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Naming the River San Jacinto

by Robin Montgomery
                
The impact of the San Jacinto on our county and on our state generally is momentous. Witness, for instance, its link to the San Jacinto River Authority, Lake Conroe and Lake Houston.  It is also associated with the most famous military engagement in Texas history, the “Battle of San Jacinto”. Furthermore, it was the eastern boundary of Stephen F. Austin’s original colony.  But where did the river get its name?
                
The traditional view is that the river received the name of the San Jacinto in honor of Saint Hyacinth, perhaps in association with the hyacinth plant endemic to the stream. That may well be.  However, before we jump too readily to that conclusion lets explore a few incidents in the history of our area in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During this period, the high rulers of our region resided in Mexico City. Their reign encompassed a vast region called New Spain which stretched from present Central America to cover the whole of the southwestern United States. 
                 
Our story begins in the sixteen eighties when the Frenchman, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, established a fort in Spanish territory just off Matagorda Bay.  La Salle soon met his demise at the hands of his own French followers near the site of present Navasota. However, his brief tenure on their turf had so alarmed the Spanish that they sought to immediately colonize East Texas. As a measure toward that end, they
carved a trail from the site of La Salle’s fort which passed through the area of later original Montgomery County. This was called the La Bahia (the Bay) Trail. Near where the trail originated, the Spanish established a mission and fort collectively referred to by the name La Bahia.

By the 1740s, the generally agreed boundary between Spanish Texas and French Louisiana was the environs  of the Red River.  Hence word of a French presence near the Trinity alarmed the commander of La Bahia, Captain Joaquín Orobio y Basterra.  Consequently, he prevailed upon a member of the main tribe of the area of later Montgomery County, the Bidai, to escort his forces to the place of the French presence.
                
Approaching the site of present Liberty, Orobio received word that the French were working by a river between the Trinity and the Brazos, but tributary of neither.  Making his way to the stream, Orobio named it the Rio de Aranzazu.
                
Though Spanish policy prohibited trade with the French on the frontier, such activity was a common occurrence anyway.  During the seventeen fifties much of this contraband trade came to be concentrated off the banks of the newly discovered Rio de Aranzazu. It is believed that these illegal activities had the  unofficial blessing of the then Spanish governor of Texas. The governor’s name was Jacinto de Barrios y
Jáuregui.  It was during the regime of this particular governor that the river Aranzazu became referenced instead as the San Jacinto River.        
                 
Was the river named the San Jacinto for Governor Jacinto de Barrios or for St. Hyacinth and/or the hyacinth plant? This remains one of the mysteries of our county.

Thank you.


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