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"Hi, my name is Tony the Turtle. My parents 

named me after my Patron Saint, Anthony. That 

is also the name of the city I live in and river I 

swim in everyday.

But the city was not always 

named after Saint Anthony, or

San Antonio in the Spanish 

language. I can tell you how

this all came to be in 1691, 

almost 300 years ago, as I tell 

you how the city of San Antonio  

was founded.

Today, we know San Antonio as a big, fun city in 

the great state of Texas, which is one of the states 

that makes up my wonderful country--the United 

States of America.   But to tell you about the 

founding or start of the city of San Antonio, I need 

to go back to before America was even a country, 

and before Texas was a state.   Then, we go back 

even further to the time before San Antonio was 

even a city or had its name.

San Antonio in its infancy....

Here's me, Tony, in my infancy.

I was a cute baby, right?

For thousands of years my land was inhabited by 

Native Americans.   There were five main groups of 

indigenous peoples (fancy words for "local folks"), 

but the two main tribes were the Payaya and 

Coahuiltecan.

In 1536, the shipwrecked Spanish explorer who was 

captured and enslaved by the locals, Alvar Nunez  

Cabeza de Vaca (let's just call him "Lucky" for short), 

wrote to the Spanish king about my beautiful 

hometown and its refreshing river.   This was the first 

time anyone had recorded the existence of this little 

area that was then known as the northernmost 

region of the Valley of Mexico. 

But it wasn’t until 1691, after a few other 

expeditions to the north of the Rio Grande about a 

century (fancy word for 100 years) later, that 

anyone showed great interest in my city.   On 13 

June, in 1691, a group of Spanish explorers and 

missionary priests found my city and its river.  

Since it was Saint Anthony’s Feast Day, they named 

both in his honor.   In 1709, three priests from 

Mexico continued to explore the area—from my 

river, now called the San Antonio River,   to the 

Colorado River.   They traveled to Spain to convince 

the king to establish new missions in my city, now 

known as San Antonio.   Father Antonio de Olivares 

was one of the priests who was very persistent 

about establishing missions along my river.

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