t Miwok can be made in most of the records
(1) by the year and the location (e.g., the year 1817 at San Rafael);
(2) by village names identical with or similar to those listed by
Barrett and by Kroeber; (3) by linguistic affinities (such as the
prefix _echa_- or the suffix -_tamal_); and (4) by subsidiary notes
in the records indicating geographical location. Deleting all really
doubtful cases we have the following numbers of baptisms

San Francisco 896
San Rafael 916
Solano 48
San Jose 162

The total is 2,020 persons.

A baptism at any of the four missions constituted a net withdrawal of
one person from the native community, since all converts from the
immediate vicinity of the missions could be easily kept at the mission
establishment or could be recaptured without difficulty if they
escaped. Hence the total baptism number must very closely approximate
the total population of the area over a period of forty years. But the
wild population was undoubtedly decreasing owing to other causes from,
say, 1790 to 1830. The presence of the Spanish soldiers or missionaries
always introduced diseases and caused disruption of native society to
such an extent that the death rate outran the birth rate. Hence the new
converts were being drawn from a diminishing population.

Another factor is fugitivism. Intimate contact with the white man for a
long period taught the native what to expect in the missions and on the
ranches. Consequently there always was a fraction of the Indian
community which eluded the best efforts of the missionaries and which
made good its escape beyond the periphery of Spanish and Mexican
influence. Many of these natives never returned to their original
homes. Still other sources of attrition were the kidnaping of adults
for labor on the ranches during the 1820's and the promiscuous killing
of all sexes and ages during the frequent armed encounters between
white men and red men.

Although for the Coast Miwok the above-mentioned causes of loss cannot
be assessed numerically with any approach to accuracy, nevertheless
their total effect must have been considerable. As a purely arbitrary
but essentially reasonable guess we may say that they produced a
one-third reduction in the net aboriginal population. Then, if the
remaining two-thirds was baptized, the initial value would have
exceeded 3,000. This is twice the figure selected by Kroeber (1925, p.
275) who says that