4.0 Historic Background

 4.1 Ethnography

At the time of historic contact with the Spanish missionaries and explorers, the Costanoan group of Native Americans occupied the area now defined by the southern edge of the Carquinez Strait in the north, the San Francisco peninsula on the west, the Livermore Valley on the east, and the Sur and Salinas rivers in the south (Levy 1978: 485).  The term Costanoan is derived from the Spanish word Costaños, or "coast people" and designates a linguistic family of eight languages.  The Coastanoan tribal groups that occupied the east shore of San Francisco Bay between Richmond and Mission San Jose (and probably the Livermore Valley) numbered approximately 2000 people in 1770, and spoke a language called Chochenyo (Levy 1978: 485).  The Chochenyo tribal group that is believed to have occupied the area from Richmond south to Emeryville is the Huchiun or Juchiun (Milliken 1983:102-103).  Milliken suggests that Yerba Buena Island was probably included within the territory of the Huchiun group, although a review of the records maintained by the Spanish padres of the mission era give no indication that the island was occupied during that period (Milliken 1995: 228, 243). 

 The tribal group that occupied the San Francisco peninsula, today’s San Francisco and San Mateo counties, numbered approximately 1,400 people in 1770.  They spoke a language known as Ramaytush (Levy 1978: 485).  Tribal groups occupying the area from the Pacific Coast to the Diablo Range and from the southern San Francisco peninsula to Point Sur spoke the other seven languages of the Costanoan family.  Modern descendants of the Costanoan prefer to be known as Ohlone and formed a corporate entity in 1971, the Ohlone Indian Tribe.  They are named after the Oljón tribal group, which occupied the San Gregorio watershed in San Mateo County (Bocek 1986; 8).  The two terms are used interchangeably in much of the ethnographic literature.

 The Costanoan diet mainly consisted of vegetal foods gathered from seasonally available staples such as acorns, greens, roots, bulbs, and seeds.  These resources were supplemented with protein-rich fish, waterfowl, and shellfish recovered from the waters, shore, and marshy shallows of San Francisco Bay, as well as by deer and other inland fauna that were hunted for both their meat and hides (Kroeber 1970 [1953]: 467; Levy 1978: 491-92).  Using seine and dip nets, harpoons, weirs, basketry traps, hooks, and fish poisons, the Ohlone fished the waters of the bay and the saltwater marshes, streams, and rivers that flowed into it.  They were accomplished watermen, employing small, lightweight boats fabricated from tule reed.  In these fragile craft, formed from cigar-shaped bundles of reeds, the Ohlone gained access to the offshore islands where they raided seabird rookeries, and hunted seals and sea lions.  Because they were a mobile people, the Ohlone built their boats to last only a season, and could leave them behind with little afterthought (Kroeber 1970 [1953]: 359; Levy 1978: 492; Margolin 1978: 37-38, 54-56).

 The Coast Miwok occupied the area to the north of San Francisco Bay; their territory centered in today’s Marin and Solano counties.  Numbering approximately 1,500 persons in aboriginal times, the Coast Miwok took advantage of the varying terrain to develop a diversified subsistence strategy based on hunting, fishing and gathering (Kelly 1978:415).

Marine foods were an important staple in the Coast Miwok diet.  Surf fish were caught in nets and bay fish in a seine strung between two tule balsas.  Mussels and clams were gathered from coastal pools and from the rocks.  Bays and lagoons within Coast Miwok territory were crossed with rafts fabricated from three or four logs lashed together, or – like the Costanoans – on a tule balsa made of several bundles of rushes (Kelly 1978:419).  

Despite the boating capability both groups possessed, there is no specific evidence that either the Costanoans or the Coast Miwok ventured far, or often into the Bay.  Neither is there any indication in the ethnographic literature that either group had any reason to travel to the Bay rocks that are the subject of this study.

 4.2 History

The historic period in the San Francisco Bay region begins with the Fages-Crespi expedition of 1770.  The Fages party explored the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, eventually reaching the location of modern Fremont, where they traded with the local Costanoans.  Members of the expedition first sighted the entrance to San Francisco Bay from the Oakland Hills.  In 1772, a second Fages expedition traveled from Monterey through modern-day Milpitas, San Lorenzo, Oakland, and Berkeley, finally reaching Pinole on March 28, 1772 (Cook 1957:131).  From there they traveled through the locations of today’s Rodeo and Crockett to Martinez, made a brief foray into the delta region of the Central Valley, and then camped somewhere near Pittsburg or Antioch.  On 31 March, the Fages party began the return journey to Monterey.  They traveled to the vicinity of modern-day Walnut Creek, turned south, and then made their way to the vicinity of Danville, where they spent the night.  On 1 April, they passed through today’s San Ramon, Dublin, and Pleasanton, finally arriving back in the area of Milpitas on the following day.

 In 1776, the Anza-Font expedition traveled through the same area and traded with residents of native villages encountered along the way.  The significant impact of the European presence on the local California natives, however, was not felt until the Spanish missions were established in the region.  The preceding year, Captain Juan Manuel Ayala, commanding the ship San Carlos, explored San Francisco Bay, venturing up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in search of a suitable mission site.  Ayala’s sailing master, José de Cañizares used the ship’s longboat to create the first map of San Francisco Bay, navigating from its southern terminus, to the mouth of the delta in the north (Galvin 1971:99).

  The first mission in the region was established on October 9, 1776 with the completion of San Francisco de Asis (Mission Dolores) in San Francisco (Beck and Haase1974: 19).  Mission Santa Clara de Asis followed in 1777, and Mission San Jose in 1797.  The ensuing Mission era lasted for the next 46 years and proved to be the downfall of the native inhabitants of the region, who were brought to the missions as conscripts for labor under the pretense of "Christianization."  The missions became the loci of native "missionization," which brought disease, subjugation, and ultimately decimation, to the native Californian groups.  It is reported that by 1810, the traditional Costanoan lifestyle ceased to exist (Levy 1978:486).  Diseases introduced by the early expeditions and missionaries, and the contagions associated with the forced communal life at the missions, killed a large number of local peoples, exemplified by a mass burial of 18 individuals adjacent to the Hotchkiss Mound site near Oakley (Heizer 1954).  Cook (1943) estimates that by 1832, the Costanoan population had been reduced from a high of over 10,000 in 1770 to less than 2000. 

 In the 1820s, substantial blocks of the mission lands were divided into large Ranchos that soon began to supply the lucrative hide and tallow trade.  Following the U.S. takeover of Alta California from Mexico in 1846, Rancho lands began to be divided up and generally overrun by the Anglo immigration to the area coincident with the land boom following the Gold Rush of 1849. 

 The discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada in 1848 produced a major population increase in the northern half of California as immigrants poured into the territory seeking gold or the opportunities inherent in producing goods or services for miners.  Prior to the gold rush, San Francisco - then known as Yerba Buena - was a sleepy hamlet situated on the shores of Yerba Buena Cove.  This situation quickly changed once word of the gold discovery reached the east coast.  In the three months December 1848 to February 1849 alone, 136 vessels cleared Atlantic ports, en route to San Francisco.  On February 28, 1849, the paddle-wheel steamer California passed through the Golden Gate, carrying the first boatload of forty-niners (Gilliam 1957:61).  Over the course of that year, 775 ships from all over the world arrived in California (Engle and Lott 1975:140).  With this sudden influx of thousands of optimistic gold seekers, a city of canvas and wood sprang up around the cove and on the sand dunes and hills that surrounded it.  Yerba Buena Cove itself filled with ships, abandoned by the crews who fled them for the gold fields. 

 To accommodate the burgeoning population of gold-seekers and the merchants who followed them, the city spread out in all directions - including into the waters of Yerba Buena Cove, which had defined the eastern boundary of the early settlement.  Street alignments were projected into the waters of the cove and pilings were driven along the alignments to define "water lots" that were later filled and built upon.  Construction of docks and wharves along the waterline began shortly after the first influx of gold seekers reached the shores of Yerba Buena Cove.  Many of the ships they abandoned were converted into commercial depots – stores, hotels, and even a jail.  Some of these were later entombed in the fill of Yerba Buena Cove.  The remaining deserted hulks were removed from the Cove, and by 1850 a substantial arrangement of wharves projected across the shallow waters of the cove.  The wharves and the businesses built upon them serviced the booming maritime trade spawned by the unprecedented population growth associated with the gold rush.

 In 1851, departures from the port began to outnumber arrivals and the harbor, no longer clogged with deserted vessels, grew into a vital port that bolstered the maritime economy of San Francisco.  The City became the hub of coastal and intercoastal trade.  Lumber logged from the north coast and the agricultural bounty of the state’s fertile soil provided much of the impetus for this growth.  The proximity of San Francisco to the Pacific Ocean’s whaling grounds led to the port’s evolution into one of the principal whaling centers of the world.  This portal of the Pacific also became the gateway to the Orient.  Down the gangways of the San Francisco-based Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s ships poured the immigrants of China, Japan, and other Asian countries that helped fuel the unprecedented growth of California and the west coast  (Delgado 1990:80, 174).  By 1890, San Francisco was the third most important sailing port in the world, trailing only Liverpool and Newcastle (Australia) in volume of ship traffic (Engle and Lott 1975:147).