This place along the Santa Cruz river has always been important. Here was a place that had water even in the driest years.
Water is everything in the desert, where there is water, life is possible.
The Sobaipuri Indians had a farming village here when the spanish pioneer Father Eusebio Francisco Kino first came here in 1691. Father Kino is a figure that looms large in the early history of the southwest. The Spanish then called their northern frontier the Pimeria Alta, an area now encompassing southern Arizona and the state of Sonora, Mexico. As a representative of the Jesuit order Father Kino was responsible for establishing a chain of missions extending north into the wilderness. Among the northernmost of these were Tumacacori and San Xavier del Bac.