Mission San Xavier Del Bac: Hardships Within the Mission

Mission San Xavier del Bac saw quiet a bit of hardships throughout its time. From epidemic diseases to apache raids, they seemed to face it all. In late November of 1770, there was an outbreak of the measles epidemic in the Pimeria Alta region of the Sonoran desert, which in turn led to an outbreak within the San Xavier del Bac mission walls.

Along with sickness, the people of San Xavier had to constantly deal with Apache raids on their people. The Apache attacks started out by just being raids of them coming in and taking horses and cattle, but by fall of 1768, the raids became more gruesome attacks of killings and massacres. On October 2^nd of the same year, it was recorded that the apaches rode in, stole a heft amount of San Xaviers horses, cattle, killed the governor of the missions, and kidnapped two of the San Xavier soldiers. The roads to and from San Xavier were very treacherous as well, due to the Apache tribes that stayed on the roads. With the roads being dangerous, people did not want to travel, leading to lack of communication between sister missions.