that the recalled Spanish governor, who had been convalescing at Nacogdoches, was preparing to continue on to Mexico City, de Pagès decided to join his party. First, though, he had to return to Los Adaes to obtain more supplies, a trip he describes as perilous because of the presence of independent Indigenous groups. He felt less threatened by local Caddo communities around Nacogdoches, whose members he describes as industrious farmers and skilled horsemen. 

Continuing down the Camino Real, de Pagès party crossed the Neches, Trinity, Brazos, Colorado, and Guadalupe rivers, accompanied part of the way by a group of Nabedache (Caddoan) Indians from the village of San Pedro. Along the way, they feasted on wild turkey and bear. He arrived in San Antonio de Béxar on November 30, 1767. Here, his military training was put to use again in a relatively minor skirmish with the "hostile Tegas and Coumanche Indians" to defend "Fort San Antonio."

The Spaniards make war upon those miserable tribes, which still retain the bow and arrow, almost with impunity. 

Once the danger passed, the Frenchman spent some time observing life in the town, noting its mixture of soldiers, Canary Island immigrants, and missionized Indians. He praised the skills of the local vaqueros.

The inhabitants of San Antonio are excellent horsemen, and particularly fond of hunting or lacing (lassoing) their wild animals.

If the locals exhibited expert control over their horses, however, they allowed their large herds of cattle to "roam at large in the woods." GLO Spanish Collection documents, such as those  detailing conflicts between San Antonio ranchers and missionaries  over unbranded, unfenced cattle in the late-18th century, corroborate the Frenchman's characterization. 

After leaving San Antonio de Béxar on December 17th,  de Pagès continued southwest on the Camino Real toward the province of Coahuila. He crossed the "Rio de Las Nouices" (Nueces River), "which we found almost destitute of water, but whose channel, containing a deep mud, was extremely embarrassing to our march," before arriving in Laredo.

The French traveler had little to say about "Rheda" (Laredo), which he characterized as "a small village consisting of about a dozen houses." At the time he visited, the settlement was very young, having only been founded in 1755 by  Tomás Sánchez de la Barrera y Garza.  In fact, just six months before de Pagès passed through, royal commissioners had been in Laredo officially chartering the town and distributing land grants to original settlers.  A copy of the records of this commission can be found in the GLO's Spanish Collection. 

De Pagès arrived in "Sartille" (Saltillo) on January 20, 1768. He described the town as large and "fairly handsome," and he correctly surmised that it served as a major regional market, where items from the Indian trade of Texas were exchanged for finished goods like clothing. The Frenchman had less flattering things to say about the "Spanish" inhabitants (really, de Pagès insisted, a people of mixed Spanish, Indian, and African blood), whom he considered:

...haughty, fraudulent, and deceitful. Under high pretensions to generosity, they are at pains to conceal their natural sentiments, which are particularly illiberal and selfish. In fine, they have all the pride and stateliness of Castile, without the noble and generous qualities of a true Spaniard.

His impressions of the Indigenous district, likely the community of San Esteban de la Nueva Tlaxcala, proved much more positive. Here, de Pagès found the Tlaxcaltecan inhabitants, central Mexican people of Nahua ethnicity whose ancestors aided the Spaniards in their conquest of the Aztecs and founded several colonies in the north, to be "industrious and affable."

From Saltillo, de Pagès traveled south into the heart of Mexico's northern mining district, a region that had long attracted the interest of French explorers and statesmen. The discovery of some of Mexico's richest silver and gold deposits in this region during the 16th century transformed the area into a thriving cultural and economic center. De Pagès himself made note of the mines of San Luis Potosí, which he credited with the clear wealth of the region. He described San Luis Potosí's churches as "magnificent" and San Miguel el Grande (today, San Miguel de Allende) as "more beautiful and considerable in extent than any [city] I had hitherto visited."

Continuing south into the kingdom's economic and cultural core, de Pagès arrived in Mexico City on February 28, 1768.

I had the pleasure to discover, [...] a very extensive lake, in the centre of which is placed the city of Mexico.

As he toured the city, he encountered first-hand New Spain's wealth, observing "vast piles of ingots" being weighed for taxation. Spain's abundance of minerals was also visible in the city's architecture, where silver was "applied to an infinity of different purposes."

Nevertheless, de Pagès found that only a small number of Spaniards benefitted from this wealth. He described the other inhabitants as "poor and wretched" people whose only occupations were "drunkenness, debauchery, card-playing, and cock-fighting." De Pagès ’ critiques were steeped in the " Black Legend ," a term describing the propaganda about the brutality and backwardness of the Spanish Empire used by Spain’s rivals to justify competing claims over the Americas.