BYWAYS PLUS: DATES! - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

XAVIER DEL BAG
Story and Photos
by
Kaye Ann Christie
The Desert Magazine/March 1980
The desert sun bounces off the glistening white
dome, scattering the light, sending the rays heavenward.
Set down in the reds and tans and browns of the
Arizona desert, it is even today a beacon to wanderers
from distant places, a landmark for those who are returning
home. This is the "White Dove of the Desert," Mission
San Xavier del Bac, conveniently reached by a marked
exit on 1-19.
Bac is an Indian word meaning a place where the
water gathers. In the desert region just south of what is
now Tucson, Arizona, accessible year-round water was
the magnet that drew people from the surrounding
area. It was the chosen home of the ancient Huhukam
Ootam, "the people who are no more." These early Indians
found that here an underground river surfaced,
and they used its water to grow their desert cotton.
The Huhukam Ootam were but a memory in 1691
when the Jesuit missionary, Father Kino, first visited
Bac as part of his plan to bring Christianity to the Indians
of Arizona and northern Mexico. He recognized
the gently winding course of the underground river,
which he named the Santa Maria, to be the ideal center
of his entire mission system. For even in the driest
years water could be obtained by digging a shallow hole
in the riverbed, water that was a necessity in this
parched land.
In 300 years much has changed. The Santa Maria
River is now called the Santa Cruz. Today it is a dusty,
dry bed, deeply trenched from the raging torrents it
carries only a few times each summer. The easily available
water is gone. The mission still stands, but it is not
the crude structure builty by Father Kino. It and the
second church constructed by Father Alonso Espinosa
in the 1750s have long ago crumbled or been destroyed.
It is the third church, the one created by Father Juan
Bautista Velderrain, that we see miles away, stark sentinel
of the desert.
Born of the missionary zeal of the Spanish Fathers
and begun in 1783 by the willing hands of the converted
Indians, Mission San Xavier del Bac represents the
crowning ideal in mission architecture. Its style is a
combination of Moorish and Byzantine influences, softened
and enhanced by the use of indigenous artisans
and materials.
Mission Bac was slow in building but was
constructed to last. Instead of the adobe of the Pacific
Coast missions, it was built of fired brick and lime mortar.
Thousands of bricks were required, all made by
hand labor, to build walls three-feet thick throughout.
Solid six-foot walls were constructed to support the
massive weight of the sanctuary dome.
For a mission in the middle of a wilderness, the
inside of Bac was unusually well furnished. In 1797, the
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