More About San Jose De Guaymas

More About San Jose De Guaymas

On the last post about San Jose de Guaymas, Gary commented "that it looks like some of the mission churches built by the Spanish in California" and indeed it has its roots there. I have done some searching online for information and from this site http://www.guaymas.gob.mx/historia/sanjose.pdf I got the following information. Now, remember that this site is in spanish and my spanish is not the best, so some of my translating might not be correct.

In 1617 the Jesuits entered the territory and began teaching Christianity to the Yaqui natives. The Yaquis adopted some of the teachings and retained some of their own religion, creating an interesting mixture of religion that they practice. The missions in Sonora settled down and they set out to Baja California to set up a mission at Loreto in 1697. Father Salvatierra and Father Kino did some exploring on the Baja to make sure that it was indeed a peninsula and not an island and then returned to Guaymas in April of 1701 to found the mission of San Jose. Before this time they were using the Port of Yaqui which was inadequate, they knew that a better port existed several miles away and decided to found a mission with the Guaimas and Pima natives and use the port there to transport grain and cattle to the growing number of missions in California.
In 1701 the Jesuit, Juan Maria de Salvatierra founded a little mission called San Jose de la Laguna. This mission was about 2 miles from the present town on a small lake where two streams joined. After establishing the mission, Padre Salvatierra returned to Loreto, leaving Jesuit Manuel Diaz to instruct the natives in Christianity. In 1704 they had built corrals for the cattle, and the church, there were about 500 natives living in the area. On the 2nd of April, 1704 they received a visit from Father Eusebio Francisco Kino from his mission in Dolores. He apparently led some cattle there, to ship to the missions in Baja California. If I understand it correctly, it says that he was surprised to see that the cattle could be loaded right onto the boats there from a stone wharf at that time. Apparently there was a ship canal that existed which allowed the boats to come right to the stone wharf. This is hard to believe now, as the town is a long way from the water but I have been told that the water was much higher years ago, so maybe I am interpreting this correctly.
The Seri indians were the enemy of the Guaimas indians and attacked the mission, destroying the church several times. The Jesuits reconstructed the church over and over again. Finally in 1758 or 1759, after a great rebellion of Seris and a new attack to San Jose, the inhabitants decided to leave the town and went to take refuge in Belem, one of the Yaquis towns.
So, after trying to figure all this out, I still do not have any idea of when the church in the photo was constructed; but I did learn some interesting history.