Dailey ArleneIt must be said at once that the Spaniards did little to develop Arizona. For them it was an arid, infertile land, also remote from the central government in Mexico and not promising many riches. But the Spanish were forced to increase their influence in this land when the southwestern United States began to be settled.
The Spaniards established two types of colonies: missions, military posts, and missionaries, church settlements designed to convert the natives to the Catholic faith and teach them about Spanish civilization.
In 1629, Franciscan friars built a mission in Awatawi, northern Arizona, to convert the Hopi people to the Catholic faith. But the Hopi resented the Franciscans’ attempts to destroy their faith and in 1633 (most likely) poisoned the monks.
When the local Apache Indians rebelled in Pueblo, New Mexico, in 1680, the Hopi Indians took advantage of the situation and killed all the missionaries in northern Arizona. In 1700 the missionaries returned to Avatowi. But the local Hopi destroyed their settlement. All subsequent efforts to convert the Hopi to the Catholic faith failed utterly.
Success contributed to the missionaries only in southern Arizona, where a missionary order of Jesuits under the leadership of Eusebio Kino was organized in 1692.
Born in Italy, the Jesuit Kino organized missionary work in the southern lands of Arizona, where the Yaqui, Pima, and Yuma peoples lived, until his death in 1711.
Kino also spent 30 years creating a detailed map of these lands. One of his maps was the first to show that Baja California was not an island, but a spit. Kino’s maps were the absolute geographic standard for nearly a century.
Spanish colonists moved slowly into Arizona and in 1752, after a year of fighting native Indians and migrating Apache tribes, the Spaniards established the Tubac Mission. It was the first temporary European settlement in Arizona. After 25 years, Spain moved its mission north to Tucson, near the San Xavier del Bac mission.