dimondites

^{By Edward Goehring} 

The first “Friends of Sausal Creek’’ arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area over 10,000 years ago. They were people known as the Ohlone or Costanoans. The tribal groups that lived on the east shore of San Francisco Bay probably numbered roughly 2,000 people in all. In Oakland, they were mostly concentrated around Lake Merritt, Emeryville, Alameda, and Lake Temescal. The mouth of Sausal Creek, in the area now known as Alameda, was an excellent site for Native American habitation. This was indicated by the presence of six shellmounds. The largest was located in an area that is now bounded by Central Avenue, Court Street, Johnson Avenue, and Gibbons Drive.

Like most California Indians, the locals lived solely by hunting and gathering the plentiful resources here. The East Bay sheltered rabbits, deer, raccoons, wildcats, and grizzly bears. Wildfowl were abundant in the marshes: ducks, curlew, snipe, and plover were often caught in nets woven from plant fibers and strung between bushes. Along upper Sausal Creek one might have seen groups of women and children, their reed baskets full of acorns after an afternoon’s work, making their way to their camps on the lower creek through the willows that give Sausal Creek its name. Acorns, a
food more nutritious than wheat, were their dietary staple. Other greens, roots, bulbs, and seeds were also gathered as food.


_{Ohlone Hoopa Dance 1891 [photo credit unknown]}

The Ohlone used various sophisticated practices to manage their sources of food, acting as ‘stewards’ of the creeks, wetlands, woods, and grasslands. They pruned trees and plants, selectively culled animal and insect populations, and practiced periodic burning of groundcover to promote the growth of native grasses for seed gathering and to create forage for deer and elk.

Rather than exhaust the plants and animals in an area like the Sausal Creek watershed, Ohlone groups moved annually between transient and permanent village sites in a seasonal cycle of hunting, fishing, and gathering. They truly were the first “Friends of Sausal Creek.”

From the October-November 2005 newsletter, Friends of Sausal Creek, P.O. Box 2737, Oakland, CA 94602

www.sausalcreek.org


To learn more about how the Ohlone lived, visit Coyote Hills Regional Park, the Oakland Museum of California, or the Dimond Branch Library, which has over 1,500 books in its American Indian Collection. Or check out News from Native California, a magazine offering an inside view of the California Indian world.

Author Edward Goehring lives on Sausal Creek, has studied the history of native peoples for many years and has worked with tribes in the Pacific Northwest to restore tribal lands and treaty rights. He also creates visual art based on the prehistory of the San Francisco
Bay Area.

MORE READING (submitted by Kristine)

Edward Goehring’s Photo Gallery
The Muhweka Ohlone
Ohlone in Wikipedia
Life on Sausal Creek 1968-1888
Ohlone Directory: Four Directions Institute

 
_{Photo:  Replica of Ohlone Hut in the graveyard of Mission San Francisco de Asís, San Francisco. Jesus Monroy Jr., Wikipedia}