Yanaguana - Paul Schaefer Collection

This 1970s news segment for San Antonio’s KMOL-TV (now WOAI-TV) briefly recounts the history of Yanaguana, a Payaya village that later became San Pedro Springs Park. Standing on the banks of the springs, former Bexar County Tax Collector Charles Davis describes encounters with Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer, and Antonio de Olivares, a Franciscan priest, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Payaya, an Indigenous people, are the earliest recorded inhabitants of the area. During the Spanish colonial period, they became Mission Indians at San Antonio de Valero Mission, better known as the Alamo.