Солтүстік Калифорния жағалауының жергілікті халықтары: Охлоне тайпасы

Native American people of the Northern California coast

The Ohlone (/ou//'//l//ou//n//i/ ohLOHnee), formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish costeño meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages. The Ohlone languages make up a sub family of the Utian language family. Older proposals place Utian within the Penutian language phylum, while newer proposals group it as Yok Utian. In pre colonial times, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups, and did not view themselves as a single unified group. They lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern. The members of these various bands interacted freely with one another. The Ohlone people practiced the Kuksu religion. Prior to the Gold Rush, the northern California region was one of the most densely populated regions north of Mexico. However, the arrival of Spanish colonizers to the area in 1769 vastly changed tribal life forever. The Spanish constructed missions along the California coast with the objective of Christianizing the native people and culture. Between the years 1769 and 1834, the number of Indigenous Californians dropped from 300,000 to 250,000. After California entered into the Union in 1850, the state government perpetrated massacres against the Ohlone people. Many of the leaders of these massacres were rewarded with positions in state and federal government. These massacres have been described as genocide. Many are now leading a push for cultural and historical recognition of their tribe and what they have gone through and had taken from them. The Ohlone living today belong to one or another of a number of geographically distinct groups, most, but not all, in their original home territory. Tamien Nation citizens are direct lineal descendants from Tamien speaking villages of the Santa Clara Valley. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has members from around the San Francisco Bay Area, and is composed of descendants of the Ohlones/Costanoans from the San Jose, Santa Clara, and San Francisco missions. The Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, consisting of descendants of intermarried Rumsen Costanoan and Esselen speakers of Mission San Carlos Borromeo, are centered at Monterey. The WD=Q111585476 tribe are descendants of Mutsun Costanoan speakers of Mission San Juan Bautista, inland from Monterey Bay. Most members of another group of Rumsien language, descendants from Mission San Carlos, the Costanoan Rumsien Carmel Tribe of Pomona/Chino, now live in southern California. These groups and others with smaller memberships (See groups listed under "Present day" below) are separately petitioning the federal government for tribal recognition.

British ethnologist Robert Gordon Latham originally used the term "Costanoan" to refer to the linguistically similar but ethnically diverse Native American tribes in the San Francisco Bay Area. The term was based on the name of a group of Ramaytush speakers in the area of Mission Dolores first mentioned in 1850 as "Olhones or Costanos". Based on the former, American anthropologist Clinton Hart Merriam referred to the Costanoan groups as "Olhonean" in the early 20th century in his posthumously published field notes, and eventually, the term "Ohlone" has been adopted by most ethnographers, historians, and writers of popular literature.

The Ohlone inhabited fixed village locations, moving temporarily to gather seasonal foodstuffs like acorns and berries. The Ohlone people lived in Northern California from the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula down to northern region of Big Sur, and from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Diablo Range in the east. Their vast region included the San Francisco Peninsula, Santa Clara Valley, Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey Bay area, as well as present day Alameda County, Contra Costa County and the Salinas Valley. Prior to Spanish contact, the Ohlone formed a complex association of approximately 50 different "nations or tribes" with about 50 to 500 members each, with an average of 200. Over 50 distinct Ohlone tribes and villages have been recorded. The Ohlone villages interacted through trade, intermarriage and ceremonial events, as well as some internecine conflict. Cultural arts included basket weaving skills, seasonal ceremonial dancing events, female tattoos, ear and nose piercings, and other ornamentation. The Ohlone subsisted mainly as hunter gatherers and in some ways harvesters. "A rough husbandry of the land was practiced, mainly by annually setting of fires to burn off the old growth in order to get a better yield of seeds—or so the Ohlone told early explorers in San Mateo County." Their staple diet consisted of crushed acorns, nuts, grass seeds, and berries, although other vegetation, hunted and trapped game, fish and seafood (including mussels and abalone from the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean), were also important to their diet. These food sources were abundant in earlier times and maintained by careful work, and through active management of all the natural resources at hand. Animals in their mild climate included the grizzly bear, elk (Cervus elaphus), pronghorn, and deer. The streams held salmon, trout, steelhead, perch, and stickleback. Birds included plentiful ducks, geese, quail, great horned owls, red shafted flickers, downy woodpeckers, goldfinches, and yellow billed magpies. Waterfowl were the most important birds in the people's diet, which were captured with nets and decoys. The Chochenyo traditional narratives refer to ducks as food, and Juan Crespí observed in his journal that geese were stuffed and dried "to use as decoys in hunting others". Along the ocean shore and bays, there were also otters, whales, and at one time thousands of sea lions. In fact, there were so many sea lions that according to Crespi it "looked like a pavement" to the incoming Spanish. In general, along the bayshore and valleys, the Ohlone constructed dome shaped houses of woven or bundled mats of tules, 6 to 20 feet (1.8 to 6 m) in diameter. In hills where redwood trees were accessible, they built conical houses from redwood bark attached to a frame of wood. Residents of Monterey recall Redwood houses. One of the main village buildings, the sweat lodge was low into the ground, its walls made of earth and roof of earth and brush. They built boats of tule to navigate on the bays propelled by double bladed paddles. Generally, men did not wear clothing in warm weather. In cold weather, they might don animal skin capes or feather capes. Women commonly wore deerskin aprons, tule skirts, or shredded bark skirts. On cool days, they also wore animal skin capes. Both wore ornamentation of necklaces, shell beads and abalone pendants, and bone wood earrings with shells and beads. The ornamentation often indicated status within their community.

A full list of their ethnobotany can be found at http://naeb. brit. org/uses/tribes/50/ (430 documented plant uses) and http://naeb. brit. org/uses/tribes/51/ (6 documented plant uses). They use the roots of many species of Carex for basketry.

Researchers are sensitive to limitations in historical knowledge, and careful not to place the spiritual and religious beliefs of all Ohlone people into a single unified worldview. Due to the displacement of Indian people in the Missions between 1769 and 1833, cultural groups are working as ethnographers to discover for themselves their ancestral history, and what that information tells about them as a cultural group. Their religion is different depending on the band referred to, although they share components of their worldview. The pre contact spiritual beliefs of the Ohlone were not recorded in detail by missionaries. The Ohlone probably practiced Kuksu, a form of shamanism shared by many Central and Northern California tribes. Although, it is also possible that the Ohlone people learned Kuksu from other tribes while at the missions. Kuksu included elaborate acting and dancing ceremonies in traditional costume, an annual mourning ceremony, puberty rites of passage, intervention with the spirit world and an all male society that met in subterranean dance rooms. Kuksu was shared with other indigenous ethnic groups of Central California, such as their neighbors the Miwok and Esselen, also Maidu, Pomo, and northernmost Yokuts. However Kroeber observed less "specialized cosmogony" in the Ohlone, which he termed one of the "southern Kuksu dancing groups", in comparison to the Maidu and groups in the Sacramento Valley; he noted "if, as seems probable, the southerly Kuksu tribes (the Miwok, Costanoans, Esselen, and northernmost Yokuts) had no real society in connection with their Kuksu ceremonies." The conditions upon which the Ohlone joined the Spanish missions are subject to debate. Some have argued that they were forced to convert to Catholicism, while others have insisted that forced baptism was not recognized by the Catholic Church. All who have looked into the matter agree, however, that baptized Indians who tried to leave mission communities were forced to return. The first conversions to Catholicism were at Mission San Carlos Borromeo, alias Carmel, in 1771. In the San Francisco Bay area the first baptisms occurred at Mission San Francisco in 1777. Many first generation Mission Era conversions to Catholicism were debatably incomplete and "external". It is apparent that the pre contact Ohlone had distinguished medicine persons among their tribe. Some of these people healed through the use of herbs, and some were shamans who were believed to heal through their ability to contact the spirit world. Some shamans typically engaged in more ritualistic healing in the form of dancing, ceremony, and singing. Some shamans were also believed to be able to tell and influence the future, therefore they were equally able to bring about fortune and misfortune among the community. Indian Canyon is an important place because it is open to all Native American groups in the United States and around the world as a place to hold traditional native practices without federal restrictions. Indian Canyon is also home to many Ohlone people, specifically of the Mutsun band, and serves as an educational, cultural, and spiritual environment for all visitors. Indian Canyon allows Natives to reclaim their heritage and implement their ancestral beliefs and practices into their lives. The problem with this type of recording is that the stories are not always complete due to translation differences where meaning can be easily misunderstood. Therefore, many Ohlone bands today feel responsible for re adopting these narratives and discussing them with cultural representatives and other Ohlone people to decide what their meanings are. This process is important because the Ohlone can further piece together a cultural identity of their past ancestors, and ultimately for themselves as well. Additionally, through knowing sacred narratives and sharing them with the public through live performances or storytelling, the Ohlone people are able to create an awareness that their cultural group is not extinct, but actually surviving and wanting recognition. Ohlone folklore and legend centered around the Californian culture heroes of the Coyote trickster spirit, as well as Eagle and Hummingbird (and in the Chochenyo region, a falcon like being named Kaknu). The Coyote spirit was clever, wily, lustful, greedy, and irresponsible. He often competed with Hummingbird, who despite his small size regularly got the better of him. Ohlone creation stories mention that the world was covered entirely in water, apart from a single peak Pico Blanco near Big Sur (or Mount Diablo in the northern Ohlone's version) on which Coyote, Hummingbird, and Eagle stood. Humans were the descendants of Coyote. Some anthropologists think that these people migrated from the San Joaquin–Sacramento River system and arrived into the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas in about the 6th century CE, displacing or assimilating earlier Hokan speaking populations of which the Esselen in the south represent a remnant. Datings of ancient shell mounds in Emeryville and in Newark and suggest the villages at those locations were established about 4000 BCE. Through shell mound dating, scholars noted three periods of ancient Bay Area history, as described by F. M. Stanger in La Peninsula: "Careful study of artifacts found in central California mounds has resulted in the discovery of three distinguishable epochs or cultural 'horizons' in their history. In terms of our time counting system, the first or 'Early Horizon' extends from about 4000 BCE to 1000 BCE in the Bay Area and to about 2000 BCE in the Central Valley. The second or Middle Horizon was from these dates to 700 CE, while the third or Late Horizon, was from 700 CE to the coming of the Spaniards in the 1770s."

The arrival of missionaries and Spanish colonizers in the mid 1700s had a negative impact on the Ohlone people who inhabited Northern California. The Ohlone territory consisted of the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula down to Big Sur in the south. There were more than fifty Ohlone landholding groups prior to the arrival of the Spanish Missionaries. The Ohlone were able to thrive in this area by hunting, fishing, and gathering, in the typical pattern found in California coastal tribes. Each of the Ohlone villages interacted with each other through trade, intermarriage, and ceremonial events, as well as through occasional conflict. The Ohlone culture was relatively stable until the first Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived with the double purpose of Christianizing the Native Americans by building a series of missions and of expanding Spanish territorial claims. The Rumsien were the first Ohlone people to be encountered and documented in Spanish records when, in 1602, explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno reached and named the area that is now Monterey in December of that year. Despite Vizcaíno's positive reports, nothing further happened for more than 160 years. It was not until 1769 that the next Spanish expedition arrived in Monterey, led by Gaspar de Portolà. This time, the military expedition was accompanied by Franciscan missionaries, whose purpose was to establish a chain of missions to bring Christianity to the native people. Under the leadership of Father Junípero Serra, the missions introduced Spanish religion and culture to the Ohlone. Spanish mission culture soon disrupted and undermined the Ohlone social structures and way of life. Under Father Serra's leadership, the Spanish Franciscans erected seven missions inside the Ohlone region and brought most of the Ohlone into these missions to live and work. The missions erected within the Ohlone region were: Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo (founded in 1770), Mission San Francisco de Asís (founded in 1776), Mission Santa Clara de Asís (founded in 1777), Mission Santa Cruz (founded in 1791), Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (founded in 1791), Mission San José (founded in 1797), and Mission San Juan Bautista (founded in 1797). The Ohlone who went to live at the missions were called Mission Indians, and also "neophytes." They were blended with other Native American ethnicities such as the Coast Miwok transported from the North Bay into the Mission San Francisco and Mission San José. Spanish military presence was established at two Presidios, the Presidio of Monterey, and the Presidio of San Francisco, and mission outposts, such as San Pedro y San Pablo Asistencia founded in 1786. The Spanish soldiers traditionally escorted the Franciscans on missionary outreach daytrips but declined to camp overnight. For the first twenty years, the missions accepted a few converts at a time, slowly gaining population. Between November 1794 and May 1795, a large wave of Bay Area Native Americans were baptized and moved into Mission Santa Clara and Mission San Francisco, including 360 people to Mission Santa Clara and the entire Huichun village populations of the East Bay to Mission San Francisco. In March 1795, this migration was followed almost immediately by the worst seen epidemic, as well as food shortages, resulting in alarming statistics of death and escapes from the missions. In pursuing the runaways, the Franciscans sent neophytes first and (as a last resort) soldiers to go round up the runaway "Christians" from their relatives, and bring them back to the missions. By running to tribes outside of the missions, escapees and those sent to bring them back to the mission spread illness outside of the missions. Indians did not thrive when the missions expanded both their populations and operations in their geographical areas. "A total of 81,000 Indians were baptized and 60,000 deaths were recorded". The cause of death varied, but most were the result of European diseases such as smallpox, measles, and diphtheria against which the Indians had no natural immunity. Other causes were a drastic diet change from hunter and gatherer fare to a diet high in carbohydrates and low in vegetables and animal protein, harsh lifestyle changes, and unsanitary living conditions.

In 1834, the Mexican government ordered all Californian missions to be secularized and all mission land and property (administered by the Franciscans) turned over to the government for redistribution. At this point, the Ohlone were supposed to receive land grants and property rights, but few did and most of the mission lands went to the secular administrators. In the end, even attempts by mission leaders to restore native lands were in vain. Before this time, 73 Spanish land grants had already been deeded in all of Alta California, but with the new régime most lands were turned into Mexican owned rancherias. The Ohlone became the laborers and vaqueros (cowboys) of Mexican owned rancherias.

The Ohlone eventually regathered in multi ethnic rancherias, along with other Mission Indians from families that spoke the Coast Miwok, Bay Miwok, Plains Miwok, Patwin, Yokuts, and Esselen languages. Many of the Ohlone that had survived the experience at Mission San Jose went to work at Alisal Rancheria in Pleasanton, and El Molino in Niles. Communities of mission survivors also formed in Sunol, Monterey and San Juan Bautista. In the 1840s a wave of United States settlers encroached into the area, and California became annexed to the United States. The new settlers brought in new diseases to the Ohlone. The Ohlone lost the vast majority of their population between 1780 and 1850, because of an abysmal birth rate, high infant mortality rate, diseases and social upheaval associated with European immigration into California. Peter Hardeman Burnett, the state's first governor, was an open advocate of exterminating local California Indian tribes. By all estimates, the Ohlone were reduced to less than ten percent of their original pre mission era population. By 1852 the Ohlone population had shrunk to about 864–1,000, and was continuing to decline. By the early 1880s, the northern Ohlone were virtually extinct, and the southern Ohlone people were severely impacted and largely displaced from their communal land grant in the Carmel Valley. To call attention to the plight of the California Indians, Indian Agent, reformer, and popular novelist Helen Hunt Jackson published accounts of her travels among the Mission Indians of California in 1883. Considered the last fluent speaker of an Ohlone language, Rumsien speaker Isabel Meadows died in 1939. Descendants are reviving Rumsien, Mutsun, and Chochenyo.

The arrival of the Spanish in the 1776 decelerated the culture, sovereignty, religion, and language of the Ohlone. Before the Spanish invasion, the Ohlone had an estimated 500 shellmounds lining the sea and shores of the San Francisco Bay. Shellmounds are essentially Ohlone habitation sites where peopled lived and died and often buried. The mounds consist predominately of molluscan shells, with lesser amounts mammal and fish bone, vegetal materials and other organic material deposited by the Ohlone for thousands of years. These shellmounds are the direct result of village life. Archaeologists have examined the mounds and often refer to them as "middens," or "kitchen midden" meaning an accumulation of refuse. One theory is that the massive amount of shellfish remains represent Ohlone ritual behavior, whereas they would spend months mourning their dead and feasting on large amounts of shellfish which were disposed of ever growing the girth and height of the mound. Shellmounds were once found all over the San Francisco Bay area near marshlands, creeks, wetlands, and rivers. San Bruno Mountain is home to the nation's largest intact shellmound. These mounds are also thought to have served a practical purpose as well, since these shellmounds were usually near waterways or the ocean, they protected the village from high tide as well as to provide high ground for line of sight navigation for watercraft on San Francisco Bay. The Emeryville Shellmound is a site standing at over 60 feet (18 m) tall and 350 feet (105 m) in diameter, and was believed to be occupied between 400 and 2800 years ago. The Ohlone burial practices changed over time with cremation being preferred before the arrival of the Spanish. Once the cremation was complete the loved ones and friends would place ornaments as well as other valuables as an offering to the dead. Ohlone believed that this would give them good fortune in the afterlife. Many of these artifacts have been found in and around the shellmounds. They often include a wide variety of shell beads and ornaments as well as frequently used everyday items such as stone and bone tools. These burials also showcase genealogies and territorial rights. The mounds were seen as a cultural statement because the villages on top were clearly visible and their sacred aura was very dominant.

The Sogorea Te Land Trust is a land trust founded by members of IPOC in 2012 with the goals of returning traditionally Chochenyo and Karkin lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to indigenous stewardship and cultivating more active, reciprocal relationships with the land. It has also started a project called the Shuumi Land Tax, which asks that non indigenous people living on Ohlone land to pay dues for the land that they live on.

Costanoan is an externally applied name (exonym). The Spanish explorers and settlers referred to the native groups of this region collectively as the Costeños (the "coastal people") circa 1769. Over time, the English speaking settlers arriving later Anglicized the word Costeños into the name of Costanoans. (The suffix " an" is English). For many years, the people were called the Costanoans in English language and records. Since the 1960s, the name of Ohlone has been used by some of the members and the popular media to replace the name Costanoan. Ohlone might have originally derived from a Spanish rancho called Oljon, and referred to a single band who inhabited the Pacific Coast near Pescadero Creek. The name Ohlone was traced by Teixeira through the mission records of Mission San Francisco, Bancroft's Native Races, and Frederick Beechey's Journal regarding a visit to the Bay Area in 1826–27. Oljone, Olchones and Alchones are spelling variations of Ohlone found in Mission San Francisco records. However, because of its tribal origin, Ohlone is not universally accepted by the native people, and some members prefer to either to continue to use the name Costanoan or to revitalize and be known as the Muwekma. Teixeira maintains Ohlone is the common usage since 1960, which has been traced back to the Rancho Oljon on the Pescadero Creek. Teixeira states in part: "A tribe that once existed along the San Mateo County coast." Milliken states the name came from: "A tribe on the lower drainages of San Gregorio Creek and Pescadero Creek on the Pacific Coast".

In 1925, Alfred Kroeber, then director of the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, declared the tribe extinct, which directly led to its losing federal recognition and land rights.

The Mutsun (of Hollister and Watsonville), The Lisjan Ohlone, The Tamien Nation, Ramaytush Ohlone and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe (of the San Francisco Bay Area) are among the surviving groups of Ohlone today. The Esselen Nation also describes itself as Ohlone/Costanoan, although they historically spoke both the southern Costanoan (Rumsien) and an entirely different Hokan language Esselen.

The Ohlone language family is commonly called "Costanoan", sometimes "Ohlone". Ohlone is classified with Miwok under the label Utian. The controversial Penutian language phylum groups the Utian languages with other languages spoken in California, Oregon, and Washington. The most recent work suggests that Ohlone, Miwok, and Yokuts may all be sub families within a single Yok Utian language family. Eight dialects or languages of Ohlone have been recorded: Awaswas, Chalon, Chochenyo (aka Chocheño), Karkin, Mutsun, Ramaytush, Rumsen, and Tamyen. Of these, Chochenyo, Mutsun, and Rumsen are seeing revival by Ohlone tribes.

The chroniclers, ethnohistorians, and linguists of the Ohlone population began with: Alfred L. Kroeber who researched the California natives and authored a few publications on the Ohlone from 1904 to 1910, and C. Hart Merriam who researched the Ohlone in detail from 1902 to 1929. This was followed by John P. Harrington who researched the Ohlone languages from 1921 to 1939, and other aspects of Ohlone culture, leaving volumes of field notes at his death. Other research was added by Robert Cartier, Madison S. Beeler, and Sherburne F. Cook, to name a few. In many cases, the Ohlone names they used vary in spelling, translation and tribal boundaries, depending on the source. Each tried to chronicle and interpret this complex society and language(s) before the pieces vanished. There was noticeable competition and some disagreement between the first scholars: Both Merriam and Harrington produced much in depth Ohlone research in the shadow of the highly published Kroeber and competed in print with him. In the Editor's Introduction to Merriam (1979), Robert F. Heizer (as the protege of Kroeber and also the curator of Merriam's work) states "both men disliked A. L. Kroeber." Harrington, independently working for the Smithsonian Institution cornered most of the Ohlone research as his own specialty, was "not willing to share his findings with Kroeber  Kroeber and his students neglected the Chumash and Costanoans, but this was done because Harrington made it quite clear that he would resent Kroeber's 'muscling in. Recent Ohlone historians who have published new research are Lauren Teixeira, Randall Milliken and Lowell J. Bean. They all note the availability of mission records which allows for continual research and understanding.

1777: Xigmacse, chief of the local Yelamu tribe at the time of the establishment of the Mission San Francisco, and thus the earliest known San Francisco leader. 1779: Baltazar, baptized from the Rumsen village of Ichxenta in 1775, he became the first Indian alcalde of Mission San Carlos in 1778. After his wife and child died, he fled to the Big Sur coast in 1780 to lead the first extensive Ohlone resistance to colonization. 1791: Charquin, a chief of the Quiroste tribe, began leading an active resistance against the mission system soon after being baptized. After his capture in 1793, the Quirostes continued their resistance, ultimately launching the only direct attack on a Spanish mission in that December. Charquin escaped in 1795 and then was recaptured in 1796 and sent to the San Diego Presidio where he died two years later. 1807: Hilarion and George (their baptismal names) were two Ohlone men from the village Pruristac who served as alcaldes (mayors) of the Mission San Francisco in 1807. As such, they were at the beginning of a long line of Mayors of San Francisco. 1877: Lorenzo Asisara was a Mission Santa Cruz man who provided three surviving narratives about life at the mission, primarily from stories told to him by his own father. 1913: Barbara Solorsano, died 1913, Mutsun linguistic consultant to C. Hart Merriam 1902–04, from San Juan Bautista. 1930: Ascencion Solorsano de Cervantes, died 1930, renowned Mutsun doctor, principal linguistic and cultural informant to J. P. Harrington. 1934: Jose Guzman, died 1934, he was one of the principal Chochenyo linguistic and cultural consultants to J. P. Harrington. 1939: Isabel Meadows, died 1939, the last fluent speaker of Rumsen and a primary Rumsen consultant to J. P. Harrington. 2006: Ralph Allan Espinoza, Director and founder of the only non profit, Native American affiliated food bank in the U. S., "God Provides Pomona Valley Food Bank" located in Pomona, California. 2016: Ann Marie Sayers, Mustun Ohlone leader, tribal chair of Indian Canyon, California, the only federally recognized Indian country from Sonoma to Santa Barbara. 2022: Tommy Guerrero, San Francisco musician, composer, and professional skateboarder.