page_title: Canarian Americans
section_title: Canary Islanders and the founding of San Antonio, Texas
hierarchical_section_title: Canarian Americans / Communities / Canary Islanders and the founding of San Antonio, Texas
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial (cenotaph) at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas. Designed by Pompeo Coppini and installed between 1936 and 1940.
context_page_description: Canarian Americans are Americans whose ancestors came from the Canary Islands, Spain. They can trace their ancestry to settlers and immigrants who have emigrated since the 16th century to the present-day United States. Most of them are descendants of settlers who emigrated to Spanish colonies in the South of the modern US during the 18th century. The Canarians were among the first settlers of the modern United States; the first Canarians migrated to modern Florida in 1569, and were followed by others coming to La Florida, Texas and Louisiana.
  Canarian Americans today consist of several communities, formed by thousands of people. Those in San Antonio and in Louisiana are mostly of Canarian settler descent. Their ancestors arrived in what is now the United States in the 18th century, while the Canarian community in Miami is made up of recent emigrants and their children. These communities are culturally distinct within the American population, having preserved much of the culture of their ancestors to present times.
  Most Canarian Americans now speak only English, although some Canarian communities that speak different dialects of the Spanish language are still extant in Louisiana.
context_section_description: On February 14, 1719, the governor of Texas, José de Azlor, made a proposal to King Philip V of Spain that 400 families be transported from the Canary Islands, Galicia, and Havana to populate the province of Texas. His plan was approved, and notice was given the Canary Islanders (Isleños) to provide 200 families for the venture; the Council of the Indies suggested that 400 families should be sent from the Canaries to Texas by way of Havana and Veracruz.
  Before the arrival of the Canarian settlers in 1730, the San Pedro channel was built for the exclusive use of the Canary Island colonists. It was called the acequia madre, the "mother ditch" that crossed the city. Its waters irrigated agricultural fields around San Antonio from that time until 1906. The last channel to supply water to the citizens was dug in 1777 for the new settlers of Los Adaes, and its remains can still be seen. American historical research indicates that Canarian irrigation practices in the San Antonio colonial period can only be understood in the context of traditional irrigation practices developed over thousands of years by the settlers' ancestors in the Canary Islands.
  By June 1730, twenty-five families had reached Cuba and ten families had been sent on to Veracruz before orders from Spain arrived to stop the movement. Most of these Canarians were from Lanzarote, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. Under the leadership of Juan Leal Goraz, the group marched overland to the Presidio San Antonio de Bexar.
  The party had increased by marriages on the way to fifteen families, a total of fifty-six persons. They joined a military community that had been in existence since 1718. At eleven o'clock in the morning on March 9, 1731, sixteen Spanish families (56 people), often referred to as the "Canary Islanders," or "Isleños", arrived at the Presidio of San Antonio de Bexar in the Province of Texas. These settlers formed the nucleus of the village of San Fernando de Béxar, and established the first regularly organized civil government in Texas.
  Juan de Acuña, Viceroy of New Spain, bestowed titles of nobility on each Canary Island family. After arriving in San Antonio, the Isleños had problems with the Texas government and the local bourgeoisie. The Franciscan friars were opposed to their founding a town so near their area of influence. The Canarians competed with them in raising crops and livestock, and their success threatened the order's own production, which had increased dramatically with the labor of Native American converts to Catholicism. The missionaries demanded that the settlers be distributed evenly among all the missions in the territory. Juan Leal, mayor of the city, refused the friars' request and decided in favor of the Canarians.
  The Isleños had no access to water from the San Antonio River for irrigating the land they farmed, as it was reserved for use by the missions. The stream of San Pedro had been used by the Canarians of San Antonio since their arrival, but in 1732 the Cabildo wrote to the Viceroy stating that the volume of water was not enough to irrigate their fields and their crops were dying. In response, the Viceroy suggested in his order that the waters of San Antonio be divided proportionately between the missions and the settlers. An official inspection found that the water flow was plentiful enough to supply the missions and the villa. The tension between the missions and the settlers continued for some time, and later focused on land grant issues as well as irrigation.
  Fourteen years after the founding of San Antonio, the non-Isleño settlers complained that the stranglehold the Canarians had on local politics was tightening to the point of depriving them of water for their homes. In 1736, the first canal was dug to distribute the waters of the San Antonio River for irrigation. Antonio Rodríguez Medero and Governor Carlos Benites Franquis de Lugo had a part in passing legislation enabling development of an irrigation system for the settlers. The Isleños irrigated their farms using the age-old techniques of their homeland.
  Their irrigatio
caption: Memorial to the Alamo defenders
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