Standing here, perhaps you can visualize the bustle of daily life at Mission San José de Tumacácori. To the left of the trail is a mound protecting the foundations of the residents’ adobe houses.
At its peak of activity, this bustling community space served as the backdrop to the lives of nearly 200 mission residents. People walked from here to attend church services, engage in work in the convento, or to go into the fields, gardens, and orchards between the plaza and the river. The long, low mound to the left of the sidewalk protects what remains of adobe residences connected in a line running north to south. The ramada to the right resembles a mission family’s outdoor cooking and living area. Take a moment to imagine the mission community as it once was—the sounds of animals, children running and playing in the plaza, oxen and carts coming and going. Here is a village at work. Many different languages could be heard in the plaza. Some priests came from Spain, but others from Austria, Switzerland, Italy, or Bavaria. The O’odham had many dialects. The Yoeme, now referred to as the Yaqui, spoke a totally separate language. The Nde, now called the Apache, shared linguistic roots with the Navajo. The proximity of neighbors in the mission core differs from traditional O’odham villages. There, family households might be generally clustered together, but did not share walls, enclosed spaces, or other facilities. The density of the closely packed mission community likely contributed to the spread of European diseases such as measles, smallpox, and typhus.
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Self-guided tour - Convento Complex
The convento—an open square of buildings with a central courtyard—was a focus of community life. To your left, an earthen berm protects the foundations of a row of work rooms. They included a kitchen, ironworker’s shop, carpentry shop, weaving room, leather shop, and grain grinding mill.
Although commonly confused with the term “convent,” Tumacácori’s convento had nothing to do with housing for nuns. The convento was the operational part of the mission. It functioned as a shared, community workspace and governmental center. It would have been alive with the sounds of people talking, working, and moving about.
The rooms aligned in a U-shape around a central courtyard. Along the north wing, where a long raised mound is still visible today, archeological evidence suggests a kitchen, ironworker’s shop, carpentry shop, weaving room, leather shop, and grain grinding mill. The storeroom is all that remains of the west row of the convento. The south wing included the priest’s quarters, other office spaces, and an arched entrance to the interior courtyard. The central courtyard was likely planted with trees, ornamental flowers, and medicinal and edible plants. An arcade—a covered walkway lined with arches and built-in benches—ran in front of the rooms. It would have been a shady, inviting, and pleasant place to meet and greet one’s neighbors. The arcade and courtyard garden of the visitor center were built to replicate this experience. For its O’odham residents, the mission’s convento may have been a place where tradition and change clashed. A host of new tools, technologies, and food sources had become available. Instead of yucca or cotton fibers, a weaver could use wool. Instead of bone or stone, one could craft tools from metal. But adopting these changes came at a social and cultural cost.
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Self-guided tour - Cemetery
The circular mortuary chapel was used to conduct funeral services for at least some of the 593 burials recorded at Tumacácori between 1755 and 1825. Grave markers visible today date to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Mission-era graves were destroyed by weather, vandalism, and cattle.
The O’odham and their neighbors had complex traditions for burials. The dead were dressed well, often provided with some personal items, buried in a cavity, and covered with rocks. The O’odham would sometimes burn items that had belonged to a person who died, and would ask the dead to remain at peace, not come back to disturb the living. A blend of traditional and Catholic beliefs and ceremonies continues among the O’odham today.
The fourteen niches in the walls surrounding the cemetery would have held paintings or sculptures of the Catholic “Stations of the Cross.” In the center lies the round mortuary chapel. The plan may have been to cover the round building with a dome. A family might spend time with their deceased loved one in this room before burial.
Although burial records exist for Tumacácori from 1755 to 1825, the first burial in this cemetery took place in 1822. The previous cemetery was next to the Jesuit-era church.Many of the dead were victims of the terrible epidemics of smallpox, measles, and typhus that swept through the missions. A few were killed during Apache raids. The majority of Tumacácori’s burials were of children under the age of five.
While records describe nearly 600 burials at Tumacácori, any evidence of mission-era graves was destroyed long ago by weather, cattle, and vandals. Families who moved into the area after the O’odham residents left continued to use this cemetery to bury their dead. Little Juanita Alegria, who died of influenza at the age of nine months in 1916, was the last person buried at Tumacácori.
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Self-guided tour - Storeroom
The mission had a communal system of growing, collecting, and distributing food from this 2-story location. In addition to the O’odham diet of native cultivars and wild foods, the Spanish introduced domestic sheep, goats, cattle, wheat, and fruit trees.
The storeroom’s two-story structure was the tallest part of the convento complex. Its wide staircase led to an upper level which was supported by heavy pine beams, hauled from the heights of the Santa Rita Mountains. The large beams were, in turn, supported by two thick adobe piers. On the right side of the doorway are depressions where large clay jars filled with seed and grain were stored for next season’s crops.
The storeroom’s surpluses and deficits were the measure of success or failure of the mission. A well-stocked storeroom allowed the purchase of clothing or other resources. Empty shelves signaled stress.
The storeroom also embodied the community’s new European-style corporate hierarchy and contrasted with the O’odham’s consensus-based government. Harvested food would be collected here and then distributed on a weekly basis. However, the gatekeeper to the storeroom could withhold access, making food contingent on following the mission’s rules.
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Self-guided tour - Lime Kiln
Lime plaster is used to protect adobe buildings from moisture. Though laborious, it was (and remains) the best protection possible for sun-dried adobe.
Most of the mission structures are made from sun-dried adobe bricks. A soil mixture would be mixed with water into a thick paste and then pressed into rectangular wooden forms and left in the sun to dry. This efficient style of earthen technology goes back thousands of years, but requires constant maintenance. Moisture, either from the ground or from precipitation, will erode sun-dried adobe bricks, rendering the structure unstable. The Spanish favored limestone plaster as a protective coating on their adobe buildings. Many tons of limestone rocks were gathered and carted to the mission’s lime kilns. A fire was built under a metal grill and high temperatures “cooked” the limestone over several days until it could be hammered into a fine powder. That powder was then made into a paste using water and sand, which was later troweled onto on the exposed adobe brick walls. Gathering stone, mixing plaster, and coating the large structures required the labor of many workers. For the O’odham, the kiln probably represented a significant change in their lifestyle. Previously, they lived with a changing landscape, in buildings that changed with it. The European worldview prioritized permanence and defiance of natural weathering. This shift would shape the way that people across the region live and think for centuries to come.
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Self-guided tour - Convento Fragment
This fragment includes the rooms in which the priest likely resided. After the mission residents left, it was used as a house by various people and was even used as a school in the 1930’s during the early days of Tumacácori National Monument.
Only portions of the original three-sided convento complex remain today: the two-story storeroom at the northwest corner, and this fragment. Just ahead of you was the arched entrance into the convento courtyard, graced by a small dome above. The priest also lived in this wing of the complex. Originally, Tumacácori was only a visita—a visiting station for Catholic missionaries. It wasn’t until 1768 that Tumacácori became a cabecera—a mission that housed a resident priest. This likely caused a significant disturbance for the O’odham of Tumacácori. With only occasional visits from the priest, they could openly continue their traditional religious and social practices. Now, under the watchful eye of a resident priest, they had to conceal those practices in order to model Spanish and Catholic values. This structure continued to serve the Tumacácori community long after the mission era. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, this remaining section of the convento served as a residence, a school, and later housed the museum of the fledgling Tumacácori National Monument. A herringbone-pattern floor currently duplicates and protects the original floor beneath one room. More than any other structure here it has seen many preservation techniques tried to protect it.
