Ohlone culture is seen in this ethnographic sketch as a world in which the people had a close physical and psychological bond to the environment and to the customs of a small society. For some village members, their entire existence might be spent within a radius of ten to fifteen miles of their natal village. Each rock, spring, tree, and creek was known intimately. A heritage of thousands of years lay under the Ohlones' feet as most of the major villages contained deep deposits, built from the debris of daily life, that sealed the remains of the Ohlone past. The ethnographic story of the Ohlone is occasionally rich with knowledge about a life that was so incredibly different from the civilization that now stands in its stead; while on the other hand it is an incomplete story, or only a rough outline, with gaps as yet undiscovered and untold.
What are the Ohlone tribe traditions?
These included: The Sun Dance, Devil's Dance, Bear Dance, Coyote Dance, Dove Dance, Puberty Dance, etc. ´ Some dances were only for women, such as the Loole dance. Women danced in pairs to music created by rattles of wood or cocoons. ´ During ceremonies, men and women wore lots of feathers and other regalia.
What were the Ohlone beliefs?
The Ohlone worshiped various nature gods with religious dances and seasonal festivals. These deities included the sun, the eagle and the hummingbird, as well as the coyote, which they believed had created the world.
How does the Ohlone tribe live today?
Today, there are small segments of the Ohlone people that still live in the Bay Area and continue to fight to keep their culture alive. Most of the tribes continue to preserve and revitalize their cultural history through education, restoration of their native languages, and the practice of cultural storytelling.
Is Ohlone a Native American tribe?
The Ohlone are Native American people located in the Northern California Coast, tribes inhabited areas from the coast of San Francisco through Monterey Bay to lower Salinas Valley. The Ohlone family of tribes have been living in the Bay Area for 10,000 years.
What language did the Ohlone tribe speak?
The Ohlone languages, also known as Costanoan, are a small family of indigenous languages spoken by the Ohlone people. The pre-contact distribution of these languages ranged from the southern San Francisco Bay Area to northern Monterey County.
What foods did the Ohlone eat?
Traditionally, the Ohlone hunted the region's prodigious wildlife (fish, fowl, and game) and gathered the abundant acorns, nuts, seeds, berries, and greens native to Northern California.
What does the word Ohlone mean?
Definition of Ohlone 1 : a member of any of a group of Indigenous peoples who before European contact lived in coastal California from San Francisco and San Pablo bays south to near Point Sur and east into the Coast Ranges. 2 : the family of languages spoken by the Ohlone peoples.
How many Ohlone are left?
500 membersBefore European contact, at least 300,000 Native people who spoke 135 distinct dialects lived in what is now California, per the Library of Congress. By 1848, that number had been halved. Just 25 years later, in 1873, only 30,000 remained. Now, USA Today reports, there are just 500 members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
What crafts did the Ohlone tribe make?
Charmstones, body paint, and Olivella shell beads were also part of the Kuksu religion and Ohlone art. Such art was related to shamanic visions and ceremonial religious performances.
What did the Ohlone tribe wear?
The Ohlone boys and men wore no clothes in the summer and used capes or robes in the winter. They also wore shell necklaces, earrings, and nose rings. Their hair was braided or tied on the top of their head with a buckskin thong. The girls and women wore aprons with a different design on the front and back.
How do you pronounce Ohlone?
Ohlone College is pronounced "oh loh nee kol ij" (audio below):
How do you acknowledge Ohlone land?
One material way to acknowledge our history and support Indigenous communities in the Bay Area is through the Shuumi Land Tax, a voluntary annual financial contribution that non-Indigenous people living on traditional Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone territory make to support the critical work of the Sogorea Te' Land Trust.
What is Kuksu religion?
Traditional Pomo religion involved the Kuksu cult, a set of beliefs and practices involving private ceremonies, esoteric dances and rituals, and impersonations of spirits. There were also ceremonies for such things as ghosts, coyotes, and thunder.
What is the Ohlone creation story?
One Ohlone creation myth begins with the demise of a previous world: When it was destroyed, the world was covered entirely in water, apart from a single peak, Pico Blanco (north of Big Sur) in the Rumsien version (or Mount Diablo in the northern Ohlone's version) on which Coyote, Hummingbird, and Eagle stood.
What weapons did the Ohlone tribe use?
Animal bones were used for spear heads, knives, awls and needles. Deer antlers were used in weapon making. Tule grass, which grew in the Bay, made fishing boats, duck decoys, hats, and toys. String was used to make structures and tools.
What natural resources did the Ohlone tribe use?
The Ohlone used willow and tule to build their houses. F resh water, redwood, shrimp and rich soil are among the many natural resources of the Peninsula. From the Ohlone to the Americans, people have used the area's many natural resources to support their daily life.
What is the role of animals in the Ohlone culture?
In traditional Ohlone culture, there were many stories for explaining how the world came to be, and how human beings fit into it. Animals played a very important role in these stories. For example, to the Ohlone, the coyote was the chief of the animals and a trickster who would play jokes on other animals. But he was also known for being a teacher to human being and giving them the skills necessary to live in the wild.
What is the name of the tribe of Ohlone?
Instead, there were many different groups of one or more villages. The Spanish referred to them as “nations,” and anthropologists have used the term “tribelet” to describe this organization.
What religion did the Ohlone adopt?
After encountering Franciscan missionaries and joining the missions, the Ohlone began to adopt Christianity. This involved a gradual process of education by the missionaries. Many Ohlone embraced the new religion, while others continued to maintain some or all of their old beliefs. Nevertheless, after a number of generations had been born at the missions, Catholicism became the dominant religion among the Ohlone.
What did the Ohlone people do when they died?
When Ohlone people died, they believed the dead went to a land across the sea. They were buried or cremated at death, and all their belongings were destroyed or buried with them. People would mourn for the deceased by cutting their hair, and the dead were not to be spoken about again.
What were the boats called in the Ohlone tribe?
The Ohlone crafted boats, called balsas, for fishing, hunting waterfowl, and traveling up and down the coast. Some early visitors said they were about ten feet long and made of rushes or rolled up dried grass. These boats would be thick in the middle and tapered on the ends. Whoever was in the boat would use a double-bladed oar to paddle through the water.
What game did the Ohlone play?
According to many traveler’s accounts, the Ohlone loved to play games in their leisure time. One game was called “Tussi,” and involved trying to guess which hand a small stick was held in. Another game involved rolling a stick with a hole carved in it along the ground. As the stick rolled, someone would try to throw a spear through the hole. You would get 10 points if the spear went through the hole. Some other games involved throwing carved pieces of wood and getting points based on whether the pieces fell on their flat or curved sides.
What are some examples of stories about the Ohlone?
For example, to the Ohlone, the coyote was the chief of the animals and a trickster who would play jokes on other animals.
Meet Hoʻonani Kamai
Hoʻonani Kamai, a student at Hālau Lōkahi—a public charter school in Hawaii—introduces herself to us and expresses self-pride and knowledge of her cultural roots.
Kumu Hina's Transition
Kumu Hina, a teacher at Hālau Lōkahi (a public charter school in Hawaii), speaks about her transition to the “place in the middle” and her mission to preserve the true meaning of aloha.
When did the Ohlone tribe get recognized?
And it wasn’t until 1996 that the group was somewhat recognized in a ‘previous unambiguous federal recognition’ which granted them some rights as an American tribe. Today, there are small segments of the Ohlone people that still live in the Bay Area and continue to fight to keep their culture alive.
What was the change for the Ohlone people?
The major change for the Muwekma Ohlone people came when the Spanish colonized the Bay Area. Although records are scarce, we know that some Ohlone people willingly converted but a sizable majority were forced to convert. The Spanish created a powerful mission system based around Mission San Francisco De Asis (Mission Dolores) and used the native Ohlone people as manual labor. The Missions were extremely strict and once a native was baptized they were essentially property of the church and couldn’t leave the mission without explicit permission. The Missions essentially destroyed the native peoples culture and turned them into slaves who were at the mercy of the Spanish colonizers. If you’d like to read more about the missions, feel free to read our article outlining the history of the Mission Dolores.
Why were the Ohlone tribes wiped out?
The Tribe Today. Tragically, the Ohlone people were nearly wiped out from disease, warfare and colonization from European immigrants. In the 20 th century the tribes finally rallied against the federal government and struggled for years to gain basic recognition.
How many members did the Ohlone tribe have?
Each of the 50 or so tribes had around 50 to 500 members and the groups often used inter-tribal marriage to strengthen tribal bonds. The average Ohlone Indian survived off of a diet that mostly consisted of crushed acorns, nuts, grass seed, berries and trapped fish or game.
What did the federal government do to the Ohlone tribe?
The federal government continued to disenfranchise and demoralize the tribe with acts intended to culturally and physically destroy them. A prime example occurred in the 1950s when the Ohlone tribal council supposedly received $150 dollars for the value of 8.5 million acres of land from the federal government.
Where did the Muewkma Ohlone live?
The Muewkma Ohlone people inhabited the lands from the San Francisco Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. In San Francisco, there were villages located at today’s Fort Mason, Crissy Field, and Sutro Baths.
What is the history of the Muwekma Ohlone?
‘Makkin Mak Muwekma Wolwoolum, ‘Akkoy Mak-Warep, Manne Mak Hiswi!’. One of the most unfortunate aspects of the American status quo is the constant ignorance about the people who lived in North America before western settlers crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The native tribes that inhabited America ...
Overview
Culture
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 V…
Name
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 …
History
The predominant theory regarding the settlement of the Americas date the original migrations from Asia to around 20,000 years ago across the Bering Strait land bridge, but one anthropologist, Otto von Sadovszky, claims that the Ohlone and some other northern California tribes descend from Siberians who arrived in California by sea around 3,000 years ago.
Burial practices
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 materia…
Etymology
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.
Divisions
Linguists identified eight regional, linguistic divisions or subgroups of the Ohlone, listed below from north to south:
• Karkin (also called Carquin): The Karkin resided on the south side of the Carquinez Strait. The name of the Carquinez Strait derives from their name. Karkin was a dialect quite divergent from the rest of the family.
Present day
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 Essel…