More detailed Alameda historical ecology.
All four Alameda Shellmounds.
Featuring Alameda’s Ancient Live Oak Forest, Historic Shoreline, and Bay Area Historic Wetlands layers.
All juxtaposed against the modern day landscape to provide accurate scale and positioning.
Available in several sizes.
More Detailed Historic Geography
Because of the juxtaposition of the historic peninsula with it’s present day silhouette, it is much easier to see which parts of Alameda were physically connected and formed the peninsula more recently known as the “Encinal”.
Both Alameda and Oakland are in a region referred to as Xučyun (also known as “Huchiun”.) Xučyun is part of the ancestral homeland of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. Muwekma have lived in the Bay Area for over 10,000 years.
Includes All Four Alameda Shellmounds
For the first time, all four of the Alameda Shellmounds have been put onto one map. Most people only know about the shellmound on Mound Street. But there are more shellmounds, in Alameda. There were over 425 shellmounds in the Bay Area. Including Alameda’s largest shellmound, at the foot Chestnut.
Why is this important?
- The existence of the three other Alameda Shellmounds was overlooked by all of Alameda’s previous historians*, including long-time (since retired) curator of the Alameda Museum: George Gunn.
- From 1948, to 2020: the Alameda Museum falsely identified the First Alamedans as “a branch of Miwok”, instead of “Costanoan” or Ohlone.
- The Alameda Native History Project is responsible for stepping forward and correcting the record, and educating the public about the real Alameda Native History.
This map proves that Alameda History is more than Victorian houses.
See also: Shellmounds – What Are Shellmounds?
Features:
Alameda’s Ancient Live Oak Forest
This place we call Alameda was once called “La Bolsa de Encinal”. Meaning, “the Encinal forest”. Because the peninsula was host to a verdant, “ancient”, Live Oak forest. (The forest still exists. It just looks different.)
Many of the first accounts of the historic peninsula use rather idyllic, and paradisaic language to describe the rich pre-contact ecosystem that thrived here.
Alameda was once referred to as a “Garden City”. This is the place where the Loganberry was supposedly born.
Historic Shoreline
tl;dr : Everyone wants to know where the landfill is. [There! I said it, okay?] They don’t even really care where Alameda used to be connected to Oakland. Or about the ancient whirl pool in la bahia de san leandro. But, whatever.
Look closer, and you can see the footprints of present day buildings. That’s the landfill.
For real though, I made this layer using pre-1900 shoreline vector data I compiled for the Bay Area region, and stitched together.
Bay Area Historic Wetlands layers
In Version 1, I made a kind of sloppy polygon with historical shoreline vectors, and painted it green. It was a good placeholder for the historic marshes and wetlands of the Bay Area.
Version 2 features the finely detailed historic wetlands layer created for the Bay Area Shellmounds Maps. It features very precise cut-outs for historic creeks, channels and waterways; and features full-coverage of the Bay Area region.
If you want some actual historical eco-data, check out the San Francisco Estuary Institute. They have some brilliant historical ecology GIS you would probably love, if you’ve read this far.
The Alameda Shellmound Map, Version 2, is ground-breaking in its completeness and exquisite detail.
Available Now!
Printed in vivid color, on premium paper. Purchase through the Alameda Shellmounds Map square payment link. 10% of all proceeds from Alameda Shellmounds Map sales go to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area.
[Footnote: Imelda Merlin mentioned numerous shellmounds in her Geology Master Thesis, but none of her assertions were backed up with any relevant citations. And geology is not archaeology, ethnology, or anthropology, the areas of study that normally concern themselves with Tribal Cultural Resources like shellmounds.
Furthermore, the famous “Imelda Merlin Shellmound Map” was actually a map of Live Oak trees present in Alameda at the time Merlin wrote her thesis (in 1977).
The “Map of Whitcher’s Survey of ‘The Encinal’ in 1853. In Alameda City Hall.”, cited on page 104 of Merlin’s thesis, has never been found by Alameda City Hall, the Alameda Free Library, or the Alameda Museum.
Certainly this means Imelda Merlin has failed to meet the burden of proof required for institutions like Alameda Museum to take reliance upon her claims re: Whitcher’s Survey, and locations of any mounds. Yet, somehow, Merlin’s geology thesis was Alameda Museum’s sole reference regarding shellmounds. (For years Imelda Merlin’s geology thesis was viewed as the authoritative source of information about Alameda shellmounds.)]
Decolonize History
One of the ways Alameda Native History Project decolonizes history is by interrogating the record. This means tracking down and reading citations. Critically evaluating reports and studies for bias. And calling out poor research, and prejudiced conclusions for what they are.
We decolonize history by updating the maps and diagrams of our past. Producing accurate, fact-based educational and reference materials to replace the biased and inaccurate educational products–which are still misinforming our schoolchildren and the greater public today.
By providing a more nuanced and comprehensive perspective; and doing away with the old, over-copied handouts from decades past: we are able to shed the misinformed, and racist, stereotypes and quackery that typify generations which brought us things like: “kill the indian, save the man”, Jim Crow, and “Separate But Equal”.
We vigorously challenge the cognitive dissonance of so many California Historians, asking “Where did all the Indians go?”, at a time when the entire United States had declared war on Native Americans. … Including the first Governor of California, who called for “war of extermination” against California Native Americans.
These ideas, stereotypes, attitudes, and beliefs have managed to propagate themselves time and time again in the textbooks and lesson plans used to “educate” countless generations of Americans.
Isn’t it time to set the record straight?
👉🏼 Your purchase of the Alameda Shellmound Map supports our mission of decolonizing history. 🙌🏼
