Statue of Jesús Nazareno

This statue is one of nine surviving santos (saints) that once stood in the church of the Spanish colonial mission San José de Tumacácori. The depiction of Jesus as “Jesús Nazareno," known in English as the "Man of Sorrows" or the "Suffering Savior," shows Christ carrying the cross on which he will be crucified. The cross is missing from this statue. He has been scourged, and wears a crown of thorns made of braided cord and - appropriate to this desert community - cactus spines. The statue is designed to be clothed in a scarlet or purple robe.

The O'odham village of Tumacácori first became a Spanish mission with the arrival of Jesuit priest Eusebio Franciso Kino in 1691. Around the year 1800 the community began to build the adobe church protected by the park today, in which these santos stood. Relentless pressure from the Apaches, along with hardships brought on by the US - Mexican War and an unusually heavy snow in December of 1848, caused the mission residents to choose to leave their homes. According to O'odham oral history, women of the village carried the santos, including Jesús Nazareno, on their backs in their kiahats (burden baskets) the forty miles north to their new home at the sister mission of San Xavier del Bac. Three of those santos remain in the sanctuary of the San Xavier church, revered and cared for by the O'odham residents of that community to this day. Six of the santos have returned home, and are now in the Tumacácori National Historical Park museum.