[citation needed] In 1756, Francisco Xavier Pauer re-established the mission, taking at least seventy-eight O'odham from their village of Toacuquita near the Santa Cruz River.

[3] On November 1 of the same year, Pauer relocated the mission to the south, putting it on the bluffs to the east of the Santa Cruz, upstream of the confluence with Sonoita Creek.

However by 1773 the church was functional and in 1775, Pedro Font said mass there during the first Juan Bautista de Anza expedition to the upper part of Las Californias.

[4][5] In 1777, the mission church, houses and the granary filled with maize, were sacked and set afire during a raid by part of a band of Apache, apostate O’odham, and Seris that had similarly attacked Magdalena and other Pimería Alta communities during 1776.

Late in 1856, the Mission church, now ranch house, became the temporary home of Major Enoch Steen, commander of four companies of the First Regiment of United States Dragoons who established Camp Moore, at the former Presidio de Calabasas, as the first military post in the New Mexico Territory’s Gadsden Purchase area.

The following year, Steen received orders from Colonel Benjamin Bonneville, the departmental commander in Santa Fe, to move closer to Tucson.

Regarding the vices of Tucson as a danger to the good order and discipline of his troops, Steen instead moved his camp 25 miles northeast to the headwaters of Sonoita Creek.