American Archaeology -Fall 2001
Big News in the Barrio
By Tamara Steward
The conservancy acquires the Barrio De Tubac, the southern portion of Arizona’s first permanent European settlement.
The Santa Cruz Valley south of Tucson, Arizona has a rich history of continuous occupation that spans nearly 5,000 years. Archaic period inhabitants were followed by the Hohokam (ancestors of today’s O’odham people), and then the Spanish colonial settlers of the late 18th century, and, beginning in the mid-19th century, American settlers.
Spanish exploration of the region began as early as 1536, and the Santa Cruz Valley was part of a major exploration and transportation route through northern Sonora, Mexico, and southern Arizona beginning in the late 17th century. In 1732, Jesuit priests from the nearby mission of Guevavi regularly traveled to Piman Indian villages, called rancherias, in the vicinity of Tubac to convert the inhabitants to Christianity and to hold Mass. In 1739, a mission farm was established at Tubac where Spanish settler lived in a Pima rancheria, supervising a small economic outpost.
Due largely to hostilities between the Spanish settlers and native peoples, the Tubac settlement suffered periodic abandonment throughout the Spanish Colonial period. In 1751, these hostilities culminated in the Pima Revolt, when the northern Pima Indians rose up against the Spanish. Although the rebels surrendered the following year, the uprising forced the Spanish to take additional steps to protect the missions, and they established a presidio at Tubac in June 1752, the first permanent European settlement in what would become the state of Arizona.
By 1767, the Tubac presidio boasted a population of more than 500,with nearly all the Hispanic inhabitants in southern Arizona located at the settlement. Although the presidio is protected as the Tubac Presidio State Historical Park, the southern neighborhood, known as the Barrio de Tubac, contains the remains of approximately 32 historic building and thousands of artifacts, and is vulnerable to erosion, vandalism, and encroaching development. Barrio de Tubac was the village that supported the presidio and its garrison of troops. The site is considered by most scholars to be one of the best remaining Spanish Colonial and Mexican period sites in the Southwest.
Developers Roy Ross, Jacque Brasher, and Baca Float Land development, Ltd. recently agreed to sell the barrio site to the Conservancy in a bargain-sale-to-charity to ensure its preservation. The Conservancy acquired the site with the help of a grant from the Arizona heritage Fund. The site will be fenced, stabilized, and nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. Artifacts that were previously recovered from the site will be processed and curated as part of the project, and an interpretive trail will be created with trained docents leading regularly scheduled public tours through the preserve.
“This project offers us an unparalleled opportunity to protect our shared past and make generations of Arizonans and visitors aware of our Hispanics and O’odham heritage,” says Thomas Sheridan, director of the Documentary Relations of the Southwest program at the Arizona State Museum.
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