Prent Duell, who calls San Xavier “the greatest of all missions” in his book on mission architecture, gives the following description of the view from the front: “The facade of the church is symmetrical, with two plain towers on either side of an ornate gabled entrance. Above the broken pediment of the gable, the noble dome may be seen between the towers. The windows and doors are symmetrically placed and thrown wholly in shadow by the heavy walls. Their blackness, contrasted with the glistening whiteness of the walls, and the reddish ornamentation about the entrance make a picture against the cloudless sky and endless desert, not to be forgotten.” The mission was founded by Eusebio Francisco Kino, picturesque pioneer missionary of the Jesuit Order, whose purpose was to Christianize the Indian population. San Xavier is the northernmost of his mission chain, extending up the West coast from Sinaloa to Pimería Alta. Pimería Alta, meaning the upper country of the Pima Indians, included all the territory between the Gila River, in what is now Arizona, on the North and the Río del Altar in Sonora, Mexico, on the south. Kino visited the “great ranchería” of Bac on the Santa Cruz River for the first time in 1692 and later wrote an eloquent report to King Philip V of Spain describing the beauty and fertility of the valley whose fields extended as far as the present site of Tucson. It was during this visit that Kino named the place San Xavier, in honor of his own patron saint, the great Jesuit “Apostle to the Indies.” A visit in 1694 to Bac and the nearby ruins of Casa Grande, prehistoric fortress, convinced him that under proper tutelage the Indians might erect large and permanent buildings. In 1697 he drove cattle up from his mission Dolores in Mexico and established the first stock farm at Bac for the support of the projected mission. Construction of the church began in April 1700, and Kino in his autobiography relates: “On the 28th we began the foundations of a very large and capacious church of San Xavier del Bac, all the many people working with much pleasure and zeal, some in digging the foundations, others in hauling many and very good stones of tezontle from a little hill about a quarter of a league away. For the mortar for these foundations it was not necessary to haul water, because by means of irrigation ditches we very easily conducted the water where we wished. And that house, with its great court and garden nearby, will be able to have throughout the year all the water it may need, running to any place or workroom one may please, and one of the greatest and best fields in all Nueva Biscaya ... on the 29th we continued laying the foundations of the church and of the house.” (Note: The site of these foundations is not where the present mission stands, but at a point some two miles north.)