Since the data and reasoning upon which the present figure of 83,820 is based are set forth in detail in the preceding pages there is little value in repeating them, nor will anything be gained by attempting a rebuttal to the arguments presented by Kroeber. At the same time the author may be permitted to recapitulate three points wherein he thinks many modern scholars have been misled.
1. All available information from the Spanish and Mexican sources must be consulted. To confine an argument or an estimate to a single account, such as that by Moraga, may lead to a false impression. Kroeber seems to have been thus deceived in his discussion of the population of the Yokuts.
2. It must be remembered that in the central valley, as contrasted perhaps with an area like the Klamath River, no informants speaking since 1900, and particularly since 1920, can possibly have furnished a true picture of conditions prior to the Spanish invasion in the decade following 1800.
3. The depletion of population in the San Joaquin Valley between 1800 and 1850 was far greater than has been appreciated, although the basic facts have always been recognized. Warfare, massacre, forced conversion, starvation, and exposure all took a tremendous toll of life but the sweeping epidemics of the 1830's were even more devastating. Together these forces destroyed in the aggregate fully 75 per cent of the aboriginal population.
APPENDIX
After this manuscript was completed, the writer had an opportunity to examine those documentary files of the Office of Indian Affairs and of the War Department which are at present in the National Archives at Washington. Several letters in the files containing information on the native population of the San Joaquin Valley have never, so far as could be determined, been published. Since the data thus procured are fragmentary and since they do not apparently invalidate the conclusions set forth in previous pages, they have not been incorporated in the body of this paper. These items, however, have some intrinsic interest and therefore merit specific mention. They are briefly abstracted as follows.
War Department
Record Group 98. 10th Military Dept. Letters received Calif., Document no. K 21. E. D. Keyes, Camp Magruder, June 17, 1851.