Part 6

This concept of the original status of aboriginal units in northern Contra Costa County is at variance with the arrangement postulated by Schenck, who places the "Tarquimenes" and the "Tarquimes" eastward across the delta islands nearly to Stockton. There is some reason to believe that many of these delta islands were aboriginally uninhabited, but wholly apart from this consideration, another explanation can be offered, which has been suggested by Schenck (1926) and by the present writer (1955). It rests upon the probability that many of the delta tribes had undergone extensive migration, owing to Spanish military pressure in the period from 1785 to 1810. Thus the Karquines of the early accounts may have moved east along the south shore of Suisun Bay, far into the delta, and hence may have been recorded by later visitors under a series of name variants. In the meantime the Chupunes, or Chupkanes, may have been pushed southwest, as intimated by Kotzebue (cited by Schenck, 1926, p. 130). It is pretty clear that the tribal territories as reported by a succession of explorers from 1805 to 1820 did not conform to the aboriginal pattern. Our best solution, for present purposes, is to consider the strip from Crockett to Port Chicago as having been the range of the Karkin.

_Area 4. The interior valleys from Lafayette to Walnut Creek and Danville._--Part of this region was traversed by Fages and Crespi, who reported several villages. It is later identified as the home of the Saclanes. This tribal aggregate first comes into prominence in 1795 in connection with the murder of the San Francisco Christians, who slept on the beach and reached the Saclanes by noon. Amador, on his expedition of 1797, reached them in less than twenty-four hours from Mission San Jose. Other documents, cited previously, indicate that in spite of terminal disorganization and scattering the original home of the group was in the small valleys west of Mt. Diablo.

The linguistic evidence adduced by Arroyo de la Cuesta (1837) demonstrates that the Saclanes were a non-Costanoan people, perhaps related to the Plains Miwok. This identification as Miwok, was first made, on the basis of the de la Cuesta vocabulary, by A. S. Gatschett, was verified by C. Hart Merriam, and first published by M. S. Beeler (1955). Kroeber (1925) classes Saclan as doubtfully Costanoan, but shows the group as Costanoan on his large colored tribal map. Regardless of their linguistic affiliation, however, historically and ecologically they must be considered as in the same position as the Costanoans who surrounded them.

The mission records are explicit. The tribe, at least under the usual name, was converted at the San Francisco Mission and no other. The first baptisms occurred in 1794 and the last in 1798.

_Area 5. The interior valleys from Livermore to Dublin and Pleasanton._--This territory was barely skirted on the west by Fages and Crespi and on the east by Anza and Font, none of whom left any record of native villages. In fact, no data in the correspondence or diaries are of significance except the reference, cited previously, to the rancheria of the Asirines. We have, on the other hand, some suggestive information from the baptism books of the mission at San Jose.

Until 1803 converts were identified in the San Jose records largely by direction. Thus three of the categories were "del Norte," "del Este," "del Sur." Of these, "del Este" seems to point to the Livermore Valley and nearby arroyos as the most likely inhabited region. In 1803, the rancheria, or some other type of ethnic name, is substituted. From 1803 to 1808, all converts were drawn from twelve places having recognizable names, ending in _-an_, _-en_, _-in_, or _-un_, characteristic Costanoan word endings. None of these places can be identified as connected with the foothill or plains area bordering the Bay. None are Saclan--to the northwest of the Livermore Valley--since that group was extinct by 1798. None can be referred to the San Joaquin Valley, since no serious conversions were attempted there, as indicated by the baptism book, before 1809. Consequently these places must have been in the interior valleys, east and northeast of Mission San Jose.

The names are as follows: Saoan, Ssouyen, Seunen, Irgin, Pelnen, Asirin, Causen (or Cusscun), Tannan (Annan), Caburun (Calenrun, Carurun), Zuicun, Tuibun, Julien. The first three are clearly synonyms, and refer to the tribe often called Seunenes. The others might perhaps have been rancherias subordinate to this tribal group, but such an hypothesis is negated by the rancheria Asirin, which is referred to in the documents relating to the Cuevas affair as if it had an independent status. Therefore, there were apparently several independent villages in the area as a whole.

POPULATION ESTIMATES

Since we have no other information and since there is no obvious tribal designation associated with the region, the geographical description will have to suffice to designate the area.

The aboriginal population of the East Bay was tentatively estimated from the village counts of the Fages and Anza expeditions as 2,400 and 2,150, respectively. It is possible to arrive at a new and independent estimate by means of the mission statistics.

The missionaries, or their agents, entered the area in question and sought converts to Christianity, who were immediately baptized and entered in the mission archive as Christians. Alameda and Contra Costa counties, except for the extreme eastern border in the San Joaquin Valley, were completely Christianized by 1810. Theoretically, therefore, the total baptisms should equal the population. However, during the process of conversion a serious population decline was in progress for other reasons. Disease, fugitivism to the deep interior, depression of the birth rate, economic and social upheaval, military butchery, all took such a toll of the nonmissionized, or surviving, Indians that certainly no more than one-half of the aboriginal number could have been actually baptized. At all events, the total number of baptisms represents a subminimal estimate of population.

The baptisms are here tabulated according to the mission and according to the five areas described previously. No attempt is made to segregate the entries by year, since we are interested in the total, not the annual increment. Certain particular problems deserve comment.

The San Francisco record is very precise, since it allocates each neophyte to his rancheria, or at least to the local region of his origin. Santa Clara, however, as noted previously, gives no indication of the origin before 1805. By this time, all the local natives had been exhausted and only valley tribes are mentioned. It is probable that from 1777 to 1789 the natives in the immediate vicinity were being converted. From 1790 to 1801, inclusive, 1,392 baptisms of gentiles were recorded. Some of these came from the south and the southwest, some from the hills to the east, and probably some represented early conquests in the San Joaquin Valley. Many, however, must have come from the north and northeast, in particular, before the foundation of San Jose in 1797. A conservative guess for this fraction would be 400, and this figure will be adopted.

San Jose, from 1797 to 1802 inclusive, indicates the origin of its converts only by general area or direction, as previously pointed out. Some arbitrary allocation is demanded. Hence, as a reasonable solution, those natives from "Palos colorados," "de la Alameda," "del Estero," and "del Sur" are assigned to area 1. Those from "del Norte" are considered Huchiun and those "del Este" are allocated to area 5. After 1802, the San Jose records specify the villages, which are all from area 5. The tabulated totals are shown at bottom of page.

The total for San Francisco and San Jose equals 1,848 baptisms. Adding an estimated 400 for Santa Clara makes 2,248. This figure, which has to be regarded as a minimum for population since it covers only mission baptisms from the region, is as great as the estimates based on the expeditions of the first decade of settlement, and proves beyond question that those estimates were highly conservative. If we assume that the aboriginal population was twice the value of the baptisms, the total would have reached 4,496. If it be allowed that conversion close to the missions was exceptionally rapid and thorough, a somewhat lower figure may be accepted, say 3,000. This estimate, however, must be regarded as the lowest consistent with the known facts.

Although little direct information pertaining to population can be secured, it is nevertheless interesting to consider the prehistoric sites in the East Bay which have been noted by California archaeologists. Most of those which can be regarded as habitation mounds have been recorded by the University of California Archaeological Survey, and have been plotted on map 1.

Area 1 Area 2 Area 3 Area 4 Area 5 Total

San Francisco 33 206 211 297 15 762 Santa Clara 400 San Jose 347 136 603 1,086 --- --- --- --- --- ----- Total 380 342 211 297 618 2,248

It must not be thought that each site represented on the map by a dot was inhabited in 1769, or the years immediately preceding, for many of the mounds are known to have been formed during the Middle Culture period, which antedated modern times by several centuries. The chief physical characteristic of these accumulations is the very high content of mussel, and to some extent clam, shell. From this feature it has been deduced that at one time a very large population existed along the shore of the Bay.

The record of known sites, as shown on map 1, is valuable, not as an indication of the size of population, but rather of its distribution. Admitting that perhaps the majority of the sites along the Bay shore from San Leandro to Crockett were abandoned before 1770, it is still apparent that the areas designated on the map as Alamedan and Huchiun contained a heavy concentration of inhabited spots. This conclusion is in conformity with the waterfront habitat and the probable large food reserves. Along the strait and the southern shore of Suisun Bay the known habitation mounds are less numerous, but there are enough to indicate a reasonably high population density. This area on the map has been ascribed to Karquin.

Through the generally hilly interior of Alameda and Contra Costa counties there are but two areas of sizable extent in which preconquest village sites occur with relative frequency. One is the Lafayette-Walnut Creek-Danville region and the other the Livermore Valley, west to Pleasanton and Dublin. These provinces were inhabited in the late eighteenth century by the Saklan and Seunen respectively, and are so designated on the map. Indeed, the correspondence between archaeological sites and the occurrence of rancherias in early colonial times is remarkably close. The conclusion is permissible that the pattern of occupancy found by the Spaniards had been established long previously and was fully stabilized at the time of their arrival. This condition in turn argues a mature balance between the natural environment and the indigenous population.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_Abbreviations_

BAE-B Bureau of Ethnology, Bulletin UC University of California Publications -AR Anthropological Records -PAAE American Archaeology and Ethnology

Abella, Fr. Ramon

MS Diario de un registro de los Rios Grandes. Oct. 31, 1811, San Francisco. Bancroft Trans., Santa Barbara Arch., IV: 101-134. Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California

Arroyo de la Cuesta, Fr. Felipe

MS Lecciones de Indios. Bancroft Library, No. C-C 63a.

This document is one of several handwritten manuscripts left by Arroyo de la Cuesta.

Beeler, M. S.

1955. Saclan. Internat. Jour. Amer. Ling., 21: 201-209.

Bolton, Herbert E.

1926. Historical Memoirs of New California, by Fray Francisco Palou, O.F.M. 4 vols. Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, California.

1927. Fray Juan Crespi, Missionary Explorer on the Pacific Coast, 1769-1774. Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, California.

Crespi's Diary of the Fages Expedition is translated by Bolton on pp. 277-303.

1930. Anza's California Expeditions. 5 vols, Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, California.

Vol. III contains Bolton's translation of the Anza diary of the second Anza Expedition (pp. 1-200) and Font's short diary (pp. 201-307).

Canizares, Jose de

1775. Letter to Ayala, September 7, 1775, San Francisco. Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain. Papeles de Estado 20 (Mexico).

Microfilm in the Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Roll II, Reel 3M715, pp. 24-32 inclusive.

MS Map, 1775: Piano del Puerto de San Francisco, registrado por el Paquebote de S.M. San Carlos al mando el Theniente de Fragata de la Real Armada Don Juan Manuel de Ayala en este ano de 1775.

Photostatic copy in Bancroft Library, Berkeley, of a manuscript map on file at the Library of Congress. Said by Henry J. Wagner (1937, II: 342) to have been drawn by Canizares.

MS Map, 1776: Plano del Puerto de San Francisco. Photostatic copy in Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Original in Ministry of War, Madrid: 9a-2a-2-27. See Wagner, 1937, II: 345.

MS Map, 1781: Plan del Gran Puerto de San Francisco descubierto y demarcado por el alferez graduado de Fragata de la Real Armada, D^{n} Jose de Canizares, primer Piloto del Departamento de San Blas.... y gravido por Manuel Villavicencio An. de 1781. Photostatic copy in Bancroft Library, Berkeley. See Wagner, 1937, II: 347.

Cook, S. F.

1955. The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California. UC-AR 16: 31-80.

1956. The Aboriginal Population of the North Coast of California. UC-AR 16: 81-130.

Cutter, Donald C.

MS Spanish Exploration of California's Central Valley. Ph. D. diss. (1950), University of California. Two copies on file in the University Library, Berkeley. 275 pp.

Danti, Fr. Antonio

MS Diario de un Reconocimiento de la Alameda--1795. (Bancroft's title.) Bancroft Trans., Santa Barbara Arch., Exped. y Cam., IV: 192-199. Bancroft Library, Berkeley.

A letter, dated December 2, 1795, addressed to P. Fr. Fermin Francisco Lasuen.

Kroeber, A. L.

1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. BAE-B 78.

Mahr, A. C.

1932. The Visit of the "Rurik" to San Francisco in 1816. Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, Calif.

Peralta, Luis

MS Diary, June 30, 1805, San Francisco. Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XIX: 33-34. Bancroft Library, Berkeley.

Pinart, Alphonse

n.d. Transcripts of Mission records. C-C66, Bancroft Library, Berkeley.

Transcripts of the personal names and rancheria names of neophytes in certain missions made by, or at the order of, Pinart from the originals in the respective missions. The date of the transcription was approximately 1880.

The transcripts are in poor handwriting, frequently difficult to decipher. There is no assurance that all pertinent material was copied. Because of the arrangement of the names the tribal affiliation of the converts is not always clear.

Priestley, Herbert I.

1937. A Historical, Political and Natural Description of California, by Pedro Fages, Soldier of Spain. Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, Calif.

Sal, Hermenegildo

MS Informe qu el Ten^{te} Don Hermeneg^{do} Sal hace al Sor coron^{l}y Gov^{or} D^{n} Diego de Borica de los parajes q^{e} se han reconocido en la Alameda conforme a lo prevenido por S. S. en Sup^{or} orden de 9 del presente mes, acompanado del R. P. F. Antonio Danti, ministro de la mision de San Francisco. November 30, 1795. Bancroft Trans., Santa Barbara Arch., Inf. y Corr., 2: 24-35. Bancroft Library, Berkeley.

Schenck, W. E.

1926. Historic Aboriginal Groups of the California Delta Region. UC-PAAE 23:123-146.

Viader, Fr. Jose

MS Diario, o noticia del viage que acabo de hacer. August 28, 1810, San Juan Bautista. Bancroft Trans., Santa Barbara Arch., IV: 74-84. Bancroft Library, Berkeley.

Wagner, Henry R.

1937. The Cartography of the Northwest Coast of America to the Year 1800. 2 vols. Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, Calif.

Left-Hand Box

A Punta de Reyes Point Reyes B Punta de Almejas Clam Point C Punta de Santiago Santiago Point D Punta del Angel de la Guarda Point of the Guardian Angel E Punta de S. Josef o Cantil Point St. Joseph or White Blanco Cliff F Punta de S^{n} Carlos Point St. Charles G Ensenada del Carmelita Carmelite Cove H Ensenada del S^{to} Evangelio Cove of the Holy Gospel Y(I) Bahia de N^{a}. S^{a} la Bay of Our Lady the Mariner Marinera J Punta de Langosta Grasshopper Point L Bahia de N^{a} S^{a} de Bay of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Guadalupe o Redonda or Round Bay M Estero de N^{a}. S^{a} de la Cove of Our Lady of Mercy Merced N Puerto de la Asumpta Port of the Assumption O Rio de San Roque St. Roch River (Sacramento River) P Agua dulce entre tulares Fresh water in the tule swamps, San Joaquin River Q Rancherias de Indios Amigos Villages of friendly Indians R Punta de los Quatro Point of the four Evangelists Evangelistas S Bosques de Palo Colorado, Forests of redwood, pine, and Pino, y roble oak T Punta de San Antonio Point St. Anthony V Remate del Estero del Sueste End of the southeast bay X Punta de Concha Snail shell point Y Ensenada de los Llorones Cove of those who weep or cove of the spurs. The former is Castilian, the latter and Americanism. Z Primera ensenada del estero First cove of the Bay 1 Ensenada de Consolacion Consolation Cove 2 Real Presidio Royal Garrison 3 Nueva Mision del Puerto New Mission of the port, i.e., San Francisco Mission 4 Laguna de los Dolores Lake of the Sorrows 5 Laguna del Presidio Lake of the Garrison 6 Laguna de la Merced Lake of Grace 7 Isla de Alcatraces Alcatraz Island 8 Isla de los Angeles Angel Island

Right-Hand Box

1 Isla de Carmen Island of Carmen 2 Pico y Cerro de Reyes Peak and hills of the Kings [The hills of Marin Co. and Mt. Tamalpais are included.] 3 Sierra que mira a la Voca del Range which overlooks the mouth P. of the port [i.e., the East Bay hills] 4 Cerro de S^{n} Juan Hill of St. John [The hills of northeastern Contra Costa Co.] 5 Islas Bajas de Tulares Low islands covered with tules 6 Estero angosta Narrow bay 7 Agua dulce en baja mar Fresh water at low tide 8 Agua dulce en Pleamar Fresh water at high tide 9 Remate de lo Reconocido este End of the reconnaissance this ano de 1776 por impedirlo year, 1776, because the tule los Tulares y venir el swamps stopped it and agua dulce por entre ellos. because fresh water was coming through them 10 Tulares Tule swamps 11 Laguna de S^{n} Juan Lake of St. John of Nepomuk Nepomuceno 12 Lugar en que deven fenecar las Place where ships should be embarcaciones para tener a stopped in order to secure mano el agua, lastre, y lena. water, ballast, and firewood 13 Fondeaderos p^{a} toda Anchorage for all ships embarc^{s} 14 Farallones de San Francisco The Farallon Islands 15 Entrada del Puerto Entrance to the port 16 Lugar en donde desde unos Place where, from some trees, Arvoles se vio no haver it could be seen that there mas vaca que la del Rio was no river mouth except de S^{n} Roque. that of the St. Roch River

Left-Hand Box

Z Punta del Angel de la Guarda Point of the Guardian Angel a Punta de ano nuebo New Year's Point b Rio de la Salud River of Health c Punta de Almejas Clam Point d Farallones de San Francisco The Farallon Islands e Quantioso canal a la entrada Sizable channel at the entrance del Puerto ^{de} 38 brazaz of the Port 38 brazes 1 deep? f Ysla de Santa Maria de los Angel Island Angeles g Ysla de Alcatrazes Alcatraz Island

Right-Hand Box

A Punta Recalada Recognition Point B Punta de Reyes Point Reyes C Punta de Santiago Santiago Point D Punta de San Carlos Point St. Charles E Ensenada a del Carmelita Carmelite Cove F Ensenada del S^{to} Evangelio Cove of the Holy Gospel G Bahia de N^{a} S^{a} del Bay of Our Lady of the Rosary, Rosario, la Marinera the Mariner H Gran Bahia Redonda o de Great Round Bay or Bay of Our N^{a} S^{a} de Guadalupe Lady of Guadalupe Y Estero Cove J Puerto de la Asumpta Port of the Assumption K Punta de los Evangelistas Point of the Evangelists L Yslas Razas entre agua dulce Flat islands in fresh water M Agua dulze entre tulares Fresh water in the tule swamps N Gran Rio sin acabar de Great river the end of which descubrir su fin was not discovered O Rancherias de Yndios Amigos Villages of friendly Indians, comerciantes en tabaco y traders in tobacco and fish Pescado. P Punta de San Antonio Point St. Anthony Q Bosques de Buenas Maderas Forests of wood lumber R Remate del Estero y fin End of the bay and end of the reconocide de agua salada salt water as determined by d^{e} Canizares. Canizares S Punta de Concha Snail shell Point T Entrada del Estero Entrance to the bay V Nueva mision de S. Fran^{co} New Mission of San Francisco fudada en 4 de Oct^{ur}. 1776. founded on 4 October 1776 X R^{l} Presidio establecido en Royal Garrison established 17 17 de Sep^{re} de 1776. September 1776 Z Punta de San Jose o Cantil Point St. Joseph or White Blanco Cliff

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Passages in underlines are surrounded by _underscores_.

2. A few punctuation errors have been corrected.