Parrilla served as a dragoon captain at the presidio in Veracruz,[1] and in January 1747 led a Spanish military action to suppress a Native revolt in Puebla de los Angeles.
Parrilla was appointed as the interim Governor and Captain-General of Nuevo Reyno de Andalucía (later called "Sinaloa and Sonora") on 27 March 1749, and swore his oath of office before the Royal Audiencia of Guadalajara on 12 September.
He was also put in charge of Presidio del Pitic, which had recently been moved from its original site (present-day Hermosillo) to what would later become San Miguel de Horcasitas.
Although he succeeded in securing their territory, Parrilla failed to wipe out the Native people he had been ordered to destroy; nonetheless, he was promoted to colonel in February 1751.
However, his return trip was put on hold when he was appointed commandant of San Sabá de la Santa Cruz, a proposed mission for converting Plains Apache people to Catholicism.
Despite his doubts over the viability of the mission and the likelihood of converting any Native people, Parrilla eventually followed through with his orders and arrived at the San Sabá River on 17 April 1757.
After exploring the valley, Parrilla established a new fort to protect the missionaries at a site one mile west of present-day Menard, Texas, becoming the first commander of the Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas.
[2] Parrilla oversaw geological surveys which searched for mineral deposits and studied ores from the Las Almagres Mine,[6] which would later become well known after it was lost and eventually sought out by treasure hunters such as American frontiersman James Bowie.
Over the course of the next eleven months, Parrilla began to fear that a raid on San Sabá was inevitable, and asked the missionaries to relocate to the site of the presidio for protection, but they declined.
Another attack occurred in March 1759 when the same raiders responsible for the massacre one year earlier again struck at San Sabá, killing the 19 men guarding the presidio's herd and stealing 750 horses.
[10] Writing to the military leadership in Mexico City, he suggested that missionary work at San Sabá be abandoned so he could lead a campaign against the "Norteños", or "northern tribes".
[11] Communication between the fort and Mexico City was difficult due to the long distances and the indecisiveness of authorities in the capital, but Parrilla eventually received formal approval for his operation and began planning his movements on 3 January 1759 at the San Antonio de Béxar Presidio.
The army was equipped with 1,500 horses, hundreds of mules, two cannons, and four months' worth of provisions largely made up of beans, corn, dry beef, and flour.
[7] Surrounded by gunfire from two angles and with no avenue for retreat, Parrilla organized his troops with Spanish soldiers in the middle and his Native auxiliaries protecting against flanking manoeuvres.
The mounted fighters would strike at the flanks and the main body of the army repeatedly before pulling back to swap out their firearms for ones that had been reloaded by support units out of range of the Europeans' guns.
Around nightfall, Parrilla called off the offensive after four hours of fighting failed to overwhelm the Natives and resulted in the deaths of 19 Spanish soldiers and 14 non-fatal casualties, as well as 19 desertions.
In his report to military authorities after the battle, Parrilla declared it a success, alleging that he had inflicted at least 100 casualties on their troops and had killed the Taovaya chief, but these details were not verified.
Parrilla and his army were left without the weapons or supplies necessary to continue their invasion, so they retreated to San Sabá, finally arriving at the presidio on 25 October after 17 days.
Rather than be allowed to return, Parrilla was reassigned; Felipe de Rábago y Terán, who had commanded the San Xavier Presidio prior to its relocation, was put in charge of the fort.
The weapons lost by Parrilla would not be recovered for twenty years, only returning to Spanish possession in spring 1778 when Athanase de Mézières secured the cannons and transported them to a settlement on the Trinity River, in present-day Madison County.
The success of Native troops over Spanish forces in the Red River Campaign was the first in a series of events that led to a reorganization of New Spain's frontier defences following an inspection tour by Cayetano Pignatelli, 3rd Marquis of Rubí in 1767.
[4][7] Juan Ángel de Oyarzún, captain of the participating company from San Luis Potosí, kept a journal tracking the course of the campaign which would prove invaluable to historians in later centuries.
With a force of 400 soldiers from Veracruz and Havana, Parrilla was made Governor of San Miguel de Pensacola and spent two years suppressing the rebellion.
He reported to Ambrosio de Funes Villalpando in Havana that the formalities had been taken care of and shortly afterwards sailed to Veracruz with his army, as well as a number of Native people who had pledged their allegiance to Spain.
Native Malaguita people reported in mid-1765 that European settlers were colonizing the "Islas Blancas" (present-day Padre Island) at the mouth of the Nueces River,[13] an area unexplored by the Spanish but close enough to Florida that it seemed possible British colonists were intruding into the territory.
[18] These men and others informed Parrilla that every coastal body of water had been flooded, so he decided not to proceed with any further exploration and spent the remainder of the expedition encamped, working on his map of the coastline.
Although he misunderstood which body of water "Corpus Christi" was meant to be attributed to and had drawn the bay in an incorrect location, the name was upheld by subsequent expeditions and the area has been known as that ever since.