The original mission, founded in 1690 near a Hasinai (Caddo/Tejas) settlement in what is now Houston County, functioned primarily as a religious outpost meant to convert local native peoples to Catholicism, teach them European farming and livestock practices, and instruct converts in Christian doctrine and daily devotional life. Franciscan friars said Mass, baptized willing residents, and attempted to introduce settled agriculture and cattle and sheep husbandry among the semi-agricultural Hasinai, who already grew corn and other crops on their own. The mission never developed a stable food supply of its own and depended on irregular resupply from Spanish authorities far to the south. Relations with the Hasinai soured as epidemic disease followed contact with the missionaries, and native residents grew distrustful of baptism and resistant to congregating at the mission; theft of mission livestock and general indifference to conversion undermined the friars' work. Drought, disease, and native hostility forced the Franciscans to abandon the site in 1693, burying its bells and cannon and burning the structure before withdrawing, after roughly three years of operation. The mission was later reestablished elsewhere and eventually evolved into Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo). Today the original site's location is uncertain and disputed among historians, but a log-cabin replica chapel stands within Mission Tejas State Park near Weches, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. The park and replica now function as a heritage tourism destination and interpretive site, commemorating Spanish Texas's first mission and marking the route of the historic El Camino Real de los Tejas.