The Aboriginal Population of the San Joaquin Valley, California

by Sherburne Friend Cook

... su capitan joasps, ni su gente jamas havian visto tropa, siendo esta la primera vez q. havilan llegado alli, pues hace mucho tiempo paso por abajo (este fue D. Gabriel Moraga en el reconocimiento q. hizo en 1806) y solo noticia tubo por sus amigos de Telame ...

Consequently, allowing for possible communicable disease, Chischa was in its aboriginal state when Estudillo saw it.

Chischa was 5 leagues east of Telame and 3 leagues from Choinocko. This places the village, according to the maps of Kroeber and of Gayton, at or just above Lemon Cove in the territory ascribed by these ethnographers to the Wukchamni. Estudillo measured off the dimensions of the village by pacing. The shape was semilunar, crescentic or approximately that of the sector of a circle. The short side ("por su frente") was 624 varas long and the long side ("por la espalda") was 756 varas. A figure plotted on coördinate paper to scale shows that the area was 80,000 square varas. On the assumption that the Spanish vara equaled a yard, and that an average city block measures 300 feet on a side, the village of Chischa would have covered eight city blocks.

Estudillo caused the Indians living in the village to form a line before the town, with the men in a single file and the women and children massed in front of them. He counted the men and found that there were exactly 437 warriors ("jovenes de arma") and "como 600 mugeres y ninos." According to the translation made for Merriam (MS in his collection):

Then I went opposite where the invited guests were lodged, and as they all, men and women and boys and girls were presented to me in a confused mass, I could not count them as I did those of Chischa but there were perhaps 600 men."

He specifies the 600 men as "jovenes" and adds that there were 200 "mugeres jovenes." He then describes going behind the village to the arroyo, where he saw more than 100 "mugeres de mayor edad," washing seeds for atoles for the celebrants of the fiesta, and an even greater number of "jovenes moliendo en piedras dhas semillas."

The extraordinary care with which Estudillo conducted his investigation can leave little doubt of the accuracy of his figures. He saw 437 "jovenes de arma" in front of the village together with 600 women and children, plus 100 "mugeres de mayor edad" and more than 100 "jovenes" behind the village preparing the meal. Even allowing for some duplication of individuals the population must have reached at least 1,250. The solidity of this evidence for Chischa renders even more probable comparable figures for Bubal and the other large villages of the general area.

Estudillo saw 600 young men and 200 young women who were visitors. If we use the same ratio of young men ("jovenes de arma") to total population for these groups as for Chischa, then the 600 young men represented a total of 1,700 persons. These were all, says Estudillo, from the "roblar," or the Kaweah basin. When he arrived at the village, he was met by seven chiefs (who were already on the scene), two from Telame, one from Choynoco, and four from other rancherias of the "roblar" near the sierra. We may assume that the seven visiting chiefs were accompanied by approximately equal retinues, or 114 persons each. If two of the chiefs and 228 persons came from the Telame district and one chief with 114 persons from Choynoco (i.e., Choinok), then the remainder, 458, were from other tribes. By the same proportionality factor these represented a total of 980, or let us say 1,000, Indians. The Wukchamni and their satellites must therefore have numbered 2,250 individuals in the year 1819. Estudillo himself says that the population of Chischa and its neighbors was 2,400, but he may have included some Telamni among this number. On the other hand, the visitors to Chischa on the occasion of the fiesta could scarcely have included all the inhabitants of the villages whence they came. Some, for one reason or another, must have remained at home. Hence the estimate of 1,000 is probably under the true value.

Now it is important that Estudillo was in the "roblar" in 1819. In view of the severe disorganization, "mortality," and "famine" of 1814 to 1816, the population of the Wukchamni must have undergone a serious decline before Estudillo saw the tribe. Despite the absence of any specific figures the documents give the impression that the reduction of population around Tulare Lake was almost complete by 1819 and that the valley tribes along the margin of the foothills had lost fully half their number. It will be proper therefore to ascribe a one-quarter reduction to the Wuchamni, Gawia, and Yokod. If we accept Estudillo's estimate of 2,400 for the year 1819, the aboriginal population for these groups would have been 3,200.

In the meantime the Mono of the upper river had scarcely been touched, save possibly by epidemics of which we have no record. It is significant that at the great gathering at Chischa there appeared, near the middle of the day, a chief with 69 men and 42 women from a rancheria called Apalame in the interior of the Sierra Nevada. These natives, probably Balwisha or Waksache, had never seen troops. To arrive at the population of the entire Kaweah basin in aboriginal or proto-aboriginal times these tribes must be included. Their strength, as previously estimated, was of the order of 600 persons.