The name came first. *Cuk Ṣon* — "the base of the hill is black" — what the O'odham called the dark rock at Sentinel Peak's foot, a people who had farmed the Santa Cruz floodplain for over a thousand years before any European arrived. Father Eusebio Kino reached Wa:k in 1692 and founded Mission San Xavier del Bac in 1700; Apache raids destroyed that first church by 1770. What replaced it — built between 1783 and 1797 by Franciscans using O'odham labor, funded by borrowed pesos — still stands: the oldest intact European structure in Arizona. Meanwhile, in 1775, Captain Hugh O'Conor staked a presidio above the river; its adobe walls weren't finished until 1783, after Apache warriors nearly overran the place. Spain built here. Mexico inherited it in 1821. The United States bought it in 1853. The O'odham never left.
