The last information we possess concerning this group of natives comes
from the year 1804. In 1803, a letter, dated May 11 at Loreto, from
Governor Arrillaga to the Viceroy (Archivo General de la Nacion, Ramo
Californias, Vol. 9, MS p. 433) mentions the fact that 20 Christians,
sent out by the missionaries of Santa Clara, were attacked and routed by
Gentiles who killed their "principal." In connection with this murder,
and with a supposed plot to destroy Mission San Jose, the testimony of
witnesses was taken a year later (Archivo General de la Nacion, Ramo
Californias, Vol. 9, MS pp. 437-439, June 21, 1804, San Jose, Luis
Peralta in charge). On September 27, 1804, from Santa Clara, in a letter
to an unnamed captain, Luis Peralta (Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap.,
XVIII: 334) advised that the expedition he made against Gentile Indians
had no satisfactory results, because of lack of guides. On September 29,
Arguello, at San Francisco, wrote to Governor Arrillaga (Bancroft
Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XVII: 354) that he had ordered Peralta to go to
the "Sierra de San Jose" in pursuit of Gentile assassins of Christians,
but Peralta could not catch them.
Peralta went out a second time. Arguello, from San Francisco, on October
26, wrote again to Governor Arrillaga (Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap.,
XVII, 358-359) that Peralta could not catch the killers of the Mission
Indian Jorge, but he did catch 11 Christians, and after leaving the
women and children at the mission, brought 32 "gandules" ("rogues,"
"rascals," a colloquial term for renegade Indians) to the Presidio.
Since the "Sierra de San Jose" was the coast range behind the East Bay
it is clear that the remnant of the people who originally inhabited the
interior had taken to the hills in a last stand against the invader.
After 1804 all mention of them ceases.
_The Cuevas Affair._--In 1805 occurred what is called the "Cuevas
Affair." This event has significance for the Alameda and Contra Costa
natives, rather than those of the 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 children, and killing another five
"Indios." At dark they retired for the night "to where the horses had
been left," but the following day returned briefly to the wood, where
they found no one. Then all hands returned to the mission.
Despite the fact that at least 40 Indians were encountered, there is no
indication in the Peralta diary of any permanent habitation. The attack
on Father Cuevas occurred at a point where no trace of natives could be
found. The battle in which Peralta was engaged took place among
barrancas and in a forested area--again, no suggestion of houses or of
even a temporary settlement.
With regard to the name of the tribal group concerned there seems to be
no question. In a letter of May 30, 1805, from San Francisco to Governor
Arrillaga (Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XIX: 42) Jose Arguello
speaks of "the rancheria of the Luechas, where the attack against Father
Cuevas took place." Much later, Jose Maria Amador, writing for H. H.
Bancroft in 1877 (Bancroft Manuscript, Amador, Memorias, translated by
Earl R. Hewitt), referred to "Cuevas, who was going to instruct in the
Christian faith the heathen at the Lochis rancheria...." Here is a
discrepancy, for the contemporary documents state that Father Cuevas
intended to exercise his religious functions at the rancheria of the
Asirenes. However, it is clear enough that the outrage itself was
perpetrated by the Luechas.
The location of the people--wholly apart from the question of where the
attack occurred--is equivocal. That the attack took place in the Sierra
is beyond doubt, but that the home of the offenders was likewise in the
hills is not so sure. Cutter (1950, p. 92) relies upon a statement of
Amador (below) when he states: "The Indians had turned out to be the
Luechas, residents of the hills between Livermore and the San Joaquin
Valley"; and "this would place them at the foothills east of Mount
Diablo at the entrance of the Valley." The pertinent sentence in
Amador's Memorias (MS, p. 13) reads thus: "rancheria de Loechas, como 14
leguas al oriente de la mision, arriba del actual pueblo de Livermore a
4 o 5 leguas de dist^{a}."
Allowing, conservatively, 2.5 miles per league, the total distance from
the mission, if Amador is correct, would be 35 miles. The rancheria
would be from 10 to 12.5 miles from Livermore. The term "above" ("arriba
de....") does not necessarily mean toward the geographical north, but
the direction may be taken as in the quadrant from north to east. The
arc of the circumference of a circle with center at Livermore and radius
of 12 miles passes approximately from San Ramon in the northwest, well
south of Mount Diablo, across the very rough lower spurs of the mountain
massif to the mouth of Kellogg Creek near Byron to the northeast. From
here it runs along beyond Altamont, close to Mountain House and Midway,
as far as upper Corral Hollow to the southeast. This entire stretch is
devoid of any indication of substantial aboriginal occupancy, either in
the eighteenth-century documents or in modern archaeological research.
Let us also note Amador's total: 14 leagues east of the Mission, or
fully 35 miles. The horseback trail of 1805 followed pretty much the
shortest highways of today: from Mission San Jose to Sunol and thence to
Livermore via Pleasanton or directly across the low hills east of Sunol.
By the first route the distance is 18 miles, by the second 16 miles.
Using the larger value, 18 miles, the rancheria would have been not 12,
but 17 miles beyond Livermore, which would have put it definitely in, or
on the edge of, the San Joaquin Valley.
This conclusion agrees with Cutter's, referred to above, with respect
to the location of the attack, but the theory that these Luechas
actually were "residents" of the inner coast ranges and hence to be
included in the area here being considered is contradicted by the
following points.
1. As indicated above, no contemporary account explicitly states that an
inhabited village was encountered or entered by the Californians during
the Cuevas campaign.
2. There is no other documentary evidence for villages actually in the
hills due west of the San Joaquin Valley floor.
3. In a letter to Governor Arrillaga dated February 28 at San Francisco
(Bancroft Trans., Prov. St. Pap., XIX: 39-40), Jose Arguello mentions a
second expedition by Sergeant Peralta "to the sierra where the Indians
were who attacked Father Cuevas." In the course of this journey by
Peralta: "A chief of the big rancheria on the river San Francisco,
called Pescadero, came to give Sergeant Peralta the assurance that
neither he nor his people had taken part in the attack against Father
Cuevas and his guard." Since Pescadero was the main rancheria of the
Bolbones, near Bethany, and since the latter were a delta tribe of
either Miwok or Yokuts stock, it is unlikely that the chief would have
feared a confusion of identity with a tribal group which was indigenous
to the hill country to the west. But if the guilty parties were plains
or delta people, he might well have been apprehensive.
4. Amador, in the Memorias (MS, pp. 14-15) says that "Lieutenant Gabriel
Moraga and his troops set out to punish the evildoers. The latter had
already moved to the San Joaquin River and gone to a rancheria called
Pitenis." Pitenis was on the main San Joaquin River above Lathrop.
Here again we see an affinity of the Luechas with the Valley, rather
than the hill habitat, for the refugees, if traditionally and
aboriginally sierran, would have been very unlikely to seek sanctuary in
the depths of the Valley.
5. Schenck (1926) has no hesitation in placing the Luechas (or Leuchas)
in approximately the region of Manteca and says Pitenis was one of their
villages.
On the whole, the writer feels that the evidence is insufficient to
warrant placing the Luechas in the coast ranges as a group aboriginally
native to that area. They are preferably to be regarded as a valley
people, of unknown ethnic affiliation, who penetrated the hills from the
east and for some reason got into difficulty with Father Cuevas and his
followers. At all events they cannot be considered Costanoans.