San Xavier-Site History

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The Mission is central to religious life for many residents of the San Xavier District. It is also a pilgrimage site, with thousands of visitors making lengthy treks on foot annually and also attracting tens of thousands of regional, national, and international tourists a year.

Located along the Santa Cruz River, where natural springs once rose to the surface, the area has been home to the Tohono O’odham and their ancestors for thousands of years with a history of agriculture dating back more than four millenia.

Father Eusebio Kino first visited the village of Wa:k in 1692 which, at the time, consisted of around 800 people. Though there are records that indicate Kino called upon the Tohono O’odham villagers to build the foundations for a church in 1700, the project was never finished and the first permanent architecture—a flat-roofed hall made of adobe—wasn’t constructed until the mid-18th century.

The facade panel surrounding the front entrance is elaborately decorated with sculptures of saints, animals, and religious motifs. It was heavily restored during the 1950s though some original polychromy most likely survives.

The present structure was completed in 1797. The San Xavier District, a subset of the Tohono O’odham Nation, was established in 1874. The District encompasses more than 110 square miles and is home to approximately 2,000 people, about 19 percent of the Tohono O’odham population. Though the Mission was the main factor in the creation of the District, currently the building and 14 acre campus is owned by a corporation of the Catholic Church. San Xavier del Bac has been utilized continuously for Tohono O’odham Catholics for more than 200 years.

Tohono O’odham people built the church under the direction of Spanish Missionaries. Bricks were made and fired, and lime was quarried, burned, and slaked on site. The church’s walls are built of fired adobe bricks, filled with a volcanic stone rubble core, which was infilled with lime slurry. Unlike many of the other missions in the Kino chain, San Xavier was laid out in a cruciform plan with a dome and vault roof system, a construction method afforded by the burned adobe bricks. The stunning interior was lavishly decorated, influenced by Byzantine and Moorish design.

The architectural style is often described as Ultra Baroque or Churrigueresque, a Spanish Baroque style that emerged in the late 17th century, which is characterized by heavily ornamented and elaborately detailed stucco design. It was declared one of the first National Historic Landmarks in 1960.

Many religious visitors and people making pilgrimages to San Xavier pray at the Mortuary chapel just west of the Mission. The walled courtyard outside was the original cemetery.

San Xavier was built with fired adobe bricks which were made on site, allowing for dome and vault construction. The roof is comprised of a series of low vaults with a large dome at the transept crossing and smaller dome over the sanctuary.

The artists and sculptors who are responsible for executing the incredible array of interior artwork remain unknown. The quality of work is exceptional for such a remote frontier outpost, suggesting that experienced craftsmen were likely brought in from central Mexico, and includes sculpture, painted frescos and elaborate woodwork. The original tempera pigments display a stunning range of color, and were cleaned and conserved after decades of darkening and damage due to soot and dust in the 1990s.

Conservator Tim Lewis touches up areas of missing paint along the dado. The bright, geometric dado was originally painted in much more subdued hues. It was overpainted during a restoration campaign in the 1950s along with some of the large frescoes in the nave.

Minimal archaeological investigation has taken place over the years, though it is highly likely that there are rich archaeological resources intact at San Xavier, due to the very low occurrence of disturbance, particularly evidence related to early Spanish-Native American interaction.