The People of the Land, Part 3: Maidu and Ohlone

    Maidu were the people of the foothills from the Cosumnes River to the Feather River, or roughly Elk Grove area north to Chico. This area covers most of greater Sacramento, Yuba City, Marysville, and Oroville. Like most Indians in California, acorns were a huge part of their diet, but even more so than other tribes. Acorns replaced the position of meat as being the major food source. This is probably due to the fact that black acorn trees are very abundant in Gold Country. They constructed large granaries to grind the nuts into flour to make bread. Some root vegetables were also eaten and some deer, elk, and antelope. When the 49ers (not the football team) first arrived at the gold fields, they called Maidu "Digger Indians" because of their use of roots. They practiced Kuksu religion like other tribes of Northern California and lived in huts over a dug-out circle three feet deep. Interesting fact: while the other tribes we've talked about saw the coyote as the greatest of the animals or even worthy of worship as the creator, the Maidu viewed them like tribes from the Plains or the Northwest--as tricksters. When the argonauts first arrived in their land, Maidu were pushed to the edges of their territory or even outside of it. Today, most of them live assimilated lives or live on rancherias outside of Susanville, Auburn, Shingle Springs, and a few other places.
     Ohlone are the more interesting cousins of Maidu, if only because we just know more about them. Ohlone were spread out across most of the Bay Area: all of East Bay and even across Carquinez Straits into the Vallejo/Benicia area, all of Santa Clara County, all of the Peninsula, all of Monterey Bay, San Benito County, and even down the Salinas Valley to just past Soledad. They were always one of the largest and strongest tribes, even today with a membership of almost 4,000 and hundreds of thousands of other descendants.
     Their culture is very interesting because it is varied. In the inland areas of their territory, they ate acorns and berries and hunted deer like other tribes. On the coast, especially in the Monterey area, they ate shellfish and sea lions. Others along streams fished for salmon and perch. The ones in the Mount Diablo area actually hunted grizzly bear! Their government was very structured. Their was no central ruling body over all Ohlone, but they were separated into groups of 50-500, each with a local chief. They conducted trade, intermarried, and came together for religious ceremonies. In most areas they lived in tule reed huts, but in areas where redwood trees were available, the huts were wood. In the center of a village was a sweathouse. Men did not wear clothing except for winter when they would wear animal skins. Women wore tule reed skirts, deerskin dresses, and sometimes redwood bark skirts. Ohlone practiced Kuksu but also thought of Coyote as a trickster. They believed that a falcon named Kaknu had been the creator and also told stories of Hummingbird who would give Coyote a taste of his own medicine and trick him.
     Ohlone were first contacted by the Spanish when Sebastian Vizcaíno landed at Monterey in 1602. A mission was not established in the area until the Carmel Mission in 1770. After the secularization of the missions in the 1830s, the remaining 800-900 Ohlone moved to rancherias such as Alisal on the Bernal Rancho Valle de San José and Niles Rancheria in modern-day Fremont. Another Ohlone area was Carmel Valley. Helen Hunt Jackson wrote about her visits to these rancherias in 1883. The last speaker of an Ohlone language was Isabella Meadows who died in 1939. Today, the Ohlone are very vocal political activists for native rights and public education of native Californian cultures.