Mission San Jose: UNESCO World Heritage Site

Mission San Jose is less than a mile from the San Antonio River, which meanders through the city’s Pearl, Downtown, and Garden District neighborhoods. Because it was the largest (and most beautiful) mission in San Antonio, it was nicknamed the Queen of Missions.   

In 1778, Father Juan Augustin Morfi described Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo as ” . . . in truth, the first mission in America, not in point of time but in point of beauty, plan, and strength, so that there is not a presidio along the entire frontier that can compare with it.”

Limestone walls barricade this massive complex, which once housed 300 indigenous residents in the 1700s. You can walk through a two-room apartment where up to 10 people once lived. 

“The mission’s objective was to convert Indigenous hunters and gatherers into Catholic, tax-paying subjects of the King of Spain. The native families’ struggle for survival in their quickly changing environment led them to the missions. Everything changed for these neophytes: diet, language, clothing, religion, culture — even their names,” according to the National Park Service (NPS).

The middle of the mission consists of a village green dotted with trees. The rectangular compound includes the residents’ lodging, workshops, and soldier’s quarters.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

UNESCO administers World Heritage Sites, which are landmarks and areas with legal protection by an international convention: “Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration.”

According to the Visit the USA website, the USA is home to 24 of the 1,121 UNESCO World Heritage Sites worldwide. (Check out my posts on two other UNESCO World Heritage sites: Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the Blue Ridge Parkway drive to Great Smoky National Park.)

In July 2015, Missions San Antonio was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Texas.

There are five Spanish colonial missions in the city. Together, they comprise the San Antonio Missions World Heritage Site:

• Alamo (San Antonio de Valero)
• Concepcion 
• Espada
• San Jose 
• San Juan

Spanish Franciscan missionary Father Antonio Margil de Jesús founded the Mission San Jose in 1720. The Franciscans relocated it three times after originally placing it on the east bank of the San Antonio River south of the Mission San Antonio de Valero (The Alamo). 

The San Jose compound included a stone friary (convento), a granary, a gristmill, and workshops for carpentry, blacksmithing, and weaving. 

To check out the Mission San Jose audio tour, click this link: San José Audio Tour (worldheritagesa.com)

Walking Tour

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) offers a free 50-minute walking tour of Mission San Jose in San Antonio. I highly recommend it if you want to learn more about the site’s history as well as its revival in the 20th century.

“Known as the ‘Queen of the Missions,’ this is the largest of the missions and was almost fully restored to its original design in the 1930s by the WPA (Works Projects Administration).”

Go to the mission’s Visitor Center to take the free guided ranger tours. Tours are offered daily at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.; afternoon programming varies.

My NPS guide provided background on why the Indigenous people chose to give up their way of life and live inside the compound. In the 1700s, 200 to 300 Indians inhabited the Mission.

“They had lived here thousands of years before the Spaniards. However, in the 1700s, these Indigenous people faced two threats: droughts and larger tribes (like the Cherokees). The Franciscan friars said we can show you how to start an agricultural system and survive. Their choices were to go inside the mission or stay out and fight with my family,” explained our NPS guide. 

The Spanish crown sent soldiers to defend their outposts in the New World and Franciscan friars to convert the Indians living in this region. Typically, two or three Franciscan friars ran the mission.

“They lived in convents. There were no nuns. The friars came from Spain or Mexico City. They were closely linked to the King and Queen of Spain,” our guide told us.

The friars taught Latin and Spanish to the Mission Indians. They also used frescoes (paintings) in the church to tell the natives the Catholic story.

Mission Work Force

Initially, 240 Indians moved into Mission San Jose. The Indians served as the primary labor force for construction, irrigation, and farming. The Mission Indians planted beans, squash, peaches, and sugar cane. 

Our guide explained that the Indian settlers were expected to earn money for the crown by learning skills such as weaving, blacksmithing, and carpentry.

Each apartment had a fireplace, as winter nights could get chilly. “It can get cold in San Antonio! We had a day when it got down to 13 degrees in winter,” our guide explained. 

But this fireplace was not used for food preparation. “They cooked in hornos (ovens) outside the home. They were rounded beehive ovens. You remove ashes and put food inside,” reported our guide.

Labor was divided by gender. “Women were responsible for farming, preparing wool from sheep, cooking, and childcare. The weaving was done by men because it was machinery. They had to use a loom and weave in the Spanish style. The Vaqueros were 15 or 16 year olds who tended the horses and cattle nearby,” said the guide.

The Mission Indians learned how to raise livestock at the two Mission ranches, Rancho de Atascosa and Rancho de San Lucas, which were 25 miles away.

Walled Fortress

Warring tribes attacked the San Antonio missions to steal food. Mission San Jose Indians turned the settlement into a barricaded compound.

“Starting in 1759 through 1764, the plaza was enclosed behind stone walls to defend the residents from attack by other Indigenous groups.” (UNESCO World Heritage)

The settlement grew to 350 Mission Indians during this time. There were 84 two-room apartments built inside the compound’s walls. Up to 10 people would live in this space. The sparse accommodations included a kitchen, main room, fireplace, and sleeping quarters.

Mission San Jose Church

The residents began building the Mission San Jose church in 1768. Fourteen years later, the Indigenous laborers and Spanish craftsmen finished it. 

“The church’s facade and Rose Window are considered the finest examples of Spanish colonial ornamentation in the U.S.” (UNESCO World Heritage Site)

To build the church, the Indigenous were guided by Old World masters to sculpt the Catholic statues. You can see them situated in front of the main church door, including Saint Anne holding her baby, Mary, and Saint Joachim.

Our guide explained that the Spanish missionaries taught with stone. Since the Franciscan friars and Mission Indians came from dissimilar cultures, the friars used symbols such as the heart, shell, pomegranate, and rose.

The Spanish brought the pomegranate to the New World. The seed of this fruit symbolized the spread of the new faith.

Mission’s History

I was curious about the mission’s fate. The Spanish crown estimated it would take 10 years to settle the San Antonio region. However, the mission encountered major setbacks over the next century.

In one year, 75% of the Mission Indians died from diseases introduced by European settlers, such as smallpox, cholera, and measles, since they had no immunity. 

I also learned these facts from UNESCO World Heritage Site research:

• Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo operated as a Spanish Mission for 104 years and baptized over 2,000 individual Indians. 

• The Mission began the secularization process in 1794, with its days as a Spanish Mission officially ending in 1824. 

• Mexican and Texian/Tejano military units later occupied the property intermittently. 

• The church reopened for services from 1859 to 1868, until a portion of the north wall, dome and roof collapsed during storms. 

• In 1928, the church’s bell tower collapsed. 

• In 1932, a major WPA restoration project began for the church, granary, bastion, and Mission Indian living quarters.”

“We are nearing the 100th anniversary of the WPA’s restoration of Mission San Jose. In the next two decades, we’ll need a big restoration of this mission,” our guide declared.

Visitor Center

Gente de Razón Film

I highly recommend you visit the mission’s Visitor Center. You can see a short film in the auditorium, Gente de Razón (People of Reason). It provides a historical overview of mission life in colonial times. 

You also understand how the descendants of the original Mission Indians still live and work in San Antonio today. In fact, Mission San Jose is both a living mission (as well as a historical national landmark), as the Mission San Jose church holds a bilingual Mariachi Mass every Sunday.

Mission San Jose Descendants

I taped this clip of my NPS guide explaining how the descendants are still active in the church and the community. She believes this is one reason why UNESCO inscribed Missions San Antonio as a World Heritage Site.

The Visitor Center also includes an exhibition featuring photos and quotes of the Mission Indians’ descendants. I particularly loved this quote: “It’s a church, but it’s more than a church because I also know that some of our ancestors lived here, some of our ancestors are buried on the grounds, so it’s hallowed property when you walk in.”

Mission San Jose hosts a Direct Descendant Day each May to celebrate their ancestors.

Hallowed Property

From the moment I entered the mission’s sturdy wooden door and looked up at the church, I felt my mind slip into the past. I could almost see the Indigenous woman bending over the horno to bake bread or the child carrying a pee pot. If I listened hard enough, I almost heard the clacking of the loom needles. 

When I walked into the three-room apartment, the ghosts of past inhabitants watched me linger at their fireplace and table. A stone window served as a portal to the past and a picture of the green.

This is indeed hallowed property.

Visit Mission San Jose and look through a portal to learn about San Antonio’s Spanish colonial and Indigenous history.