San Xavier del Bac Mission

Is located on tribal land.

San Xavier del Bac Mission is Arizona’s oldest European structure and a masterpiece of Spanish Colonial architecture. Completed in 1797, it continues to serve as a place of faith and community. Ongoing restoration preserves this historic treasure for all who visit.

Founded in 1692 by Jesuit missionary Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, SJ who traveled extensively in the region to spread Catholicism and foster peace among Indigenous communities.

San Xavier del Bac Mission on the Tohono O’odham Nation in Tucson, Arizona was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 by the Secretary of the Interior and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

This Mission, continues it’s original purpose in serving the Tohono O’odham people of the Wa:k Community of the San Xavier District. The Mission building began as a modest adobe structure but soon transformed into an extraordinary architectural and spiritual marvel that we experience today.

Construction of the church we see today began in 1783, during the period when Southern Arizona was part of New Spain.

Thanks to a unique partnership between Franciscan missionary Fr. Juan Bautista Velderrain and Sonoran rancher contributions, work on the current building commenced under the direction of architect Ignacio Gaona.

Completed in 1797, it remains the oldest intact European structure in Arizona and an outstanding example of Spanish Colonial architecture.

When the Spanish arrived in the Santa Cruz river valley they found, to their great surprise, a flood plain covered with cultivated fields stretching for several miles in each direction of Wa:k. The Tohono O'odham had traditionally spent the summer months living in "rancherías," semi-permanent villages, situated near monsoon rain-fed water courses, that were supported by seasonal agricultural production of maize, squash, melons, and beans. During the winter dry months, small groups of people left the rancherías to hunt and gather wild resources in areas fed by natural springs.
The Spanish friars failed to recognize the soundness of such a lifestyle. Their commission, as defined by the Spanish government, was to situate the Indians in permanent settlements around mission churches in order to more efficiently convert and civilize them. Their mobility was condemned as "heathen vagabondage" that was counterproductive to successful permanent European agricultural theory.

Father Kino was most likely the first European to visit the O'odham village of Wa:k when he arrived in the area in 1687.
His explorations took him into new territory, the Pimería Alta, which because of its location on the northern reaches of New Spain was called the "rim of Christendom."
Spanish colonial policy relied on the missionaries to concentrate the scattered natives at a small number of mission sites and to pacify them and civilize them, thus producing loyal vassals of the crown.

"...They came to a ranchería [an O'odham village inhabited during the agricultural crop-growing season] called Caborica, to which they added a saint's name and styled it San Ignacio de Caborica.'

Kino remarks that it was inhabited by 'affable people,' and this was probably the case, for they were now in the territory of the friendly and docile Opatas, perhaps the most amiable of the Pima tribes. The spot was marked for a future mission, which was founded there in due time. It is now the town of San Ignacio. A few miles to the north, another ranchería was selected, and named San Jose de Himires (now Imuris). In all places, ' says Kino, they received with love the Word of God for the sake of their eternal salvation."
From Rufus K. Wyllys, Kino of the Pimeria Alta.Læs mere