The Pajalache Acequia (Ditch)

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice passing it along. Way back in the early part of the eighteenth century, a group of people called the Pajalache Indians built something that, when you stop and think about it, is pretty extraordinary. They constructed an acequia, a ditch, as part of their irrigation system.

And we're not talking about some modest little channel scratched into the dirt. This thing began right here in La Villita and ran all the way to Mission Concepción. That is a stretch of water that was wide enough and deep enough for the padres and the Indians to travel between those two places by canoe.

By canoe. Not on foot alongside it, not by horse, but floating right down through it. Whatever you pictured when you heard the word ditch, I'd ask you to reconsider.

This was a working waterway, a corridor of movement, connecting a settlement to a mission, carrying water and carrying people. The Pajalache Indians built that. Early in the eighteenth century, with their own hands, they engineered something serious enough that folks climbed in boats to get from one end to the other.

The State of Texas saw fit to erect a marker here in 1936, and honestly, that might be the least surprising part of the whole story. Some things are worth remembering out loud.

What the marker says

Constucted early in the 18th century by the Pajalache Indians as a part of their irrigation system, began here in La Villita and ended at Mission Concepcion. The padres and the Indians travelled in canoes between these places, as the acequia was wide and deep. Erected by the State of Texas 1936