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 José 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), José 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.