The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, CaliforniaCook, Sherburne Friend
History
The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California
Cook, Sherburne Friend
Indians of North America -- California -- San Joaquin Valley; San Joaquin Valley (Calif.) -- Population
Another documentary source is of interest in this connection. This is
the account by José Berreyesa in 1830 (MS) of an affray along the lower
Sacramento River in which Americans participated under Ewing Young.
Christian fugitives from the missions had been protected by the
Yunisumenes (Junisumne), who had joined with the Ochejamnes. They were
opposed by the Mexicans and their allies, the Sigousamenes (Siakumne),
the Cosomes, and the Ilamenes. These last tribes had gathered an army
of 450 "Gentiles auciliares." The Yunisumenes, Cosomes, and Ilamenes
are, of course, precisely the three subtribes discussed in the
preceding paragraph. Now if the Sigousamenes, Cosomes, and Ilamenes
contributed 450 men collectively, they each may be considered to have
furnished 150 men. Since the opponents were fairly well matched, it is
likely that the Yunisumenes supplied a similar number. We can assume
that for routine fighting of this sort, particularly where two of the
tribelets were ranged with the Mexicans instead of against them, the
armies included no more than the strictly military population, or not
in excess of half the males over the age of ten years. Hence, if the
sex ratio was unity and the young children constituted approximately 15
per cent of the population, the aggregate number of the three subtribes
would have amounted to 1,920, or almost the same as was estimated from
the Soto report in 1813 for the Lelamne (Ilamenes) above, or perhaps
the Lelamne augmented by some of the Cosumnes tribelets or subtribes.
The Berreyesa episode occurred in 1830, after all these groups had
suffered twenty years of attrition owing to perpetual minor warfare,
disease, and starvation. Hence the population of the three tribelets
jointly, Junisumne, Cosumnes, and Lelamne, must have reached fully
3,000 in 1813. The baptism factor, consequently, would not have been 50
per cent, but 575 divided by 3,000, or 19.2 per cent.
Three other villages or tribelets which can be identified in the
mission records as being closely associated with the Cosumnes are the
Amuchamne, Sololumne, and Locolumne. The first two probably correspond
to Merriam's Oo-moo-chah and So-lo-lo, which in later times at least
were rancherias. Assuming all three to have been villages, we may
consider that each contained an average number of 300 inhabitants. The
respective baptism numbers were 13.6, and 52. In relative terms the
baptisms amounted to 4.3, 2.0, and 17.3 per cent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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