An unseemly squabble now ensued between Rivera and Padre Lasuen, the former violating the sanctuary of the church to arrest the Indian.  Lasuen, on the next feast day, refused to say mass until Rivera and his violating officers had retired.

All this interfered with resumption of work on the church; so Serra himself went to San Diego, and, finding the ship “San Antonio” in the harbor, made an arrangement with Captain Choquet to supply sailors to do the building under his own direction.  Rivera was then written to for a guard, and he sent six soldiers.  On August 22, 1777, the three padres, Choquet with his mate and boatswain and twenty sailors, a company of neophytes, and the six soldiers went to the old site and began work in earnest, digging the foundations, making adobes, and collecting stones.  The plan was to build a wall for defense, and then erect the church and other buildings inside.  For fifteen days all went well.  Then an Indian went to Rivera with a story that hostile Indians were preparing arrows for a new attack, and this so scared the gallant officer that he withdrew his six men.  Choquet had to leave with his men, as he dared not take the responsibility of being away with so many men without the consent of Rivera; and, to the padre’s great sorrow, the work had to cease.

In March of 1778 Captain Carrillo was sent to chastise hostile Indians at Pamo who had sent insolent messages to Captain Ortega.  Carrillo surprised the foe, killed two, burned others who took refuge in a hut, while the others surrendered and were publicly flogged.  The four chiefs, Aachel, Aalcuirin, Aaran, and Taguagui, were captured, taken to San Diego, and there shot, though the officer had no legal right to condemn even an Indian to death without the approval of the governor.  Ortega’s sentence reads:  “Deeming it useful to the service of God, the King, and the public weal, I sentence them to a violent death by two musket-shots on the 11th at 9 A.M., the troops to be present at the execution under arms also all the Christian rancherias subject to the San Diego Mission, that they may be warned to act righteously.”

Ortega then instructed Padres Lasuen and Figuer to prepare the condemned.  “You will co-operate for the good of their souls in the understanding that if they do not accept the salutary waters of baptism they die on Saturday morning; and if they do—­they die all the same!” This was the first public execution in California.

In 1780 the new church, built of adobe, strengthened and roofed with pine timbers, ninety feet long and seventeen feet wide and high, was completed.

In 1782 fire destroyed the old presidio church.

In 1783 Lasuen made an interesting report on the condition of San Diego.  At the Mission there were church, granary, storehouse, hospital, men’s house, shed for wood and oven, two houses for the padres, larder, guest-room, and kitchen.  These, with the soldiers’ barracks, filled three sides of a square of about one hundred and sixty feet, and on the fourth side was an adobe wall, nearly ten feet high.  There were seven hundred and forty neophytes at that time under missionary care, though Lasuen spoke most disparagingly of the location as a Mission site.