By Richard L. Carrico

The Journal of San Diego History
San Diego History Center Quarterly
Spring 2017, Volume 63, Number 3+4

Introduction

In March 1778 a squad of soldiers from the Presidio de San Diego marched
from their presidial fortification along the San Diego River and northeast into the
backcountry near present day Ramona, California. The stated purpose of their
more than 30 mile trek was to enter the Ipai village of Pa’mu and interrogate
several tribal leaders. An Ipai villager from a native settlement along the San Diego
coast had reported to Spanish authorities that the leaders at Pa’mu were plotting
an insurrection. This is an analysis of that military action, the subsequent arrest
and treatment of four Ipai leaders, the roles of Lt. José Francisco Ortega, Father
Junípero Serra, and Father Fermin Lasuén in that treatment, and the ultimate
disposition of native men deemed as rebellious and insolent. In addition, this
article corrects a serious mistake made more than a hundred years ago by the
noted historian Hubert H. Bancroft when he erroneously declared that the four
Ipai men were executed—thus alleging the first public execution in California.

The Boltonian School

Discussions of Spanish colonial efforts and the effects of imposing their New
World institutions on the native peoples of California provide for rousing and
widely divergent views of history. Traditionally the followers of historian Herbert
Bolton ascribe to the view that the Spanish colonial system sought to preserve
native peoples, and through introduction of Spanish civilization, to better the
natives. The followers of Bolton have often evolved into mission apologists and,
at times, conflated Spanish intentions and regulations with actual events and
results, and shown minimal understanding of the cultural, economic, and social
havoc that colonization brought to many native peoples. Nor does the Boltonian
school of thought ascribe any agency to native people portraying them instead
as either passive or unable to cope with Europeans. A noted scholar of Spanish
borderlands, David Weber labeled this approach and those classified as Boltonians
as “Christophilic Triumphalists.”1

In stark contrast, doctrinaire followers of the so-called Sherburne F. Cook
school of thought, keep alive the Leyenda Negra or Black Legend. The Leyenda Negra
professes that Spaniards were intrinsically, and without exception, inhumane conquerors.2
Some adherents go so far as believing that the Spaniards were analogous to members of
Hitler’s Third Reich. 3 Epithets such as Holocaust and
Genocide pepper the writings of Cook’s followers. James Sandos wrote that this
grouping of scholars could be called “Christophobic Nihilists.”4

While an understanding of the scholarship associated with these two divergent
schools of thought is important, at least in a historiographical sense, an analysis
of the actual interaction between California’s Native Americans and Spanish
colonists is better viewed from geographically local and regional perspectives.
A local approach, such as this one that follows for San Diego, better illuminates
the diversity of Indian peoples in Alta California, a diversity that led to differing
responses towards and from the European intruders.

Furthermore, the 21 Spanish missions and 4 presidios that administered to
more than 30 tribal or cultural groups stretching over 600 miles of Alta California
should not be presented as a single entity operating within an all-encompassing
eighteenth-century world system. Despite uniform codes and regulations, the
men, both religious and secular, who administered and governed the frontier,
possessed their own attitudes towards justice and towards native peoples.

Background to the Pa’mu Incident

Spanish military history in Alta California beginning in 1769 includes daily
presidial activities, overland expeditions, and occasional forays against local
native people, primarily the Diegueño, or as they are now known, the Kumeyaay
with Ipai applied to northern peoples and Tipai applied to more southerly people.
Under orders to maintain peace on the frontier and to protect Spanish interests
in the San Diego presidial district, it may have been natural that soldiers and
Kumeyaay developed an adversarial relationship. After all, some researchers
have suggested that the Kumeyaay were the “most troublesome challengers of
Spanish authority.”5

Within weeks of arriving in San Diego in 1769 relations between the coastal
Kumeyaay and the Spaniards soured. In August Father Junípero Serra and his
colonists were attacked by Kumeyaay in search of cloth and other items not
available to native people. After detailing the Kumeyaay distaste for colonial
food, Father Francisco Palou wrote, “If their aversion to our food was great, their
desire for our clothing was no less notable.” 6
It seems likely that by August 1769
the Kumeyaay from the nearby village of Kosaii, often glossed as Cosoy, and
possibly others had decided that the Spaniards were going to be neither beneficial
trading partners nor reciprocal in gift giving.7

Unsuccessful attacks by Kumeyaay on August 12 and 13, 1769 and a more
violent attack again on August 15 were described by Palou as acts of plunder and
that is probably a correct assessment.8
Traditionally, the Kumeyaay felt animus
towards intruders into their territory who had little to offer. The Kumeyaay fell
upon the sick and weak Spaniards knowing full well that only four Spanish
guards protected the newly built brush mission. The raiders fought with “…their
arrows and wooden instruments, fashioned like sabres, which cut like steel.”9

In the coming years battles or skirmishes with Kumeyaay warriors or
combatants were actually uncommon in San Diego. In part this was because
of the relatively peaceful nature of the Kumeyaay and their apparently mixed
strategy of passive resistance and accommodation when it suited their needs.
In addition, the majority of the Kumeyaay people in the immediate area of the
presidio often avoided contact with Spaniards (and particularly the soldiers). With
some exceptions, the Spanish sphere of influence existed along a narrow coastal
strip no wider than thirty miles and about twenty miles east along the San Diego
River. While priests may have gone further afield in search of converts, soldiers
rarely penetrated into San Diego’s populous backcountry. One contemporary
observer noted that “Even in going only as far as the Valle de las Viejas [about 15
miles east of the presidio] it was considered dangerous and the greatest precaution
was used by the soldiers….”10

After six years of uneasy relations, highlighted by occasional isolated incidents,
violence broke out on November 4-5, 1775 when native villagers from at least
eighteen Tipai rancherías attacked Mission San Diego de Alcalá. 11 As is clearly
documented in the annals of the time and in later historical analysis, destruction
of the newly established mission and the murder of Father Luis Jayme and two
others struck a severe, but not definitive, blow to the Spanish colonial efforts.

The Tipai insurrection tested the Spanish legal and moral systems as they
applied to native people and increased pressure from military officials to mount
punitive expeditions against local tribes. Father Junípero Serra, however, strongly
opposed military action and convinced political and therefore military leaders
to take a more moderate path. Almost two years later, on the heels of the trials
of the 1775 insurrectionists (in absentia) and as the new Mission San Diego rose
from the ashes of the razed mission, another incident flared up.

In the spring of 1778, Rafael and Luis, co-conspirators in the sacking of Mission
San Diego and Jayme’s alleged murderers, surrendered and were sentenced along
with Carlos, another influential insurrectionist. The three Kumeyaay were exiled
to the presidio at Loreto in Baja California Sur where they were imprisoned and
later worked as seamen.

Several months later a native leader from Arroyo de San Juan Bautista,
assumedly a Juaneño, was arrested for the earlier death of Corporal Briones.12
These actions, the torture and imprisonment and then the exile of Kumeyaay
leaders and the flare ups of native resistance, created a tense and watchful mood in
San Diego. It is in the context of this tenseness and uncertainty that a second case
of alleged conspiracy occurred, a conspiracy that Bancroft mistakenly believed
led to California’s first public execution.

The Pa’mu Incident

Pa’mu, meaning either “resting place” or “singing place” was the winter
and early spring village for the Ipai (northern Diegueño or northern Kumeyaay)
from Tekemuk (meaning “sheltered place”) a large settlement in the mountains
at Mesa Grande. Pa’mu was an important ranchería in the Santa María Valley
near present-day Ramona.13

Pa’mu first appeared in military records on March 22, 1776, when Captain
Fernando Rivera y Moncada marched through the Santa María Valley and
recorded a field of wheat near a native settlement. Rivera noted, “una corta milpa
de trigo bien sembrado y con alguna cerca (a finely sown cut field of wheat with
some [wheat] nearby).”14 This wheat crop most likely came from contact with the
Colorado River Quechan and not from the meager seed crop at the struggling
San Diego mission. It is also possible, however, that an opportunistic Ipai laborer
expropriated some mission wheat seeds for planting at Pa’mu. The Kumeyaay, as
agents of cultural change and adaptation, like many California tribes were quick
to adopt useful introduced plants.

The first baptisms at Pa’mu occurred two years later in 1778 and the last in
1834. Over that period of fifty-six years 131 villagers were baptized and duly
added in the mission records.15 Ipai family or clan names included Metehuir,
meaning strong or hard earth and later changed to Duro, Llachap (present-day
LaChappa), U’u, a type of owl, Shrichak, also a type of owl, and Kwitlp or Quilp/
Culip, the name of a shrub. The presence of these five clans, all of which were
prominent, suggested a large population at the village, perhaps as many as 200
seasonal residents.

On March 16, 1778, Benito, a newly Christianized coastal Ipai kwaapay (leader)
from the village of ‘aqwilawa or Ahwell ewa meaning “twine’s house,” (known to
the Spaniards as Sellegua or Jellegua and later as San Dieguito just east of Del
Mar near present-day Rancho Santa Fe), reported to Father Fermin Lasuén that
villagers from Pa’mu (sometimes glossed as Pamo), were arming themselves
against the colonists.16 Benito further informed the priest that the Pa’mu leaders
had killed a fugitive Indian from Mission San Juan Capistrano. According to
Benito, who prior to his baptism in December 1777 was known by his native
name of Jamacuain Culip (Kwitlp/Quilp), the leaders at Pa’mu sought to ally
themselves with at least three nearby mountain villages and strike out against
the weakened Spanish forces.

When warned by Spanish officials to remain peaceful and loyal, Pa’mu’s
second in command, Jaran Metehuir, threw down the gauntlet replying that
Spanish troops should come out of their hiding place at the Presidio and into the
mountains and meet their death.17 Rather than wait for the supposed insurrection
to possibly develop further, and fearful that Jaran might rally other villages, Lt.
José Ortega ordered Sergeant Mariano Carrillo to take preemptive military action.

In many ways this action mirrors the previous orders of presidial
comandante Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncada in August 1776 upon hearing
that villagers from South Bay near present-day Chula Vista were arming
for another attack, he ordered Sergeant Carrillo to march to the village of
La Punta (Chiap/Chyap) at the end of San Diego Bay and arrest the town’s
captain. Carrillo failed to capture the leader of Chiap (probably Manneguay)
but did manage to arrest Naguasajo, a highly influential Tipai leader.18 The
arrest of native leaders based on hearsay was clearly considered rightful and
expedient by Spanish military authorities.

Certainly, this was the case in the military operation against Pa’mu. Leaving
the coastal presidio on March 30, 1778, Sergeant Carrillo marched thirty miles
east and north into the mountains with eight soldiers, an interpreter, and two
guides. His orders were to “castigate the insolent ones.”19 A veteran of several
punitive expeditions, Carrillo was under specific orders to subdue and question
the cabecillas (leaders) at Pa’mu and, if they admitted guilt, to bring them back to
the presidio to receive a flogging of 30-40 azotes (lashes).

Carrillo and his men entered the village at three in the morning on April 1
and woefully outnumbered in the midst of a darkened enemy village in a strange
territory, Sergeant Carrillo may have lost sight of the non-punitive nature of his
mission. During a brief skirmish at least two Ipai were killed outright and Carrillo,
as Bancroft dryly reported, “…burned a few who refused to come out of the hut
in which they had taken refuge.”20

Carrillo’s forces reportedly captured 80 bows, 1500 arrows, and an unspecified
number of clubs, perhaps an arms cache in preparation for an insurrection. Or
maybe only a typical stockpile within a village of about 200 persons with probably
50 hunters/warriors that depended on hunting for a large part of their subsistence.
Despite denying that they were plotting any attacks on Spanish forces, five Ipai
leaders were flogged on the spot and four alleged rebel leaders, Hachil Llachap,
Kumeyaay kwaapaay and the first in command, Jaran Metehuir (sometimes
glossed as Metehuix and Mathuir) his second in command, and two assistant
leaders, Taguagui and Alcuirin were shackled and marched to the presidio for
further interrogation.21

Aftermath

The four men were placed in the presidio jail and questioned extensively
before their trial. On April 6 all four leaders were found guilty of disobedience and
disloyalty, rather than the far more serious crime of conspiracy. To set an example
for other native leaders, Kumeyaay men and women from nearby villages (Kosaii
and Nipawaii were the closest) were brought to the presidio to witness the public
flogging. In a recent careful analysis of punishment at the San Diego Presidio
in this period, Claudio Saunt suggested that public flogging was particularly
demoralizing to Kumeyaay leaders.22 This was especially true for Kumeyaay
leaders who may have viewed the Spaniards as lesser, dishonorable foes.

The four chastised leaders were then sentenced to death by Lieutenant
José Ortega, a penalty far exceeding prescribed punishments for disobedience
and disloyalty. The military officer’s execution order, which he was not legally
empowered to impose, may have been an act of bravado and an attempt to
intimidate the Kumeyaay.23 Ortega’s order stated, “Judging it convenient to better
serve God, the King and the public welfare I sentence them [the four cabecillas] to
die at 9:00 on the morning of the 11th day, by two rifle shots, with the presence of
the troops armed for war and all the Christian ranchers [villagers] corresponding
to the San Diego Mission, so it may serve them as incentive to behave well”
[author’s translation].24

Lieutenant Ortega’s justification was that the Pa’mu leaders had supposedly
been pardoned in the past for alleged plots against the Crown. Specifically, they
had been accused of plotting with the people of Soledad (Ystagua/Istawa, meaning
“worm’s house”) in Sorrento Valley, to attack the Spaniards.25 No record of this
plot has been found except for Ortega’s after the fact statement. From his office in
Monterey, Father Junípero Serra wrote to Father Lasuén at Mission San Diego that
he doubted if the death sentence would in fact be carried out but cautioned Lasuén
to be prepared to conduct last rites for the accused in their cells just in case.26

For more than a century the writings of historians from Hubert H. Bancroft
to Edward Castillo have maintained that the four Pa’mu leaders were actually
executed on April 11, 1778. Bancroft alleged that the execution was “California’s
first” and it has thusly entered the literature as a result of those who wrote
subsequent to Bancroft and relied solely on secondary sources and his footnotes. In
conducting his research just before the turn of the nineteenth century, Bancroft, or
one of his translators, apparently misread Ortega’s execution order as a completed
action.27

Two noted historians of the early 1900s, Zephyrin Engelhardt and Tomas
Temple, came closer to the truth when Engelhardt wrote that “Probably the
execution was postponed…”28 and with more certainty Temple noted that “their
execution was not carried out, and we find them three years later as stubborn
and bellicose as ever.”29 Temple did not entirely avoid the vicissitudes of research
however. In footnotes to his quite accurate translations of Ortega’s letters, he
incorrectly names Guillermo Carrillo as the captor of the Pa’mu leaders when it
was actually Guillermo’s brother Mariano Carrillo.

Native American scholar Edward Castillo in his discussion of the native
response to Spanish colonization in Alta California, compounded Bancroft’s
error by writing that Father Fermin Lasuén blessed the non-existent execution.30
In reality, Junípero Serra tasked Lasuén, who was stationed at Mission San Diego,
to offer religious services to the condemned men to include baptism. In doing so
Serra was echoing his own actions when, in August 1776, he had attempted to
forgive and convert Naguasajo another rebel leader.

So what did happen to the four Ipai leaders imprisoned at the presidio? It is
uncertain if the native men were flogged a second time or not but such punishment
would have been consistent with Ortega’s previous treatment of prisoners.31
Taguagui, sometimes spelled as Tabaco, after a month of incarceration fell ill in
his cell and agreed to baptism by Father Juan Figuer on May 16, 1778. Tabaco died
four days later on May 20, 1778 without receiving last rites.32 Ironically, 21 months
earlier, Kumeyaay kwaapaay Naguasajo of Kosaii who had been captured at Chiap/
Chyap hanged himself in the same prison having refused Catholic conversion.
Records indicate that Taguagui is buried under his missionized name of Juan
Nepomuceno at an unspecified location within the presidio complex, probably
in the campo santo.

After four months of imprisonment, Hachil and Jaran accepted baptism on
August 15, 1778, assuming the missionized names of Mariano de la Asumpcíon
and Buenaventura María respectively.33 Giving Hachil, the leader of Pa’mu, the
appellation “de la Asumpcion” was consistent with the priests’ habit of naming
a village leader after the given name of the village. In Spanish records Pa’mu had
become Pamo de la Asumpcíon

A cryptic annotation in the baptismal record for Hachil notes that Lt. Ortega
refused permission for the two prisoners to receive baptism in the presidio
church.34 In doing so Lt. Ortega ensured that the men were kept in their cells
and not given access to the larger military establishment. Hachil and Jaran were
subsequently released along with the third prisoner Alcuirin, about whom
no baptism data is available. The three leaders returned to their mountain
settlement no doubt relating their imprisonment and the death of Taguagui to
their villagers.

Despite a complaint from Lt. Ortega to Governor Neve three years later in 1781
that the same Pa’mu leaders refused to attend Mass and that they were once again
plotting “nefarious and insolent designs,” the leaders remained obdurate.35 Over
the next two decades Pa’mu became a largely Christianized village. The death of
Hachil Llchap in 1796 led to a change of leadership and a Christian Ipai Jopajar
assumed control of the village perhaps leading to further Christianization.36

Between 1778 and 1834, 131 Pu’mu villagers took baptism and at least 31
couples were married by Spanish priests. Sometime between 1820 and mission
secularization in 1835, the village or Pa’mu relocated further back into the hills
and deep valleys northeast of Ramona. Today Valle de Pamo is the name of the
broad valley where the original village of Pa’mu once stood. Pamo Valley further
to the northeast probably represents the later home of Jaran and his descendents
before they were removed from their traditional lands in the American period
circa 1875.

Analysis

In the documents of the time and in some later histories, the four cabecillas
from Pa’mu are portrayed as rebels and insurrectionists. Their so-called insolence
sprang from their autonomous nature and their belief in their native sovereignty—a
concept at odds with Spanish colonization. From a native perspective these men
were patriots and defenders of their homeland—not criminals. Taguagui paid the
ultimate price for this conflict of cultures when he died in the presidio jail cell. In
spite of the statements of later historians, the outcome of the Pa’mu incident was
not, however, California’s first public execution—the execution never occurred.

The warnings from Benito of San Dieguito that Pa’mu’s leaders were seeking
alliances with tribes of the Colorado River may or may not be factual. Certainly,
the people of Pa’mu had strong ties to their Yuman-speaking Quechan cousins.
Spanish fear of the Colorado River Quechan and upriver Mojave was well-founded
as evidenced by the successful Quechan attack on Father Garcés and Rivera y
Moncada in 1781. It is just as likely, however, that Benito sought to enhance the
danger of Pa’mu’s military efforts by bringing up the specter of alliances with
the river tribes.

Conclusion

The Pa’mu incident involving Ipai leaders, the Spanish military, and the
Franciscan clergy nine years after initial contact represents a microcosm of such
relations in the early colonial period. The rebel Ipai wished to be left alone in their
mountain enclave but by calling attention to themselves ended up in conflict with
the Spanish military. On the coast, Benito, the Christianized Ipai leader sought to
curry favor with the Spaniards by informing on the Pa’mu leaders. In converting
to Catholicism while imprisoned, or at least appearing to, Jaran and Hachil made
a drastic and lasting shift. Taguagui, with a virtual death bed baptism, may have
performed a convenient spiritual acquiescence. While the people of Pa’mu may
have harbored ill feelings for the Spanish colonists and particularly Lt. Ortega
and his soldiers, they never threatened the settlements again

In the case of Mariano Carrillo, while he probably overstepped his specific
orders from Lt. Ortega in burning portions of the Pa’mu village and slicing off
ears, the record is silent on that issue. Lt. Ortega himself certainly overreached
and overacted when he sentenced the rebel leaders to death. This harsh attitude is,
however, consistent with Ortega’s refusal to allow Jaran and Achil to be baptized
in the presidio chapel and his previous torture of his prisoners following the
1775 insurrection.37

For Father Junípero Serra, the imprisonment and proposed execution of Ipai
men offered him an opportunity to exert Christian charity and to bring
what he believed to be recalcitrant native rebels into the Catholic fold.
Because of Serra’s pleas, Father Lasuén was able to baptize Taguagui before
he died and Jaran and Hachil before they returned to the mountains. When
he died in March 1796 at forty years of age, Hachil Llachap was actually
buried at Mission San Diego perhaps reflecting his genuine conversion to
the faith.38 Further, given that several residents of Pa’mu later sought not only
to be baptized but also to be married as a Catholic, Serra’s efforts bore fruit.

The Pa’mu incident provides valuable insights into the relationship
among the Spanish military and the native people, the Spanish military
and the clergy, and intra-village relations among the Kumeyaay themselves.
The story is one of possible betrayal, Kumeyaay patriotism, military action, and
clerical intervention and is far more complex than a supposed execution or
alleged plot—it is the story of native and foreign
interaction on the frontier of the Spanish empire and in the heartland of the
Kumeyaay.

Notes About Spelling and Word Glosses

The spelling of native Kumeyaay names and places varied in Spanish
documents of the time and in later transcriptions by historians and anthropologists.
For example the tribal leader named as Jaran Metehuir in this article also had
his name written as Aaran, Aran, and Aron with his clan name (which is rarely
provided in documents) as Metehuix and Methuir. For the purposes of consistency
and also in an attempt to provide a spelling or glossing closer to actual Kumeyaay
orthography, I have used the spelling as it occurred in contemporary documents
for the first usage and then used the more accurate orthography for subsequent
uses. For example, Jaran Metehuir, Hachil Llachap (present-day LaChappa),
Taguagui, and Alcuirin. Similarly, present-day Pamo is more accurately written
as Pa’mu with a glottal stop between the “a” and the “m.”

NOTES
1. David J. Weber, “Blood of Martyrs, Blood of Indians: Toward a More Balanced View of Spanish
Missions in Seventeenth Century North America,” in David Hurst Thomas, ed., Columbian
Consequences (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1990), vol. 2, 429-448.
2. Sherburne F. Cook, The Conflict Between the California Indians and White Civilization (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976).
3. Rupert and Jeannette Costo, The Missions of California (San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1987).
4. James A. Sandos, “Between Crucifix and Lance: Indian-White Relations in California, 1769-
1848,” in Ramon Gutiérrez and Richard J. Orsi, eds., Contested Eden: California Before the Gold
Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 86-112.
5. Edward Castillo, “The Native Response to Colonization of Alta California,” in David Hurst
Thomas, ed., Columbian Consequences (Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).
p. 385.
6. Maynard J. Geiger, ed., Palou’s Life of Fray Junipero Serra (Washington, D.C. Academy of American
Franciscan History, 1955).
7. This event is discussed by Paul Chace in his paper “International Alliance: International
Assault: A sovereign Kosaii Kumeyaay Perspective on the Beginning of the Spanish PresidioMission
at San Diego.” Paper presented at the California Missions Foundation 34th Annual
Conference, Mission Santa Inés, 2017. The name of the Kumeyaay settlement closest to the
presidio has been written and recorded as Cosoy, Cosai, Kosoy, and most recently and
accurately as Kosaii, which means the “drying place” or the “dry place.”
8. Geiger, Palou’s Life of Fray Junipero Serra, p. 76.
9. Ibid.
10. Vicente Romero. Notes of the Past. pp. 3-4, MS Bancroft Library, 1872.
11. For an ethnohistorical approach to the sacking of the mission see Richard L. Carrico,
“Sociopolitical Aspects of the 1775 Sacking of Mission San Diego de Alcalá: An Ethnohistorical
Background,” The Journal of San Diego History, Spring 1997. Contemporary documents include
Diario del Capitan de Rivera y Moncada con un Apendice Documental. Colección Chimalistac
Libros y Documento Acerca Nueva España, Vols. 24-25. (Madrid: Ernest J. Burrus, ed.) and
José Francisco Ortega “Revolt of the Indians, Burning of the Mission, Death of the Missionary,
November 30, 1775,” Archives of California, Provincial State Papers, Benicia, Military, Tomo
1, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.
12. Provincial State Papers, Benicia, Military, Tomo 1, MS 1:97.
13. Information about Pa’mu can be found in the 1925-1927 notes of John P. Harrington based on
his interviews with native consultants who remembered the village and knew Ipai born there.
See “The Papers of John Peabody Harrington.” Originals held at the Smithsonian Institution,
National Anthropological Archives, Washington D. C. Also available online through the
Smithsonian as John P. Harrington Papers, Reel 169 for Diegueño in the United States and Reel
170 for Diegueño in Baja California and in Edward W. Gifford. “Clans and Moieties in Southern
California.” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, 14 (2).
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1918). Archaeological excavation at the assumed
location of Pa’mu verified the presence of this extensive village near the Santa Maria Creek,
see Theodore Cooley and Richard L. Carrico, Excavations at the Village of Pa’mu: Ramona,
California. Report on file at the South Coastal Information Center, San Diego State University.
14. Translation by the author. Diario del Capitan de Rivera y Moncada, p. 242.
15. Libros de Bautismos, Mission San Diego. Records on file at Mission San Diego Diocesan
Offices and also online through the Early Population Project, Huntington Library, San
163
Marino, California. As James Sandos has pointed out, baptism of native peoples should not
be necessarily equated with conversion or even acceptance of the Catholic faith. See James
J. Sandos, Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions. (Yale University Press:
New Haven, 2004).
16. Provincial State Papers, Benicia, Military, Ortega 1778: 1:41.
17. Hubert H. Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft Co., 1886). Vol. I, p. 315.
18. Claudio Saunt, “My Medicine is Punishment: A Case of Torture in Early California, 1775-1776.”
Ethnohistory 57:4: 679-708. Also see Chace “International Alliance: International Assault,” 2017.
19. José Francisco Ortega, “Insurrección de Indios, Resultado Castigo de Cabecillas,” April 6,
1778. Provincial State Papers, Benicia, Military, Tomo 1.
20. Bancroft, History of California, p. 316.
21. Ortega, “Insurrección de Indios,” p. 41.
22. Saunt, “My Medicine is Punishment,” p. 695.
23. Ejecución de Reos, April 12, 1778, Letter to Governor Neve from Ortega. Provincial State
Papers, Benicia, Military, Vol. 1:44.
24. Ibid.
25. Provincial State Papers, Military 1778: 733-735.
26. Antonine Tibesar, ed., Writings of Junípero Serra. (Washington DC: Academy of American
Franciscan History, 1925), Vols. 1-3.
27. Bancroft, History of California, p. 316.
28. Zephyrin Engelhardt, San Diego Mission (San Francisco: The Barry Co., 1920), p. 96.
29. Tomas W. Temple, “Two Letters from Sergeant José Francisco Ortega to Governor Felipe de
Neve, September 4 and 5, 1781.” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, 22, 4: 121-130.
30. Castillo, “The Native Response,” p. 386.
31. Saunt, “My Medicine is Punishment.”
32. Libros de Bautismos, Misión de San Diego: Baptism 00610.
33. Libros de Bautismos, Misión de San Diego: Baptisms 00633 and 00634.
34. Libros de Bautismos, Misión de San Diego.
35. Temple, “Two Letters.”
36. Libros de Misión de San Diego: Deaths: 00772.
37. Saunt, “My Medicine is Punishment.”
38. Libros de Misión de San Diego: Deaths: 00772.