Note 1 — LOVER’S LEAP IN KIMBLE COUNTY

Originally there were two Spanish sites in the Menardville vicinity, both founded in 1757: the presidio, San Luis de Las Amarillas, on the north bank of the San Saba River, and the mission, San Sabá, three miles south. In 1758 the Comanches destroyed the mission; then the presidio was strengthened and maintained until 1769. The remains of it are yet to be seen at Menard. The mission was established for the benefit of the Apaches; their hereditary enemies, the Comanches, from the north, regarded the Spanish policy of trying to Christianize the Apaches as an act of war. In the middle of the eighteenth century, it is hardly necessary to say, the Comanches and Apaches were not yet “remnants.” The Cheyennes and Arapahoes never got as far south as the San Saba. The whole story of the San Saba settlement is to be found in two monographs by William Edward Dunn: “Missionary Activities among the Eastern Apaches Previous to the Founding of the San Sabá Mission,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, XV, 186–200; and “The Apache Mission on the San Sabá River; its Founding and its Failure,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVI, 379–414. Dr. Bolton in his Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century, pp. 78–101, gives a succinct account of “The Apache Missions and the War with the Northern Tribes.”—Editor. ↑