Qualla: Los Adaes https://qualla.com/los-adaes en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:04 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/losadaes.jpg Qualla: Los Adaes https://qualla.com/los-adaes Los Adaes: Introduction https://qualla.com/los-adaes/ Photo credit Cpaligo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first capital of Texas sits in Louisiana. That sentence is not a mistake. In 1721, when Spain needed to assert its claim over the vast territory it called Tejas, it built a presidio called Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Los Adaes near the present-day town of Robeline, Louisiana -- just twelve miles from a French fort at Natchitoches. For more than fifty years, this remote outpost of six cannons and a hundred soldiers served as the administrative seat of Spanish Texas, a capital so isolated from the rest of the province that its settlers bought their goods from the very French colonists they were supposed to be defending against. When Spain finally closed Los Adaes in 1773, it forced the entire population to march to San Antonio, but the displaced settlers refused to stay -- and their restless wandering would eventually found the city of Nacogdoches.

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Image: Cpaligo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/9vts-los-adaes-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Los Adaes: Empires Shoulder to Shoulder https://qualla.com/los-adaes/ Photo credit Guillaume Delisle, Public domain. Spain had claimed the Gulf Coast for centuries but largely ignored everything east of the Rio Grande until 1699, when French forts appeared at Biloxi Bay and on the Mississippi River. Suddenly the buffer was gone. In 1716, an expedition under Domingo Ramon left San Juan Bautista ...

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Image: Guillaume Delisle | Public domain

]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/9vts-los-adaes-empires-shoulder-to-shoulder.mp3 0:06 2 full Los Adaes: The Marquis and His Six Cannons https://qualla.com/los-adaes/ Photo credit Cpaligo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Spain's response came in the person of the Marquis de San Miguel de Aguayo, who raised an army of 500 soldiers to reconquer Texas. By July 1721, Aguayo had reached the Neches River and encountered a French force marching to attack San Antonio de Bexar. Outnumbered, the French agr...

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Image: Cpaligo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/9vts-los-adaes-the-marquis-and-his-six-cannons.mp3 0:06 3 full Los Adaes: Trading with the Enemy https://qualla.com/los-adaes/ Photo credit Cpaligo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Life at Los Adaes was defined by a single, absurd fact of geography: the nearest Spanish settlement of any size was hundreds of miles away, while a French trading post sat just twelve miles down the road. Spanish trade law required all goods bound for Texas to ship first to Vera ...

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Image: Cpaligo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/9vts-los-adaes-trading-with-the-enemy.mp3 0:06 4 full Los Adaes: Exile and a New Beginning https://qualla.com/los-adaes/ Photo credit Cpaligo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The end of Los Adaes came not from war but from diplomacy. In 1762, the Treaty of Fontainebleau transferred western Louisiana to Spain, eliminating the French threat that had justified the outpost's existence. The Marques de Rubi inspected Los Adaes and found a forlorn scene: two...

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Image: Cpaligo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/9vts-los-adaes-exile-and-a-new-beginning.mp3 0:06 5 full Los Adaes: A Capital Unearthed https://qualla.com/los-adaes/ Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Today the site of Los Adaes is preserved as a Louisiana State Historic Site near Robeline, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Archaeologist Hiram F. 'Pete' Gregory Jr. of Northwestern State University conducted landmark excavations at the presidio from the 1960s thr...

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]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/9/v/t/s/los-adaes-wp/9vts-los-adaes-a-capital-unearthed.mp3 0:06 6 full