e delta or lower San Joaquin Valley,
only if the Indians concerned were bona fide aboriginal inhabitants of
the inner coast ranges, as Cutter (1950) seems to assume. We must
therefore review the evidence.

On January 16, 1805, Jose Antonio Sanchez wrote from San Jose to Jose
Arguello (Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XIX: 34-35) that Father
Pedro Cuevas had asked for a guard to visit and confess invalids in a
"rancheria of Christian Indians." The guard was granted. When the party
arrived at the designated rancheria, they did not find the invalids.
Whereupon they continued farther to another rancheria, where they were
attacked and badly mauled. The most reliable account is probably that
of Governor Arrillaga, contained in a letter dated March 11, 1805, at
Loreto, to the Viceroy (Archivo General de la Nacion, Ramo Californias,
Vol. 9, MS pp. 452-453). According to him, Father Cuevas was intending
to confess Indians at a "nearby" rancheria called Asiremes. Jose
Arguello (January 31, 1805, San Francisco, letter to Governor Arrillaga,
Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XIX: 36-37) calls it Asirenes and says
it was in the "interior of the Sierra." No other mention of this
rancheria occurs, to my knowledge, in the contemporary documents.

The Governor then recounts the casualties: the major domo and two
Mission Indians killed, Father Cuevas and two Indians wounded, all the
horses killed. He adds that Sergeant Luis Peralta immediately went out
with a punitive expedition.

Peralta's story is told in a diary dated January 30, at San Francisco
(Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XIX: 33-34). He left San Francisco
January 19 for Santa Clara to raise personnel. With 18 soldiers and some
civilians he arrived on the 22nd "at the point where the evil doers made
their attack." They found the body of the major domo, and "since, due to
the rain, they could find no trace of the Indians, they camped in the
Sierra." Very clearly there was no rancheria or other habitation at this
point.

Peralta continues that he found two Gentiles who told them where the
rancheria was. Early on January 23 they marched to the place designated.
When the occupants began hostilities, the Spaniards fell upon them and
killed five. The remainder "fired at us from some barrancas, part of
them from a wood [_bosque_] which was located there. Soon all retreated
to the wood." The whites then attacked the wood and cleared it out,
capturing 25 persons, all women and child