Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/377

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INDIAN HOSTILITIES.
353

ing the distribution of mission lands. After much correspondence between the governor and local authorities, including calls upon the comandantes and alcaldes for aid, a small force was sent to El Cajon under corporal Gonzalez to seize Tajochi and other ringleaders. No resistance was made, the Yuma allies, if there had been any such, having run away. Tajochi was sentenced after trial to two years of public work, and three of his associates received shorter terms of punishment. The political element was perhaps imaginary; and it is not impossible that the plot for a general revolt was equally so.[1] Palomares and Bojorges, old Indian-fighters, mention rather vaguely some expeditions from San Jose out into the valleys the same year, in one of which the name Calaveras was applied to a battle-field on which thirty unburied bodies of the foe were left. This is partially confirmed by a report in the archives of an expedition by Regidor Peralta from San Jose, in which he killed twenty-two Moquelumnes in November.[2]

Complaints were frequent of depredations committed near each of the southern missions in 1834, and especially at San Gabriel. The Indians went so far as to steal the holy vessels used at the rancho of San Bernardino, and to hold Padre Estenega as prisoner for a while when he went there to protest. Lieutenant Araujo and others connected with the Hijar colonly were supposed to be in some way implicated in the troubles here, referred to in current correspondence as a revolt, in which four or five Indians seem to have been killed.[3] This was in October, and at the end of December San Bernardino was attacked


  1. Dept. St. Pap., MS., iii. 89, 117-23; Id., Ben. Mil., Ixxv. 5-8; Ixxix. 13-14; Id., Ben. Pref. y Juzy., v. 39; Id., Aug., i. 99-100; xi. 3, 9.
  2. Palomares, Mem., MS., 32-8; Bojorges, Recuerdo*, MS., 9-11; Dept. St. Pap., Ben. Pref. y Juzg., MS., i. 15, v. 45; S. Jos6, Arch., MS., v. 27. Peralta met Joaquin Joven (Ewing Young) and his cattle-thieves, also a party of Frenchmen.
  3. Dept. St. Pap., MS., iii. 175-205; Id., Ben. Mil., Ixxxviii. 14-17. An expedition against the Xavajos by citizens of Los Angeles is mentioned in January. Id., Aug., i. 139, 141.