The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 41, July 1937 - April, 1938 Page: 163
383 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Builders of San Xavier Del Bac
and Calabazas. All of these missions being fit and respectable for
divine service, they are also adorned and supplied with an abund-
ance of proper vestments, sacred vessels, and other church goods
for the administration of the holy sacraments and the funerals of
the deceased.24
The missions of San Xavier, San Ignacio, Pitiqui, and Tubu-
tama, says Father Barbastro, were built by the fathers of the
college of Quer6taro; Father Arricivita writes that the Indians
built these churches--but, of course, they built them under the
direction and with the help of the friars in charge of the missions
at the time. Who was the missionary, or who were the missionaries
who superintended the building of San Xavier? If we consider the
date, 1772-1783, Father Garc6s, who was sent to San Xavier in
June, 1768, and in 1778 was transferred to the new missions to
be founded on the Colorado, may have made a beginning. Or,
this may have been done by Father Jos6 del Rio, who is mentioned
as a companion of Father Garces, though in 1768-1769 he had his
own mission at Tubutama, and in 1770-1771 made a trip to
Mexico City. It would seem that the principal builders of San
Xavier were Father Baltasar Carillo, superior at Bac from May
22, 1780, to 1794, and his assistant, Father Narciso Guti6rrez.25
Subsequently and successively both the latter missionaries were
transferred to Tumacacori, which by that time had displaced
it was never entirely completed. Vide Frank Pinkley, Mission of San Josd
de Twmacdcori, p. 7.
240p. cit., pp. 488-489 (Santa Barbara Archives copy). While this state-
ment of Arricivita has been known, it is only Father Barbastro's memorial
which enables us to determine the date of the building of San Xavier.
Bancroft (op. cit., p. 380) questions Arricivita's statement regarding San
Xavier, writing: "Yet I think the chronicler would not have dismissed
with so slight a notice the magnificent structure still standing at San
Javier, which has elicited many a description from modern visitors." Apart
from the fact that San Xavier was undoubtedly made more "magnificent"
during the years following 1791, Bancroft would have to question for the
same reasons Arricivita's remark about the hardly less remarkable mission
churches of San Ignacio, Pitiqui, and Tubutama. Both Arricivita and
Barbastro tell us that the Franciscans also built these missions of brick
at the same time that San Xavier was erected. They, too, are still standing
today across the international boundary line; vide A Trailer, "Along
Untrodden Trails," Franciscan Herald, June, 1921, pp. 241-244. Besides,
Father Barbastro's definite statement no longer allows us to question
Arricivita's statement in as far as it agrees with his own.
25Zephyrin Engelhardt, The Franciscans in Arizona (Harbor Springs,
Mich.: Holy Childhood Indian School, 1899), pp. 188-189.163
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 41, July 1937 - April, 1938, periodical, 1938; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101103/m1/179/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.