The Aboriginal Population of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California

FR. RAMÓN ABELLA'S EXPEDITION

ABORIGINAL GROUPS

LOCATION

San José was founded and began conversions in 1797. The baptism book here has the converts identified according to general area, not specific village. There are six such regions, or categories: "Palos colorados," "de la Alameda," "del Estero," "del Norte," "del Este," "del Sur." Of these the first three are evidently local and in the region now being discussed: (1) the redwoods back of Oakland and San Leandro; (2) Alameda Creek and adjacent plain; (3) the shore of the Bay directly west of the mission. The conversions, 1797-1802 inclusive, from these three areas were respectively 31, 170, 130, indicating that San Francisco and Santa Clara had by no means completed the conquest.

Area 2. The coast from Richmond to Carquinez Strait.—That this strip was held by the tribal group known as Huchiun (Cuchillones, Juchillones) has been supported by the accounts of Amador (diary of 1797) and of Abella (diary of 1811). The latter writer, it will be remembered, renamed the Point of the Huchines, Point San Pablo, a name which it retains today. The point of the Abastos or Aguastos became Point San Pedro. The Abastos, it may be pointed out, were neither Costanoan nor resident on the east side of the Bay. They lived on the Bay shore of Marin County, as is abundantly evident from the San Francisco baptism records.

The Huchiun are mentioned by Chamisso and by Choris (Mahr, 1932) in 1816, jointly with various other North Bay tribes. Chamisso says that the Utschíun, together with the Guyment, Olumpalic, Soclan, and Sonomi, all speak the same language, a manifest error. Choris repeats the mistake. Arroyo de la Cuesta gives a Huichun vocabulary and says (1837; MS p. 21) "Karquin and Huichun is one language—Saclan is another, entirely distinct." The Huchiun are noted in the San Francisco records first in 1787 (Tuchiun) and subsequently repeatedly until 1809, although they never appear in the San José record. Apparently San José derived converts from the east rather than from up coast.

The exact limits of the Huchiun are doubtful. Amador spent a night somewhere near Richmond and then went north to find them. Abella associates them closely with Point San Pablo, and implies that their land reached as far as the strait. We may tentatively draw their boundary between Rodeo and Crockett.

Area 3. Carquinez Strait and Concord Valley.—We are dealing here with the shore line from Crockett through Martinez nearly to Pittsburg, and inland between Concord and Pacheco. The principal Indian name associated with this area is Karquin, from which the strait takes its name. Just what group of people is involved is a puzzling question.

Kroeber, in the Handbook of California Indians (1925, pp. 356, 466), includes the Karkin as a division of the southern Wintun, which would mean that the principal seat of habitation was north of the strait. While there is no evidence in the early records to exclude this completely, there is certainly no question that at least a portion of the group lived on the south side. Thus the mission records before the settlement of the north shore report numerous baptisms of Karquines or Tarquines. Viader (1810) camped near Martinez, where the rancheria of the Tauquines used to be. Arroyo de la Cuesta says the language of the Karkin is the same as (or similar to) that of the Huchiun. The latter is Costanoan: the former could not be Wintun. The name Karkin was said by Arroyo de la Cuesta to signify "trocar," or "to trade." It has been supposed that the reference is to the rancheria which traded with Cañizares and other early explorers.

The Karquines (on the south side at least) probably began near Crockett, adjoining the Huchiun on the west. The next sure tribe on the east is the Julpunes, whose western limit is near Antioch and who must be considered a delta people.

Abella (1811) states that the strait ends on the east in the land of the Chupunes, and on the strength of this statement Schenck (1926) places the Chupunes from Port Costa to Martinez. Schenck also cites Father Narciso Duran who, in 1817, mentions the Chupcanes as holding this territory. Yet Viader, in 1810, says it was the site of the former rancheria of the Karquines.

The mission records are illuminating. San Francisco reports its first baptism of a Karquin in 1787. The statement reads: "natural de la otra banda del paraje de Turis, ó nacion Karquin." The next reference is in 1801 when eleven of this "nation" were baptized. In the meantime, scores of Huchiun had been baptized. In 1810, Chupunes or Chupanes (or Chupkanes) begin to appear, both at San Francisco and San José. This looks as if missionization moved progressively north and east along the shore: first the Huchiun, then the Karkin, then the Chupunes, and finally the Julpunes, who begin to show up at San José in significant numbers in 1811.

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 José. 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 José.

Until 1803 converts were identified in the San José 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 José.

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

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.

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

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. A few punctuation errors have been corrected.

2. The words with ligature and diacritical marks have been standardized.

3. The following misprints have been corrected:
    "adressed" changed to "addressed" (page 136)
    "minimun" changed to "minimum" (page 142)
    "desended" changed to "descended" (page 143)
    "behing" changed to "behind" (page 144)
    "converion" changed to "conversion" (page 148)
    "enviroment" changed to "environment" (page 149)

4. Other than these, no other changes have been made in the original text.