History of the Ohlone

first published in the 2005 UCSC Disorientation Guide

The Hordean Ohlone People lived where this University now stands. As some sit in class contemplating progressive ideals and liberal leaning ideologies, it would benefit them, and more importantly the indigenous Ohlone alive today, to remember this land was stolen. To this day, the University of California at Santa Cruz exists as a direct result and modern projection of imperialism and white supremacy. This university is sullied in blood. Sadly, students remain complicit with the acts of genocide that the Ohlone have been and continue to be subject to, when they neglect to take action appropriate to what can only be termed a holocaust.

This article was not written as a definitive synthesis of Ohlone history. If that were my goal, it would either represent an extreme ignorance or complete delusion. I am not a Costanoan Ohlone, nor am I indigenous to North America at all. To put it nicely, I'm a foreigner. As much as I may despise the notion, I still reap material benefits from the slaughter of Native Californians. Most of the population, both "radical," and otherwise, lie inside this same hypocritical camp. Understanding this, I can only hope that my intention to provide some basic information, history, and analysis will not lead to further marginalization of Ohlone culture and existence. [1] I am not attempting to preach to the Ohlones about what their lives are like, or to reinterpret the history of their ancestors. I have no interest likewise, in idealizing their culture and stereotyping them as being a "pure" or "unspoiled" people, though we do have much to learn from them. In short, I do not want to promote more presumptuous and oppressive systems of thought... just some history and consideration that hopefully is a little more fair and constructive, and a little less racist than what has been written many times before, and perhaps to an audience who might not hear it otherwise.

Before recounting the past, I thought it seemed fitting to get an idea how the Ohlones are portrayed today. I included this quote from an article in the history section on About Santa Cruz.com, a website dedicated to attracting tourists to the area. "They [the Ohlone] left us something we can remember every time we visit the beaches, hike through the redwoods or walk the fertile valleys -- the Costanoan Ohlones left us a pristine, beautiful environment to call home. "

This quote, and specifically the euphemistic wording in the quote: "the Costanoan Ohlones left us a pristine, beautiful environment to call home," is good example of the dominant attitude regarding the geno/ethnocidal war the European colonizers waged against the Ohlone Peoples. Namely, that the process of extermination was essentially benign and unavoidable at best, and at worst, simply did not occur. It nonetheless remains true however, that this land was not left to us peacefully. It was stolen . It was expropriated.

It is not coincidental that the article about the Ohlones was found in the history section on the website. It seems that through mass murder, cultural appropriation and censorship, among other governmental mechanisms, the Ohlone peoples have been cast in the media as just that- history long past, as folklore, mascot and caricature, pioneer nostalgia, shadows; "Happy Birthday Santa Cruz, 202 years and going strong!"

An Incomplete Ohlone History

More than 10,000 Native Americans once lived in the coastal region stretching from Point Sur to the Monterey Bay. Before the advance of Spanish colonists Central California had the most populated community of indigenous peoples anywhere north of Mexico. The Spaniards who came in search of "savages" to "civilize," as well as labor and resources to exploit, arrived literally millennia after the original inhabitants of the area, the Costanoan, or, Ohlone People. [2] Among the 10,000 Ohlone, there were about forty different groups, forty distinct cultures. The Hordean Ohlone of what is known contemporarily as Santa Cruz, or, "Holy Cross," is but one. These groups inhabited different territory, had varying social practices and customs, as well as largely unique languages. Because of this, it is either ignorance or hyperbole to refer to the Ohlone as a tribe, completely aside from the racist origin of this term. Despite this, many anthropologists, archaeologists, and ethno-historians continue to do so. Still, it is possible to speak generally about the Ohlones, as so much more was held in common than was different, among the groups.

In relation to their environment, the Ohlones attitude could be best described as respect. While they too altered the landscape somewhat, their damaging impact on other wildlife was minimal to nil. Certainly, it was incomparable to the ecocidal projects and supposed zeniths known today as industrialism and Civilization. Perhaps the foremost aspect of Ohlone life that fostered respect for the natural world, was their direct and unmediated relationship with their bioregion, and more generally, the earth. Whether through fishing for salmon or sturgeon, gathering seeds or brome grass, or collecting clams or oysters, basic daily sustenance came with their volition and the direct use of their bodies in interaction with their environment. [3] More than this, every living and non-living thing was considered sacred. The earth was not a simple mass of objects or resources to be exploited, but a vast and intricate network which both provided the necessary amenities to live, and demanded respect and awe. The symbiotic interaction between human and other animal populations with plant life and each other, in tandem with the intimacy of the social relationships in the groups, begin to explain the harmony said to have been found in much of Ohlone life before invasion.

To further understand the deep bonds within Ohlone society, it's important to recognize that each tribe constituted between roughly two or three hundred people. There was virtually no leaving such a situation unless one became outcast completely. Reserved for the greedy or aggressive, such ostracization did occur, but was very rare. As the English explorer Captain Vancouver put it, the Ohlone were not, "stimulated to obtaining consequence among themselves." More clearly Margolin, author of The Ohlone Way, writes of greed: "Acquisition was not an Ohlone's idea of wealth or security." After a hunt, for example, the hunter would not prepare meat for himself, but would rather distribute the bounty to family and friends first. For this, the hunter would receive admiration and respect, as well as a kind of insurance that they would be treated with similar trust and benevolence. This is what would be recognized today as a "gift economy," a method for distribution of goods without bureaucracy, through a network of friends and family, otherwise known as kinship. We can see how this could likely lead to an individual who wouldn't see themselves as living in a rugged individualistic hyper-competitive world, but rather a world of collective security and mutual aid. Clearly this was unheard of to Europeans who felt that a strong (i.e. oppressive) government was the cornerstone of society, and that this state of relative anarchy was unfit for humankind.

The Mission Period (1697 - 1834)

The first response of the Ohlones on the coming of the somber gray-robed missionaries can best be described as fright and awe. The stability and seemingly unchanged quality of life that existed with the Ohlone for centuries was suddenly shocked into a new reality. A member of the Portola expedition wrote of the Ohlones reaction to the Franciscan Monks: "Without knowing what they did, some ran for their weapons, then shouted and yelled, and the women burst into tears." But this was to be only a minor hysteria compared to what was to befall the Ohlone in coming years. When the Missionaries appeared to intend no harm, the Ohlone treated the new-comers quite warmly," bearing gifts of fish seed cakes, roots, and deer or antelope meat."

Some people came voluntarily to the missions first, entranced by the novelty of the missionaries dress, their magic and metallurgy, their seeming benevolence. Others were captured through force. The mission project was created with the stipulation that the Natives would only be held captive and forced into cultural "assimilation" camps for a period of ten years, after which they would be "weaned away from their life of nakedness, lewdness and idolatry." Ten years of captivity and torture were just the beginning for the Ohlone, whose language was criminalized, who were forced to pray like white people, dress like white people, eat like white people, to raise cattle, abandon traditional native crafts, farm etc. Essentially, to abandon all their previous ways of living. In the Missions, they were baptized without knowledge of the implications of the ritual. If not before, then from that point on, the Spanish believed they had title over the Ohlones, could hold them without consent, and deprive them of any vestige of freedom, or their previous culture. If they attempted escape, a deployment of soldiers would likely find them, and capture them again. Routine escapees were," whipped, bastinadoed, and shackled, not only to punish them but to provide an example to the others." Soon, by torture and imprisonment, the Spanish postulated that these heathens would be transformed from bestias (beasts) to gente de razon (people of reason). A Missionary by the name of La Perouse described the missions as a cross between a monastery and a slave plantation:

We declare with pain that the resemblance [to slave colonies in Santo Domingo] is so exact that we saw both the men and women loaded with irons, while others had a log of wood on their legs: and even the noise of the lash might have assailed our ears as that mode of punishment is equally admitted...Corporal punishments are inflicted on the Indians of both sexes who neglect their pious exercises, and many faults which in Europe are wholly left to divine justice are here punished with irons.

Resistance to the Mission

Some Ohlones acknowledged that the only way they could preserve their way of life, was through the employment of political violence, also more favorably known as self defense. Certainly (much like today) law had little to offer the Ohlone, other than to reinforce their servility to the theocracy of the Mission system. As such, along with the consistent escapes from the Missions, other, more insurrectionary actions were taken by the Ohlones. As an Ohlone author put it on IndianCanyon.org:

They resisted in many ways the restrictions that the Padres seemed to think were desirable for their neophytes, willing or otherwise. Santa Cruz Mission was attacked by some indigenous resistance fighters who were pursuing their rights to life and liberty.

Phil Laverty wrote of the attack on Mission Santa Cruz:

On the night of December 14, 1793, Mission Santa Cruz was attacked and partially burned by members of the Quiroste tribe, an Ohlonean group [just twenty miles north of modern-day Santa Cruz]. Based on all available information, this occurrence appears to be the first and perhaps the only direct attack on a mission building in Central California during the Spanish era. Nearly two years of armed resistance on the part of members of the Quiroste [Ohlone] tribe preceded the attack, which was probably the first extended resistance against the Spanish in the entire San Francisco Bay Area.

Ohlone resistance was on too small a scale however, to make the critical difference. The only significant threat in the area, the Quiroste, were defeated by sheer force in numbers and a superior military apparatus. Another large blow to the health and morale of the Ohlone, were diseases such as influenza, smallpox, syphilis, measles and mumps. These often were intentionally spread by Europeans, and were much more devastating to the Ohlone due to the lack of immunity to such diseases. Death rates at the missions soared, while birth rates plummeted. This was partially a result of the isolation of women and men into separate facilities (prisons) which were intended to enforce strict chastity regulations. In just some sixty years, the missionary project left the Ohlone peoples almost completely decimated. Native arts like basket making were all but entirely forgotten. Native dialects became mixed and muddled, or were deserted entirely, forcibly replaced with the dominant language of the Spaniards. The gift and barter economy that existed for centuries at least, along with the intricate network of tribal relations and collective responsibilities shared by the Ohlones, had virtually disappeared.

The Mexican Era and Anglo Advance

After California was ceded to Mexico from Spain in the 1820s, the struggling Ohlones were jostled into a new, but equally disastrous position. The Missions were turned over to the Mexican state in 1834, and the Ohlone who had survived were now legally free, but without much of the knowledge or resources necessary to make it in the modern world (if this was something that was desired at all). Without a means to sustain themselves, some Indigenous Californians became servants to the Spanish, while others formed wandering bands who subsisted by hunting cattle, horses and sheep. This was their only option, as the elk and antelope had almost entirely disappeared. These bands of "outlaws" were themselves hunted and killed. At Mission Dolores in 1850, an old man speaks about his people:

I am very sad; my people were once around me like the sands of the shore- many, many. They have gone to the mountains- I do not complain: the antelope falls with the arrow. I had a son- I loved him. When the pale-faces came he went away; I know not where he is. I am a Christian Indian; I am all that is left of my people. I am alone.

With California's annexation to the U.S. in 1846, and the coming of Anglo settlers, extermination became more overt and publicly acceptable. Indian killing was a favorite pastime, and one subsidized by the U.S. Government. The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians led to looser protections for Native children already heavily exploited as young slaves and servants. This act also ensured that Indigenous People's were withheld status as legal persons, although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo already ostensibly secured Indigenous Californian's citizenship. With the Land Claims Act of 1851, most remaining Indigenous land was expropriated for the coming white settlers. Racism and hatred of California Indians led to the impossibility of their receiving fair trial, as virtually any white man would lie for another. The new inhabitants of California made their desire clear in this article from the Yreka Herald in 1853:

"we hope that the Government will render such aid as will enable the citizens of the north to carry on a war of extermination until the last redskin of these tribes has been killed. Extermination is no longer a question of time - the time has arrived, the work has commenced, and let the first man that says treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor."

Between 1850 and 1870 indigenous Californians experienced perhaps the most bloody and murderous times in their history, with squatters and supposed 'pioneers' tracking and assaulting any Native who could be found. In California, the population of 200,000 -300,000 California Natives in 1848, was reduced to 15,238 by 1890. As for the Ohlone, all 40 groups and almost all 10,000 people are gone. The last full-blooded Ohlone died recently.

The Modern Era

Yet, despite the centuries of torment and subjugation, the Ohlone are not dead. One example of a current Ohlone project is the Indian Canyon Ranch, which serves as an Indigenous cultural center and home for Native Americans of many tribal origins. Also hopeful is Quirina Luna-Costillas, who has studied the Mutsun Ohlone language extensively, and started a foundation to research and teach it to others. Some have revived the art of traditional basket making, storytelling and are writing about various aspects of Ohlone culture and his-story. These examples serve as a reminder of a living culture that has persevered, and a wake-up call to those of us who consider the Ohlones (if weÕve ever heard of them) to be deceased. As we are clearly not the rightful inhabitants of this of this land- unless right is defined by superior might and propensity for brutality- it would do us well to shed some of our haughtiness, and our sense of entitlement. We should Consider for a moment the courage of the Quiroste, and recognize that we are an intrinsic part of the process of genocide until we act concretely and directly to destroy it.