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 sti