Chapter i 



FROM WHAT RACE OF PEOPLE MAY THESE INDIANS COME? 



[i."| Since no information is found as to where these people of 

 California may have come from, neither the natives of this Mission 

 nor of the rest of the country being able to give an account of their 

 origin or race, not even having it by tradition, it is necessary [for us] 

 to walk blindly, traveling to and fro with closed eyes after the truth, 

 and perchance not knocking at her door for a long interval, or perhaps 

 departing further from the truth — inasmuch as this chapter is all by 

 way of conjecture, if I err in this undertaking, it is not through will 

 and caprice, but because of not being able to discover the light in a 

 place so dark, going along groping blindly. 



2. Without pausing over what the authors relate as to whether they 

 are descended from Jews, as some think, or from Carthaginians or 

 Phenicians, as others think, I for my part, without involving myself in 

 times so remote, shall give attention to the kinds of people who came 

 to settle the Mexican kingdom. 



3. The kinds of people who settled the Mexican kingdom, accord- 

 ing to what Fr. Torquemada tells us in his Monarquia Indiana [mar- 

 ginal annotation: book i, chapter 14], were four, he says, namely: 

 Tultecas, Chichimecas, Aculnas, and Mexicans. Among these above 

 mentioned different kinds of people, it is my feeling that the Indians 

 of California here are of the Chichimeca race, because they are simi- 

 lar [to them] in every respect, according to what the above mentioned 

 Torquemada relates to us [marginal annotation : same book, chapter 

 15], when he says: that toward the regions of the north (away from 

 the City of Mexico, and at a great distance) there were certain prov- 

 inces, the principal city of w^hich was called Amaqueme, and the inhabi- 

 tants Chichimecas, people naked of clothes, fierce of appearance, and 

 great warriors, their arms bows and arrows, their ordinary subsistence 

 is game and wild fruits, and their habitation in cavernous places or 

 straw huts, for since the principal exercise of their life was hunting, 

 they did not amuse themselves with building palaces. 



4. Although the said Chichimecas lived in towns or rancherias, they 

 had very few police, for they did not recognize any king or lord, but 

 let themselves be governed by a chief, though not by one greater, as we 



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