Activity along the Contra Costa was again intensified in 1797. This
time, as in 1795, the reason for attention in the official records was a
minor expedition which got into trouble. Reference to the purely routine
correspondence is here omitted and citation is made only of those
letters containing matter of intrinsic interest.
On June 20, 1797, the commandant, Jose Arguello, wrote from San
Francisco to the missionaries at San Jose (Bancroft Trans., Prov. St.
Pap., XV: 213). He had just learned that a Christian Indian, named
Raymundo el Californio, had left the mission at the head of about 30 or
40 other Indians in pursuit of fugitive Christians on the other shore.
He asked for confirmation of this report. Within a few days he had his
answer. In an undated letter, probably subsequent to June 22, from San
Francisco he informed Governor Borica what had happened (Bancroft
Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XV: 216-217).
The Indians under Raymundo el Californio returned, completely
dispersed because the winds and high waves swamped many of
them. Since they did not tell the same story, he [Arguello]
questioned Raymundo, who declared: having reached the other
shore he found in three rancherias of the Cuchillones several
Christians, men, women and children. On retreating to the beach
with them, he was attacked by the other Indians of the place,
but he succeeded in embarking in the boats without their having
started a battle. Two of his group who had lagged behind were
pursued by the Indians and were forced to jump into the water.
Soon they were rescued by a boat, one of them having received a
spear wound in the head, but of little severity. While they [the
whole party] were all retiring, a storm came up which dispersed
them widely. When they tried to follow Raymundo, they were twice
forced back to the territory of the Cuchillones. Seeing that
their boats were being broken up and thinking themselves lost,
they abandoned the boats and went by land, without leaving the
edge of the beach until they arrived opposite San Francisco,
where they came upon a rancheria of heathen, named Santa Anna.
The inhabitants made them welcome and furnished them with tules
from their own houses, with which they constructed other boats
and crossed to this shore.
The expedition sailed across, apparently to the region of Richmond or
San Pablo. Later, the fugitives followed the beach to the vicinity of
Oakland and San Leandro. The existence of a rancheria of heathen,
bearing the name of Santa Anna, is peculiar. The name was familiarly
applied without church sanction, or it was a village containing
Christian converts rather than heathen. In either event, complete
absorption of the natives into the Spanish Colonial system as far north
as Oakland is implied. Also noteworthy is the casual manner in which the
Mission Indians crossed and recrossed the Bay at its widest point in
tule rafts.