Actually, I would prefer to avoid population statistics. Many scholars have
scoured the Mission records in California for data on baptism, birth and death
rates. The problem is that no one did a census to see who else was out there.
The Spanish never learned the native populations settlement systems, hence the
statistics will always be in question. My understanding of the local
Yuman-speaking Ipaay was that they settled in various places by seasons and gradually
broke off into family or work units to relocate along kinship use-rights
areas. A family caught in birth records for the village of Nipaguay, for example,
might end up in the high mountains for summer and high desert for winter.
Depending on kinship lines, they could also visit relatives along the Lower
Colorado River or in the Sierra Juarez of Mexico. This system would make it hard for
U.S. Census records to be accurate. Nonetheless, people working those records
have estimated the effect of encomienda in California, along with European
introduced disease, had devastating effects on native populations.

There is ample evidence the native people were not willing participants in
the mission system, even though many learned to adapt. As well, people who had
low ranking in native society could do well by rising to supervisorial levels
in the Roman Catholic Church and actually leave written records for us to read.
I feel the native people who were freed by Mexican decree in 1934 simply
stripped-off the cotton clothing and went back to the inland villages and resumed
their seasonal tranhumance in remote mountains and deserts far away from
Spanish/Mexican populations. Disease continued to take a toll on the families
through the 19th century and the groups of people examined by anthropologists in
the 1890s and early 20th century were a very small population compared to those
who were here before Spanish incursion into the area.

Back to the archaeology questions, I would ask what effects disruption of
settlement systems had upon the material culture? Is the crude, thick, brown
pottery found at Spanish settlements and Roman Catholic mission sites a material
expression of the impact to their culture? Or, was it simply un-trained
Spaniards trying to create pots to replace the dwindling supplies brought on by
internal economic and global problems back in Spain and Mexico? For a number of
years, I examined collections of crude brown pottery from California missions
with emphasis on construction technique. There is no doubt that coil-paddle-anvil
type pottery got thicker at missions outside native pottery-production areas.
Some pottery had very organic animal dung temper and you have to wonder if
the potters deliberately did a poor job for some reason? The coil-scrape pottery
was crudest of all, but as I mentioned yesterday, I do not subscribe to
Anita's hypothesis that Owens Valley Brown Ware influenced pottery production in
the Spanish system. I have studied collections of Owens Valley Brown Ware.
However, in any mission pottery collection, there will be finely made wheel-thrown
terracotta pottery and small quantities of nicely made coil-paddle-anvil
pottery which I feel came in trade shipments from San Blas, Mexico, right along
with Mexican Majolica and olive jars.

What Anita did provide in her abbreviated email yesterday is the exciting new
research into trace element analysis of pottery clays. Proving the same clay
trace elements from one region or mission to another, however, does not prove
anything with regard to how this happened. Russell Skorowneck's discovery that
pottery from the 1796 Spanish Army canon battery at San Diego shared pottery
with the same trace elements as that found at Mission San Luis Rey might
substantiate my hypothesis that Yuman-speaking potters from San Diego were taken by
Roman Catholic priests or Spanish soldiers north to Mission San Luis Rey to
trade pots or teach pottery-making. It also could mean that the natural
distribution of trace elements from clay seams does not differ substantially over a
70-mile distance. Nothing in trace element analysis addresses the cultural
origin of plain, terracotta pottery recovered at Spanish presidios and Roman
Catholic mission sites.

I think the use of an eastern term like colonoware would be foolish for
California. There is no use of the term in the accepted literature. If it comes to
a vote among professionals, I vote against it.

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.