Saturday, February 23, 2008

Jesuit Mission In Old Mexico, Now Arizona

Twenty miles north of the Mexico border you'll find Tumacácori National Historic Park, a Jesuit mission to the Pima Indians founded by Spanish Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1691 and the location a bloody O'odham Indian uprising in 1751.
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Read the blog post (here) Some nice pictures also.
Kino was born Eusebio Francesco Chini on August 10, 1645 in Segno, today frazione of Taio, a village in the Val di Non in the Bishopric of Trent now in present-day Italy. After recuperating from a serious illness, Kino joined the Society of Jesus on November 20, 1665. Although he wanted to go to the Orient, he was ordered to establish a mission on the northern frontier of New Spain (today's northern Sonora and southern Arizona). Father Kino departed Spain in 1681 with that purpose in mind. He led the Atondo expedition to lower California. After a drought in 1685, Kino was forced back to Mexico City.
In addition to his pastoral activities as a missionary, Eusebio Kino also practiced other crafts, and was an expert astronomer, mathematician and cartographer, who drew the first accurate maps of Pimería Alta, the Gulf of California and Baja California. Father Kino enjoyed making model ships out of wood.

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