Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera was a

Spanish mission in the Sonoran desert The Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert () are a series of Jesuit Catholic religious outposts established by the Spanish Catholic Jesuits and other orders for religious conversions of the Pima and Tohono O'odham indigenous peoples residing i ...

History

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

missionary

Eusebio Kino Eusebio Francisco Kino, Jesuits, SJ (, ; 10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was an Italian Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer, mathematician and astronomer born in the Prince-Bishopric of Tre ...

founded Cocóspera in 1689. It was initially a of Mission San José de Imuris, and at various times served as an independent mission or as a of Mission Nuestra Señora de los Dolores or Mission Santa María Suamca. Churches at Cocóspera were burnt by

Apaches The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

in 1698, 1746, and 1776, and repeatedly rebuilt by the missionaries. Due to ongoing Apache raids, the mission was eventually abandoned in 1845.

John Ross Browne John Ross Browne (February 11, 1821 in Beggars Bush, Dublin, Ireland – December 9, 1875 in Oakland, California), often called J. Ross Browne, date of birth sometimes given as 1817, was an Irish-born American traveler, artist, writer and gover ...

sketched the mission in 1864.

Missionaries

Missionaries stationed at Cocóspera included: * Pedro Sandoval (1691–?) * Juan Bautista Barli (1693–1694) * Fernando Bayerca (1694–?) * Pedro Ruiz de Contreras (1697–1698) * Francisco Hlawa (1757–?) * Francisco Roche (1768–?) * Francisco Cobas (1798–?) * Rafael Díaz (1831–1836)

References

{{reflist Missions in Sonora Jesuit history in North America 1689 establishments in the Spanish Empire