Captain Domingo Ramon went bravely to work with his soldiers and Franciscans. He was very much loved by the Indians. They adopted him into their tribes and cheerfully aided him in the hard labor of clearing and building. Within a few years the country was dotted with missions. Some of these were temporary structures, rude and frail; others were built of stone. The noble and majestic ruins of the latter fill the beholder to-day with wonder and delight. If the mission served also as a presidio, it was entitled to a garrison of two hundred and fifty soldiers; where there was no fortress, the church itself served as a stronghold. Among the earliest of the missions thus built were Our Lady of Guadalupe (Gwah-dah-loop′ā), at Victoria (1714); Mission Orquizacas (Or-kee-sa′-kass), on the San Jacinto River (1715); Mission Dolores near San Augustine (1716); Adaes, east of the Sabine River (1718); Nacogdoches (1715); and Espiritu Santo, at Goliad (La Bahia) (1718). The Mission Alamo,[7] which was to play so prominent a part in the later history of Texas, was begun under another name, in 1703, on the Rio Grande River. It was removed to the San Pedro River at San Antonio in 1718. In 1744 it was finally built where its ruins now stand, on the Alamo Plaza in San Antonio, and was called the Church of the Alamo. Early in 1718 the foundation of San José (Ho-sā′) de Aguayo, the largest and finest of all the missions, was laid near San Antonio. The little settlement which had so pleased the eye of St. Denis four years before had grown to a village. It had been laid off and named for the Duke de Bexar (Bair), a viceroy of Mexico; and St. Denis’ road, which linked it on the southwest with St. John the Baptist and on the northeast with Natchitoches in Louisiana, had already become a traveled highway. The Mission and Presidio of San José were therefore of the first importance. Captain Ramon himself may have selected the site. It was a few miles below the town, on the limpid and swift-flowing river San Antonio. A day or two after the site was decided upon, a long procession wound across the beautiful open prairie from the village. It was headed by a venerable barefoot Franciscan father, who carried aloft a large wooden cross; on either side of him walked a friar of the same order, and behind them came acolytes and altar-boys bearing censer, bell, and vessels of holy water. Captain Ramon and his soldiers on horseback, and stiff and erect in their holiday uniforms, followed with the Spanish flag in their midst; the Mexicans who composed the slim population of San Antonio came next; then, grave and stately in their blankets and feathered headdresses and as proud as the Spaniards themselves, stalked a hundred or more converted Apache and Comanche warriors. A rabble of Indian squaws and papooses brought up the rear.