That night, as they sat around the campfire, Massea told the other Indians all they had heard that day. Some of the Indians laughed at the story, but Massea said, “If one of the fathers comes over here, I am going to know more about him. Perhaps I shall go to live with him.”
DOCAS IN A FIGHT
A FEW days after this visit to the red hill, Massea and his family saw some white men coming into the rancheria. Three of them were riding on animals very much like those ridden by Portola’s men; but these were not mules—they were horses.
Each man wore a cloak of padded deerskin. Arrows could not go through these cloaks, so the white men always wore them. Sometimes the Indians shot arrows at them, but when they came to this rancheria the Indians did not try to hurt them. They gave the white men some acorn mush to eat.
While they were eating, Docas crept up to his father and said, “Do you think that man with the long dark dress is the father the Indian from the coast told about?”
Massea said, “I think so, but we will see after dinner.”
The white men had an Indian with them who could talk both Indian and Spanish. After they had eaten, they began to talk to the Indians.
Docas was right. One of the men was Father Pena, who had come into their valley to start a new mission.
He went about ten miles farther south. There he started the new mission, and called it Santa Clara, after a very good and beautiful woman.
One day, a few weeks later, Massea got into a quarrel with some Indians from another rancheria, about some deer they had trapped. That night Docas heard something go “thud” by the side of his head while he was asleep. He put out his hand and felt an arrow sticking in the ground beside the tule mat on which he was sleeping.