THE SPANISH COLONIAL EXPERIENCE AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY OF SAN AGUSTIN DEL TUCSON: A CASE STUDY OF SPANISH COLONIAL FAILURE

Abstract

In the 1690s, Father Kino described Tucson as a highly suitable place to establish a mission community. Once founded, Mission San Agustin del Tucson became a visit a of the neighboring Mission San Xavier del Bac, which served as the cabecera. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, the nearby Pima village of El Pueblito was abandoned, and the mission fell into ruin as the church property was homesteaded, given away, or sold. Physical evidence of the mission, including a convento and gardens, was further compromised after a brick manufacturing plant and, later, a landfill took their toll on the archaeological record. By the middle of the twentieth century, the last evidence of the mission era was destroyed. Mission San Agustin can be interpreted as an example of colonial failure that does not conform to traditional culture contact models of a unilinear sequence from diffusion to acculturation and, ultimately, to assimilation. San Agustin was for a short period a thriving, productive, complex mission community that overshadowed its neighboring cabecera, San Xavier del Bac. Using a historical archaeological approach, this paper describes the cultural context in which Tucson's mission was constructed, abandoned, fell into ruin, and disappeared. Major historical events and processes are suggested as possible causes for this failure.