The Jesuits had a problem. Their first mission in Baja California, Mision de Nuestra Senora de Loreto Concho, founded in 1697 in the coastal town of Loreto, had too little water. The site could never become self-sustaining through agriculture. Cochimi visitors to Loreto told the missionaries about farmable land on the other side of the Sierra de la Giganta. In May 1699, Piccolo set out to find it. When his party descended into the valley of Biaundo, they found what Loreto lacked: a dependable water source and hospitable terrain. The Cochimi rancheria at the site was friendly, and Piccolo baptized 30 of their children. He returned in October with soldiers and converts, and on December 3, 1699, dedicated the mission to Francis Xavier -- the Navarrese Catholic saint who co-founded the Society of Jesus. San Francisco Javier became the second permanent mission established in Baja California.

The early years were turbulent. In 1701, a threatened indigenous revolt forced the mission's abandonment. Juan de Ugarte reestablished it in 1702, but the original site still lacked reliable irrigation water, and crops failed. In 1710, the mission was relocated a few kilometers south to its present location, where a spring provided the steady flow Ugarte needed. He threw himself into construction -- building dams, aqueducts, and stone buildings that transformed the remote valley into a functioning agricultural outpost. Between 1744 and 1758, Jesuit Miguel del Barco oversaw the construction of the mission church that still stands today. Its stone facade, vaulted ceilings, and careful proportions earned it the reputation as the finest surviving mission church on the entire Baja California Peninsula. For a building constructed in a mountain valley accessible only by rough trails, its ambition is striking.

The Cochimi were nomadic and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who ranged across the austere deserts and mountains of central Baja California. The Jesuits considered them less warlike than their southern neighbors, the Guaycura and Pericues, and more receptive to missionary work. Food distributed by the Jesuits initially drew the Cochimi to the mission. Over time, the missionaries worked to transform them into sedentary farmers and herders -- a fundamental reshaping of a way of life that had sustained the Cochimi for generations. But concentrating people at the mission created conditions for the rapid spread of European diseases. Smallpox and measles swept through the population with devastating regularity. The mission recorded 482 inhabitants in 1768. By 1808, only 83 remained. In the 19th century, the Cochimi ceased to exist as a distinct culture and identifiable people -- their languages silent, their lifeways erased by the very institutions that had recorded their names.

By 1817, the mission was deserted. The church was eventually restored and is now maintained by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. It remains an active place of worship -- one of the few Baja California mission churches that never fully stopped serving its original purpose. The village of San Javier that surrounds it is small and quiet, accessible by a winding mountain road from Loreto. Ancient olive trees still grow on the mission grounds, descendants of trees planted by the Jesuits centuries ago. Date palms, grapevines, and citrus also survive, living artifacts of the agricultural project that justified the mission's existence. Walking among these trees, past stone walls that Miguel del Barco designed nearly three centuries ago, the visitor encounters a place where two very different stories overlap: the ambition of the Jesuit enterprise, preserved in beautiful architecture, and the disappearance of the Cochimi people, preserved only in the name of the valley they once called home.