settlements was founded by
Philip Nolan, a man whom rumor had connected with Wilkinson's intrigues,
and who, like many another lawless trader of the day, was always
dreaming of empires to be carved from, or wealth to be won in, the
golden Spanish realms. In the fall of 1800, he pushed beyond the
Mississippi with a score or so of companions, and settled on the Brazos.
The party built pens or corrals, and began to catch wild horses, for the
neighborhood swarmed not only with game but with immense droves of
mustangs. The handsomest animals they kept and trained, letting the
others loose again. The following March these tamers of wild horses were
suddenly set upon by a body of Spaniards, three hundred strong, with one
field-piece. The assailants made their attack at daybreak, slew Nolan,
and captured his comrades, who for many years afterwards lived as
prisoners in the Mexican towns. [Footnote: Pike's letter, July 22, 1807,
in Natchez _Herald_; in Col. Durrett's collection; see Coue's edition of
Pike's "Expedition," LII.; also Gayarre, III., 447.] The menace of such
buccaneering movements kept the Spaniards alive to the imminent danger
of the general American attack which they heralded.

Spain's Colonial system.

Spain watched her boundaries with the most jealous care. Her colonial
system was evil in its suspicious exclusiveness towards strangers; and
her religious system was marked by an intolerance still almost as fierce
as in the days of Torquemada. The Holy Inquisition was a recognized
feature of Spanish political life; and the rulers of the
Spanish-American colonies put the stranger and the heretic under a
common ban. The reports of the Spanish ecclesiastics of Louisiana dwelt
continually upon the dangers with which the oncoming of the backwoodsmen
threatened the Church no less than the State. [Footnote: Report of
Bishop Penalvert, Nov. I, 1795, Gayarre.] All the men in power, civil,
military, and religious alike, showed towards strangers, and especially
towards American strangers, a spirit which was doubly unwise; for by
their jealousy they created the impression that the lands they so
carefully guarded must hold treasures of great price; and by their
severity they created an anger which when fully aroused they could not
well quell. The frontiersmen, as they tried to peer into the Spanish
dominions, were lured on by the attraction they felt for what was hidden
and forbidden; and there was enough danger in the