mate
by means of the mission statistics.

The missionaries, or their agents, entered the area in question and
sought converts to Christianity, who were immediately baptized and
entered in the mission archive as Christians. Alameda and Contra Costa
counties, except for the extreme eastern border in the San Joaquin
Valley, were completely Christianized by 1810. Theoretically,
therefore, the total baptisms should equal the population. However,
during the process of conversion a serious population decline was in
progress for other reasons. Disease, fugitivism to the deep interior,
depression of the birth rate, economic and social upheaval, military
butchery, all took such a toll of the nonmissionized, or surviving,
Indians that certainly no more than one-half of the aboriginal number
could have been actually baptized. At all events, the total number of
baptisms represents a subminimal estimate of population.

The baptisms are here tabulated according to the mission and according
to the five areas described previously. No attempt is made to segregate
the entries by year, since we are interested in the total, not the
annual increment. Certain particular problems deserve comment.

The San Francisco record is very precise, since it allocates each
neophyte to his rancheria, or at least to the local region of his
origin. Santa Clara, however, as noted previously, gives no indication
of the origin before 1805. By this time, all the local natives had been
exhausted and only valley tribes are mentioned. It is probable that from
1777 to 1789 the natives in the immediate vicinity were being converted.
From 1790 to 1801, inclusive, 1,392 baptisms of gentiles were recorded.
Some of these came from the south and the southwest, some from the hills
to the east, and probably some represented early conquests in the San
Joaquin Valley. Many, however, must have come from the north and
northeast, in particular, before the foundation of San Jose in 1797. A
conservative guess for this fraction would be 400, and this figure will
be adopted.

San Jose, from 1797 to 1802 inclusive, indicates the origin of its
converts only by general area or direction, as previously pointed out.
Some arbitrary allocation is demanded. Hence, as a reasonable solution,
those natives from "Palos colorados," "de la Alameda," "del Estero," and
"del Sur" are assigned to area 1. Those from "del Norte" are considered
Huchiun and those "del Este" are allocated to area 5.