Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/739

Rh estate; and he would have established a new mission in the north if the padres would have aided him. Doubtless his policy was a wise one, even if his position as guardian of the Indians in charge of their private property put by them in his care was not recognized by the laws. Moreover, there was a gain rather than a loss in live-stock. Thus the mission community had no real existence after 1836, though Pablo Ayala and Salvador Vallejo were nominally made administrators. The visitador made no innovations in 1839, and apparently none were made in 1840. I suppose there may have been 100 of the ex-neophytes living at Sonoma at the end of the decade, with perhaps 500 more in the region not relapsed into barbarism.

On the secularization of Solano a pueblo was founded at Sonoma in 1835. Besides the fact of the founding, the transfer of the San Francisco military company, the granting of several ranchos in the north, several campaigns against hostile Indians, and a few other matters fully treated elsewhere as indexed and supplemented with minor items in the appended note, very little is really known in details of events and