
Ysleta Mission (La Misión de Corpus Christi de San Antonio de la Ysleta del Sur)
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo
El Paso County, Texas
Coordinates: 31.690447,-106.327454
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Photo by James Reyes. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
From northern New Mexico to West Texas
The Tigua have faced many challenges in the past three hundred years since arriving in what is now West Texas, and Mission Ysleta became their home and a place of meeting and mixing of cultures. The original mission church at Ysleta del Sur is believed to have been built of mud-chinked logs and willow reeds. Later, Tigua labor built a permanent mission from adobe by 1682. Beginning in the 1670s, and succeeding years, Indians and their friars began to flee the devastating drought, starvation, and Apache attacks. Leaving their villages in the early 1670s, they moved south to establish four new communities in the southeastern portion of El Paso, including San Antonio de Senecú del Sur, San Lorenzo, Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción de Los Piros de Socorro del Sur (featured in this itinerary) and Santa María de las Caldas. Earlier short-lived mission sites in the seventeenth century at El Paso del Norte served the local Mansos and Sumas. In 1682, a large influx of Spaniards and Pueblo Indian allies fleeing the Pueblo Revolt came to these communities around El Paso and helped establish new ones.

1980, Sandra L. Sherrill for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
In the process of construction of a federal building in the 1990s, archeologists uncovered the remains of Ysleta Jacal, the Tigua settlement associated with the nearby Mission Ysleta. A jacal is a wattle and daub structure, and this group of jacales dated between 1680 and 1725. The remains of the settlement represent the first generation of Tigua at the Ysleta mission. Archeological excavations found evidence that in this period, native foods like corn, prickly pear, mesquite, and amaranth continued to be gathered and eaten. Along with domesticated animals, the people at Jacal Ysleta ate relatively high proportions of native animals like deer, rabbit, fish, and birds. As generations past, more Tigua took Mexican names, and some married Mexicans or Mexican Americans, but they maintained their native identities through time. Most continued to live in the same neighborhood, called the Barrio de los Indios. By the 1940s this Pueblo had been incorporated into the town of Ascarate.

NPS photo.
In 1958 the city of El Paso annexed Ysleta and imposed property taxes that threatened to drive many Tiguas from their homes. In order to maintain their community, the Tiguas sought official recognition as an Indian tribe but had trouble convincing people of their cultural identity as Indians because of their history at the mission. It took six years to gain both state and federal recognition, but, finally, Congress passed a bill in 1968 that recognized the tribe and activated state assistance, which was necessary to their survival. The tribe's case is unusual because their claim is in an urban setting, and they demonstrate one of many ways of being American Indian in the United States today.
What you can see today
The original adobe church did not survive the centuries, but the community continued to have a church at the site. Parts of the present church were constructed in 1851. Its distinctive silver-domed bell tower was added in 1897. In 1881 the Jesuits took over the church and renamed it Nuestra Señora del Monte Carmelo. Fire severely damaged the mission church in 1907, but it was soon rebuilt and is still in use today by the El Paso Diocese. The Tigua people still identify with the mission and observe several ritual days with dancing, drumming and chanting, such as the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua on June 13th.

Photo by davidtravel. Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.
Today at the mission, the community's unique integration of Indian tradition with Christian religion is expressed in a profusion of Indian motifs—rain clouds, corn stalks, baskets, blankets and more—that flow through the church's neoclassical interiors. The display is an unexpected contrast to its Spanish Colonial Revival facade with sparse architectural décor. The cultural, architectural and spiritual juxtapositions reflect the disparate influences that have impacted Ysleta Mission during the more than 300 years since residents first made their way down El Camino Real to face an unknown future in El Paso del Norte (present-day Juárez, Mexico) in New Spain.
Inside the mission, statues of St. Anthony and Kateri Tekakwitha, the Catholic Church's sole American Indian saint, share close quarters. Outside, El Camino Real runs along Socorro Road to the east.
Plan Your Visit
Ysleta Mission (La Misión de Corpus Christi de San Antonio de la Ysleta del Sur) is located south of El Paso at 131 S. Zaragosa Rd. near its junction with U.S. 800, in Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, TX. The church is open to the public daily and offers services in both English and Spanish. For more information, visit the Ysleta Mission website, call 915-859-9848, or email info@ysletamission.org.
Every year, on the second weekend of July, the three-day Ysleta Mission Festival celebrates the cultures, music, arts, foods and other highlights of the lower El Paso valley with activities for the entire family. Nearby Ysleta is the Tigua Indian Cultural Center located at 305 Yaya Lane, where the tribe has a museum and has social dances and guided tours.
The Ysleta Mission has been documented by the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey. The mission is also featured in the National Park Service South and West Texas Travel Itinerary and El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Travel Itinerary.
Every year, on the second weekend of July, the three-day Ysleta Mission Festival celebrates the cultures, music, arts, foods and other highlights of the lower El Paso valley with activities for the entire family. Nearby Ysleta is the Tigua Indian Cultural Center located at 305 Yaya Lane, where the tribe has a museum and has social dances and guided tours.
The Ysleta Mission has been documented by the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey. The mission is also featured in the National Park Service South and West Texas Travel Itinerary and El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Travel Itinerary.
Last updated: April 15, 2016