Tag: bay area history

  • Shellmounds: Spanish and American Influence on Indigenous Burial Practices and Shellmound Use

    A shellmound is a graveyard, a mortuary complex, an ancient structure. It’s a place where the first peoples who live along the coasts and rivers of California, used to bury their dead. This article briefly explores why that is.

    Spanish Influence on Indigenous Use of Shellmounds

    This changed when Spain Conquistador’s invaded the San Francisco bay area, on June 27, 1776, and established what’s known now as The Presidio, in San Francisco, California. [On July 4th, 1776, thirteen British colonies in North American declared their independence, and formed the United States.] Three months later, on October 9, 1776, is when Mission San Francisco de Assisi was founded and missionization of the Bay Area officially began.

    This missionization of local indigenous people can be characterized by the abduction, forced baptism, and slavery of Indigenous people by Spanish Priests and Conquistadors. And, the outright theft of natural resources (like food) which indigenous people had helped cultivate and depended upon for all of their food, medicine, building materials, etc.

    In spite of the homefield advantage, and larger numbers, indigenous people could not defeat the colonizing Spanish force.

    Spanish conquistadors were cruel, paranoid, psychopathic, mass murdering kleptomaniacs. Their expeditions were marked by massacres of unarmed people; looting of villages’ water, food and gold; and the enslavement of surviving indigenous people. Indigenous objections to the Spanish invaders were often met with attacks on villages, and public executions–a fear tactic meant to terrorize local indigenous people into submission.

    Spanish Missions are places where indigenous people were brainwashed into accepting their slavery and the belief that “indigenous people are inferior to Spanish” colonizers, conquistadors, and especially clergy. Indigenous people were indoctrinated into the Catholic labor system by Clergy through coercion, torture, and threat. And reinforced with food, personal living quarters, better jobs, and some form of acceptance into the Spanish way of life.

    When Spanish colonizers had ruined the ecosystem by grazing, logging, razing, and waste, indigenous people found themselves with little choice but to join the missions or flee to places outside of the reach of the mission system. (In reality, no Indigenous Californians were safe from the missions, except those in the far North of California, where Missions did not exist.)

    Because the Missions were located in Central Areas; and because of the Area of Influence Spanish Invaders were able to exert dominance over was so vast (due to horses); indigenous people of the area known as the Bay Area were forced to abandon their burial practices because they had to abandon the land their graveyard was situated upon.

    This meant that indigenous people had to figure out how to bury their dead using the resources found away from the coasts and rivers they were used to.

    It also meant that, indigenous people were being buried in graveyards at Catholic Missions all around the Bay Area.

    American Influence on Indigenous Use of Shellmounds

    Soon, American aggressors would begin to appear in what they though was their frontier land; an “Indian Frontier”. This was during the time of the “Wild West”, when Indian Wars were being actively fought.

    The Indian Wars would be romanticized for years to come in newspaper stories, and on the screen especially during the 1950’s with such films/shows as:

    • Winchester ’73
    • Gunsmoke
    • The Lone Ranger
    • Davey Crockett
    • They Died with Their Boots On

    But there was nothing romantic about the real story of the California Genocide.

    Americans would purposely destroy or vandalize sacred sites for entertainment or out of spite. One famous shellmound, in Alameda, California, was used to pave Bay Farm Road in 1908. The bodies of ancestors were routinely ground up and used as aggregate for cement, or even calcium enrichment for roses and other flowers (instead of eggshells.)

    The vandalization, desecration and disrespect of Native American Graves and Bodies continues to this day.

    Militias were paid by the United States Government, and (later) the State of California, to hunt and kill all indigenous people. The United States Army “expeditions”, especially what they liked to call “punitive expeditions”, were marked by the execution of indigenous men, and the rape, torture, and mass-murder of indigenous women and children.

    In 1848, the area now known as California was ceded by Mexico, at the end of the Mexican-American war. Two years later, California would officially earn statehood, and its first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, during his first State of the State address mentioned the California genocide explicitly.

    “A war of extermination will continue … until the Indian race becomes extinct,” Peter Hardeman Burnett, the First Governor of California continued, “the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert.”

    Now, all Indigenous people were actively under threat by all white people, who were paid for each “Indian” they killed, baby they stole, or person forced into slavery via “prisoner debt” to white business and property owners. Prison debt was money owed to a person or business for a crime committed against it. These were often times for extraordinary amounts of money which the debtor was only able to pay through involuntary labor or servitude. The prison debt system was created to control Indigenous People, and People of Color, and prevent them from gaining any foothold or capital in a society and world which white people viewed themselves as being solely entitled to because of their religious or racial beliefs.

    Once Native Californians were being displaced, forced onto reservations, into indebted servitude, boarding schools, orphanages; and their burial places forced abandoned, and desecrated by American invaders. Many indigenous people began the practice of cremation. One of the most common reason for why someone is cremated was because they wouldn’t be able to be buried with their ancestors, next to their loved ones, or with their family or tribe. It was better to live the afterlife free of their body than to have it defiled.

  • SF Bay Area Shellmounds Are Some of the Most Endangered Cultural Resources in the World

    Save Shellmounds Not Parking Lots campaign image of archaeologists sifting through soil in a cemetery. Title reads: “You wouldn’t let them dig up your grandma. Why would you let them dig up ours?”

    The San Francisco Bay Area had well over 425 shellmounds.

    Gabriel Duncan, from the Alameda Native History Project, estimates the true number of shellmounds around the S.F. Bay Area’s shoreline is closer to seven or eight-hundred shellmounds, which existed before European invasion and colonization.

    Shellmounds are ancient burial grounds used by the First People of the San Francisco Bay Area for over 10,000 years. Shellmounds form ancient mortuary complexes created by Ohlone, Miwok, and Karkin people. Shellmounds were not village sites; but they were places where ceremonies dedicated to indigenous ancestors were performed; and large seasonal gatherings were held nearby to celebrate the unity, harmony, and balance indigenous people share with the earth, each other, our ancestors, and all creation.

    Grave robbing by universities and treasure hunters; as well as desecration by railroad companies, oil refineries, and quarry operators, has made the remaining San Francisco Bay Area Shellmounds one of the most endangered cultural resources in the world.

    One of the chief defilers of shellmounds are quarry companies. These companies are still operating today, at places like the San Rafael Rock Quarry–which is home to no less than five shellmounds; and Dutra Materials Quarry, in Richmond, California–an area dotted with the highest concentration of shellmounds in the East Bay.

    But not much is being said about the historical and ongoing desecration and defiling of indigenous bodies to build the infrastructure and institutions all around us.

    This is surprising, considering the amount of time, effort, and fundraising which has gone into “preserving” a parking lot in West Berkeley, and protesting a thriving and established shopping mall in Emeryville, California.

    While other cities and corporations used shellmounds to level their train tracks, and pack for roadways: the Angel Island Immigration Station is one of the best surviving answers to the question of “What Happened to the Shellmounds?”

    Angel Island was home to about four shellmounds. All of which were quarried and used as a base for the concrete to construct the immigration buildings now standing as Angel Island State Park. However, there is no mention of this fact in the park brochure, or uttered by any tour guide on the island.

    The historical and continuing desecration goes unspoken, and right before our very eyes; all over the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Instead of directly addressing and challenging the corporations and cities responsible for the desecration of Ohlone, Miwok, and Karkin burial grounds, and sacred sites: advocates and allies are being fooled into believing these parking lots (in West Berkeley), and post-industrial waste sites (in East Oakland) are the priority for the fight against desecration of indigenous land. This is not true.

    “Saving” parking lots is not an indigenous priority over stopping the desecration of indigenous sacred sites today.

    Optic-driven, PR events, like urban gardens, and cultural easements to use our own land for free, do not address the fact that shellmounds are being quarried into extinction. That these ancient structures are being erased by shoreline development, and urbanization of the San Francisco Bay Area waterfront.

    This situation will not change; the desecration will not stop, until our supporters and allies start to critically assess the information being given to them by non-profit corporations trying to fundraise for their money, and compare that with information provided by scholars, experts, and bona fide tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Save shellmounds. Not parking lots.

  • Who are the people who inhabited the area now known as the City of Alameda?

    A Frequently Asked Question about Ohlone People, the First Alamedans, and the Tribe Fighting for Federal Re-Recognition.

    This is one such reply.

    (more…)
  • Milliken 2009, “A Time of Little Choice”, Has Just Been Liberated

    Anthropology, Archaeology, and Ethnology have always been competitive fields. In the East Bay, Native American Graves Consulting is a booming, and exclusive business.

    And, the documented existence of the Ohlone people, who have occupied the East Bay continuously, for thousands of years, hinges upon the information locked away behind paygates; only being referenced by Developers, and City Attorneys.

    The exclusivity of this information has been exploited for money. And used to bolster false claims of sovereignty.

    But, let me be clear:
    The only reason you have this information is because you robbed our ancestors’ graves.

    On a very basic level–without being reductive–these academic papers; all of the information; tangible and non-tangible things that have been developed, derived, or created from the desecration of our ancestors….

    All of that still belongs to us.

    ” A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1810″

    Randal Milliken, 2009