Event of the Month

By the time the main event of the San Xavier Pageant and Fiesta begins, our fingers are sticky from honeyed popovers and our feet dusty from shuffling to the chickenscratch, or waila, music of the Joaquin Brothers Band that played earlier. Now, as the last orange streaks of sunset fade into the darkening sky, we join some 20,000 other people in front of the mission to witness this internationally renowned event. The welcomes and introductions come in four languages, which says a lot about the history of Mission San Xavier del Bac (popularly known as the "White Dove of the Desert") and the nature of this pageant. Spanish music of long ago plays in the background while speakers greet the crowd in Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, Spanish, and English. The Tohono O'odham and their predecessors have lived at this site for at least 10,000 years, we are told. They called this place Wa:k (the: indicates lengthening of the vowel) or Bac, a more contemporary rendering of a Tohono O'odham word meaning "where water rises from the ground." And with this water from the Santa Cruz River they irrigated their crops of corn, beans, and squash. A spotlight illuminates the figure of a priest standing before a cross on Grotto Hill, just east of the mission. The narrator tells of the arrival of the Franciscans, of the coming of Christianity to

MORE THAN 20,000 CELEBRATE THE FOUNDING OF MISSION SAN XAVIER WHEN YOU GO

The San Xavier Pageant and Fiesta will take place Friday, April 16, beginning at 8:00 P.M. (Pre-pageant activities start at 6:00 P.M.) Admission is free; there will be a $3 per car parking fee. Bleacher seats will be available ($5) as well as chairs ($5). Proceeds benefit the San Xavier Mission School and the Tucson Festival Society, the event's sponsor. If you wish, you may bring your own seating. Getting there: Mission San Xavier del Bac is about 10 miles south of downtown Tucson and less than a mile west of Interstate Route 19. From Phoenix, take Interstate Route 10 to Tucson and then Interstate 19 heading south. Take the San Xavier Road exit to the mission, which is visible from the highway. For further information about the pageant, contact the Tucson Festival Society, 425 W. Paseo Redondo, Suite 2, Tucson, AZ 85701; (602) 622-6911.

the Southwest. On the hill, a tableau depicts the meeting of the missionaries and the Indians. Down the hill comes a throng of Wa:k runners with swirling torches, lighting bonfires as they run and dance. The fires throw a yellow glow across the mission, and huge coils of mesquite smoke rise into the windless night. Soon a string of horsemen, representing the Spanish "leatherjacket soldiers," gallops down the hill carrying shields and lances. They are followed by a procession of candle bearers, schoolgirls dressed in blue capes and hoods. The mission bells ring, and fireworks spread across the sky like a fan. The church doors open, and a group of worshipers and Yaqui dancers joins the procession. The mind reels with details: the animal-hide coats of the horsemen, the haunting gestures of the deer dancer, the dazzling crepe-papered headdresses of the Matachines as they perform the maypole dance. The origins of the mission, like the participants and crowd here, are eclectic. The mission was conceived and founded in about 1700 by the Jesuit priest Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, but the church we see today was begun by the Franciscans circa 1778 and completed in 1797, save for the unfinished bell tower. (Father Kino died in 1711.) Both San Xavier villagers and artisans from Mexico participated in the construction, an effort that went on for some 19 years. What the San Xavier Pageant celebrates, as much as the founding of the mission, is the rich heritage and shared ancestry that is ours today. Later in the evening, as we join in the Tohono O'odham round dance, we feel lucky to be part of this festival.