shooting until they killed as many as
seven....

Governor Borica goes on to say:

This Othon and others told me that these Chimenes Indians are of
a rough and valiant nature. They are at continual war with the
neighboring villages, and particularly with the Tegunes. They
live toward the north coast in the vicinity of the Port of
Bodega. Their food is amole, bellota and pinole and their chiefs
are called Mule and Yuma.

The identity of these Chimenes is something of a mystery. Certainly the
Christian Indians, after leaving the rancheria of the Chaclanes (i.e.,
Saclanes), somewhere behind the Oakland hills, could not have even
approached the port of Bodega, for they could not have crossed the Bay
and the rivers on foot. Yet they traveled twenty-four hours, if Othon's
account is even approximately correct. Hence they must have covered
fully twenty-five or thirty miles, a distance which would have brought
them to some point on the south shore of Carquinez Strait or Suisun Bay.
If this is true, then they encountered representatives of the Huchiunes,
the Karkines, or the Chupunes, the only tribal groups known definitely
to have inhabited the area. The statements of Othon, as transmitted by
the Governor, regarding the number of Chimenes, as well as their
ferocity, must be heavily discounted (although the smashing of the
temescal is a touch which would hardly be supplied by imagination
alone). One hundred, or even fifty, infuriated warriors would no doubt
have appeared to be thousands to the fourteen terrified Christians, and
the Governor would hardly want to report to the viceroy that his Mission
Indians had been routed by a handful of wild natives. On the other hand,
the incident proves the existence of a sizable rancheria somewhere in
northern Contra Costa County in 1795.

FR. ANTONIO DANTI'S EXPEDITION

In the late fall of the year 1795, following the reconnaissance of
Sergeant Amador, of which no written record survives, another and more
pretentious expedition covered the lower east side of San Francisco Bay.
There are two accounts available describing this trip. One was written
by Hermenegildo Sal (1795), a soldier from Monterey, and the other by
Fray Antonio Danti (1795). The two documents are very similar in form
and give indication of collaboration in the writing. Sal's "Informe" is
the longer and the more circumstantial but is so badly executed as to be
nearly incomprehensible in s