Lasting Salvation Is All That Really Matters

When Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino visited the Akimel O'odham (Pima) village of Tumacacori in January 1691, he did little more than celebrate Mass and promise the natives lasting salvation.

But since he arrived there a day before he did the same in nearby Guevavi, technically, the Mission Tumacacori is the oldest, if not the most famous and most visited, Spanish Colonial mission in Arizona.

Last year, some 45,000 visitors walked the shady grounds of Mission Tumacacori. That's a far cry from the approximately 200,000 that flocked to San Xavier del Bac, its more famous and prettier sister to the north. The experience at Tumacacori is very different from the still-living traditions available at San Xavier--it's as much about experiencing a long-lost landscape as it is about seeing a crumbling church ruin.

For many years, the church was an adobe hovel on the east side of the Santa Cruz River, which back in those days flowed seasonally and gave the O'odham their lives.

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