The Last of the Ramaytush:
Descendants of the Original People of the San Francisco Peninsula
Introduction
In an interview with Indian Sub-agent Adam Johnson in the early 1850s, Pedro Alcantara declared, “I am all that is left of my people. I am alone.” Alcantara was born in 1786 at Ssalaime, a village of the Cotegen tribelet located on the Pacific Coast side of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County. Alcantara’s lineage did in fact survive until the death of his granddaughter Marie Buffet in 1922. A second family is known to have survived as well. Joseph Evencio, a descendant of the Ssalson tribelet and the son of Pedro Evencio, is thought to have survived until the 1930s in San Mateo County. Writing in reference to the Evencio family Alan K. Brown stated with some certainty that “the San Mateo County Indians have vanished from among us as completely as any could” (Brown 1973:23). While other families may have survived into the twentieth century, only one lineage is known to have produced living descendants in the present. The lineage originated from the Aramai tribe at the village of Timigtac located near present-day Pacifica.