>> san antonio is here because of these missions. what is really wonderful is that a lot of people who called us parish home and come to

church here can trace their ancestry to the colonial period, the people who build these mission buildings and who built these churches are the missions are about the start of the city of san antonio. we are at the entrance. this is a part of san antonio mission's national historic park. this is a unit of the national park service. there are more than 400 national park sites around the country. each of these 419 help to tell some part of the american story, the part of the american story that we tell here at the san antonio mission is the spanish colonial history of this area of this part of the world. mission san jose is one of formations that make up the national park. the park is comprised of four missions. we have a model of this mission, mission san jose. this is a model that shows the exterior wall, the exterior walls were a series of rooms

that served as the living quarters for the mission inhabitants. the mission compound also, in the colonial period, would have included buildings and workshops. today we see remnants of foundations for some of those buildings. the mission would have included the church and the fryery. we are going to walk towards the church and talk a little bit more about what these missions were all about. here we are standing in the

place with the missionaries would have made living quarters, offices, classrooms. it is behind the church and today is missing the roofs in the second floor. you can still really see the artistry that went into these buildings. the whole idea was to claim this land for spain. by doing that and establishing colonies they hope to claim the land for spain. they started to get nervous. while spain had been what today is mexico for 200 years prior

to establishing the missions here, they had not had much interest in establishing these missions until they started to feel that pressure from france, in what is today louisiana. they established missions in what today is east texas and establish the missions here to serve as a kind of rest stop for travelers going from the provincial capital and what is today northern mexico. that was a long ways to go to the east texas missions and they established missions here to serve as a rest stop for travelers. the national park service maintains the grounds. the other historic structures and visitor center, but the church building itself, because it is still an active parish,

is maintained not by the national park service but by the archdiocese. it is still an active church and because today we do abide by the separation of church and state in the national park service, does not maintain the building. these walls would have been covered with amazing frescoes. we can see a segment of that fresco that has been reproduced here on the wall. this is a reproduction, done in the 1940's and 1950's, and while it is not original, the design and the colors are original. if you can imagine all of these walls would have been covered with frescoes. a fresco is this wall

decoration with colors and pigments applied to the plaster when the plaster is still wet, still fresh. it was that they were working on a small segment at a time. they would apply the plaster and then the pigment and go to the next section. that had to have been something to see when all of these flat surfaces would have been covered this. so here we are at the aqueduct for the mission. it was the irrigation canal and so the system was this whole system of bringing water from the tunnels and the river to the farm fields at the different missions.

the san antonio river was a source of plentiful, good water that was really important and necessary for the kind of farming they were doing here. they were irrigating and the farming was how they were going to provide food and resources for the mission inhabitants. this particular structure carried the water for the espada creek. it is a low spot and as they were built following the contour of the land, the way they could get water from one side of the creek to the other was by ling this aqueduct.

-- was by building this aqueduct. the indigenous people in this area were surviving and doing well. there started to be some changes that affected their ability to make a living. when europeans arrived in north america, they brought with them horses. other indigenous groups, the apache and the comanche and other group took those horses and became some of the best worst people that the world had ever seen. what that meant for them was that those groups, the apache and comanche, could expand their territory and could live in very large groups. they were also quite aggressive, much more aggressive than other groups in the area.

they eventually came into this area and so the apache caused some pretty serious problems. much bigger problem than that was the problem of diseases that had brought by europeans that were devastating, that wiped out huge portions of the population. all of the americas, groups tended to live in small groups, maybe a couple dozen or so at a time. so for these groups that may be at their peak maybe had 20 to 30 people, but then would get wiped out by a disease, others

would get kidnapped by apache and other groups. so you might end up with just a handful of individuals. into that situation come these strangers and the missionaries say, come with us and you will have enough to eat and we will protect you against the apaches and come with us and you will survive and you will find salvation. so the groups thought about that and most of them said, no, thanks, we will figure it out for ourselves. for some, into the mission was a means of survival.

coming into the missions was about surviving and may be finding a way for their children and offspring to survive and persist. it was a difficult decision to come into the missions, but it was one that quite often was made from desperation. when we are talking about the story of the missions, it is about the whole region of the country where the spanish influence today continues. we see that not only in language and food and culture, but in the very persons who make up the population here. that spanish influence is something that continues to persist and that is really central to our identity, certainly here in san antonio.

so these missions are our story and not just something from long ago.

>> today what we are planning to do is spend a little time talking about george washington and the character he developed over a lifetime. if you think about what we've done for the duration of the course we brought him into the story intermittently throughout whether it's talking about individual battles or how he organized or kept men or recruited men to stay in the service. one of the things that i tried to get across is that washington is a bit of an enigma. why? because we don't