Mission del Apostol Santiago

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in the Big Bend country, where the land itself seems to be testing your commitment to the journey, there stands a marker that points back to one of nine missions. Nine.

Not one lonely outpost thrown up on a prayer, but nine, spread across this rugged corner of the world. That number alone ought to stop you for a second. Think about what it took to plant that many missions in country like this.

The man behind it, well, two men, really. Father Fray Nicolas Lopez, of the Order of Friars Minor, and Don Juan Dominguez de Mendoza. Together, between 1683 and 1684, they established all nine of them out here in the Big Bend.

One of those nine was Mission del Apostol Santiago. The missions were maintained by Franciscan missionaries, and their purpose, as the record puts it plainly, was the civilizing and christianizing of the Jumano, the Julimes, and other Indians of this area. That was the stated work.

Carried out in some of the most demanding landscape Texas has to offer, by missionaries who had committed themselves to staying. The Big Bend doesn't make anything easy. It didn't then, and it doesn't now.

But for a stretch of time in the sixteen-eighties, nine missions stood out here, and Mission del Apostol Santiago was among them.

What the marker says

One of nine missions established in the Big Bend country by Father Fray Nicolas Lopez, O.F.M., and Don Juan Dominguez de Mendoza in 1683-1684. Maintained by Franciscan missionaries for the civilizing and christianizing of the Jumano, Julimes and other Indians of this area. (1936)