Yerba Beuna

Preface: Continued from the previous chapter.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the San Francisco Peninsula was home to the Ohlone people, sometimes referred to as the Costanoan. “Ohlone” is the modern academic term for a network of Indigenous tribes living between the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay. The word “Ohlone” itself comes from one of those tribes, Oljon or Olhone. The Spanish originally called them Costanoan, meaning “people of the coast,” from the Spanish los costanos. In the 20th century, as part of broader efforts toward cultural self-determination and identity restoration, scholars and Native communities began to favor the term Ohlone.

The Ohlone were not a single tribe but a network of roughly 50 to 60 small tribes or villages, each with its own language, chief, and territory. The basic social unit was the village or tribelet, each of which controlled a defined area of land. Small groups might consist of only a few dozen people, while larger ones could have several hundred. On average, each tribe controlled several permanent villages and a number of seasonal camps.

Each tribe was led by a male or female headman (or headwoman)—sometimes called ruk or kaknan. The chief was not a monarch but rather a coordinator and resource distributor. Their power was based on kinship, wealth, and social reputation. Chieftainship was often hereditary, so lineage mattered greatly. Wealth meant things like shell beads (used as currency) and hunting resources. Social status came from one’s ability to mediate disputes and lead ceremonies. These three elements—politics, money, and relationships—remain recognizable forms of power even today. Within this system, the chief managed communal storage and redistribution—controlling acorns, dried fish, and other shared reserves—and presided over weddings, funerals, and festivals. They also represented their tribe in trade, alliances, and intermarriage with neighboring groups. This decentralized leadership structure allowed the Ohlone to maintain regional peace and ecological balance without a central government.

Linguistically, the Ohlone formed a language complex, not a single language family. According to linguistic studies by Catherine Callaghan and Randall Milliken, the Ohlone languages were divided into eight major dialect regions. Briefly:

• Chochenyo, spoken in the East Bay (modern Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont), was closest to Northern Miwok and is the primary language revived by the Muwekma Ohlone today.

• Ramaytush, spoken on the San Francisco Peninsula (San Francisco to Daly City), was the first to be assimilated after the Spanish missions; this was the language of the Mission Dolores community.

• Tamyen, spoken in the Santa Clara Valley (San Jose area), was tied to the Santa Clara Mission.

• Awaswas, spoken in the Santa Cruz Mountains and coastal areas, overlapped linguistically with Mutsun to the south.

• Rumsen, spoken in the Monterey and Carmel region, was the first to encounter the Spanish (Mission Carmel, 1770).

• Mutsun, spoken around Gilroy and Hollister, survived the longest and is now being revived by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

• Chalon, spoken in the Salinas Valley, blended features of the northern and southern branches.

• Karkin, spoken around the Carquinez Strait (Martinez, Benicia), was small but distinct—considered the northernmost Ohlone dialect.

This diversity reflects a broader pattern of Californian Indigenous society: multilingual, highly localized, and defined by ecological boundaries.

Each tribe’s territory covered anywhere from a few to several dozen square miles, typically bounded by rivers, ridges, or coastlines. These boundaries followed ecological logic: each domain included oak groves, wetlands, grasslands, and creeks—ensuring food sources year-round (acorns, fish, berries, migratory deer). The borders were defined by the land itself; visiting neighboring territories required ritual permission or tribute. For example, the Yelamu tribe in northern San Francisco fished along the bay and ocean, while the Tuibun tribe near modern Fremont gathered acorns inland. They traded and intermarried—but never crossed boundaries without ceremony.

The Ohlone tribes were interconnected through networks of trade and intermarriage. They exchanged shell beads, feathers, salt, flint, stone mortars—even obsidian imported from the distant Sierra Nevada. Marriage rules strictly forbade unions within the same tribe—two childhood friends could not marry (“RIP to childhood sweethearts”). Marriages between different tribes maintained linguistic and cultural exchange, often accompanied by reciprocal trade, shared feasts, and festival visits. Neighboring tribes also gathered for seasonal ceremonies, such as the acorn harvest festival, healing rites, and communal dances. Together, these systems formed a kind of decentralized federation—no empire, no single language, yet deep cooperation across ecological and spiritual lines.

Today, many Bay Area Ohlone descendants still identify with their ancestral tribes: Muwekma (Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone), Amah Mutsun (Mutsun-speaking Ohlone), Rumsen Ohlone, and Esselen (closely related by geography though distinct linguistically). They are actively reviving and preserving Ohlone culture—reconstructing languages from old mission records, forming tribal councils and educational programs, organizing “First Dance” ceremonies, and advocating for land back and shellmound protection in urban planning.

In the 1500s, the two Iberian maritime powers—Spain and Portugal—divided the “New World.” The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) split the globe in two, granting Spain most of the Americas. Spain’s early colonial goals were to seize the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru and establish a Pacific trade route linking the Americas to its colonies in the Philippines. “California” was never the original goal—it was an unknown northern frontier.

The name “California” first appeared in a 1510 Spanish romance novel, Las sergas de Esplandián (“The Adventures of Esplandián”), describing a mythical island of gold ruled by Amazonian queens. When Spanish explorers in the 1530s reached what is now Baja California, they mistook it for that legendary “Island of California” and kept the name. Only a century later did they realize it was part of the mainland.

In the 1530s, conquistador Hernán Cortés, after conquering Mexico, sent expeditions northwest to explore. They reached Baja California but failed to colonize it due to drought and harsh conditions. In 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed north from Acapulco, mapping the California coast for the first time. He named many landmarks—Monterey (after the viceroy of Mexico), Carmel Bay, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and a distant cape he called Punta de San Francisco. Vizcaíno praised Monterey Bay as a “safe and noble harbor” and recommended future settlement—but no one returned for 160 years, until the 1760s.

By the mid-18th century, Spain’s empire in North America was under threat. To the north, Russia was moving south from Alaska, establishing fur-trading outposts. To the east, Britain and France were expanding their colonies. Spain feared losing the Pacific coast and decided to occupy Alta California—not by war, but by faith: “To conquer the land with the cross, not the sword.” Thus began the California Mission System.

Spain officially arrived in California in 1769. The expedition was led by Governor Gaspar de Portolá and Franciscan friar Junípero Serra, accompanied by soldiers, Indigenous auxiliaries, cowherds, and women—about 200 people total. They marched north from Loreto, Baja California, establishing outposts and missions along the way.

When the Spanish founded the missions, they sought to control the villages by co-opting local chiefs. Missionaries baptized leaders, gave them Christian names, and pressured them to “dedicate their lands to God.” This dismantled traditional authority:the village-based political systems collapsed, and Indigenous society was reorganized into the mission’s rigid hierarchy. For instance, Chief Hilisime of the Yelamu (San Francisco area) was among the first baptized at Mission Dolores, but within years, disease wiped out most of his people. He was remembered in mission records as a “faithful Indian convert,” yet in reality, he had lost all political power.

The mission system’s core goal was to convert Indigenous peoples into Catholics and laborers. Tens of thousands of Ohlone, Tongva, and Chumash people were forced into mission life—baptized, renamed, forbidden from speaking their languages. They farmed, herded, and built during the day, and were confined inside mission walls at night. Disease, malnutrition, and punishment led to staggering death rates. For Indigenous people, this meant cultural and demographic devastation; for Spain, it was seen as the triumph of “civilization and order.”

In 1776—the same year as the American Declaration of Independence—the Spanish built their sixth mission on the San Francisco Peninsula: Mission San Francisco de Asís, commonly called Mission Dolores. That same year, they also established the Presidio of San Francisco at the northern tip of the peninsula, a military fort to guard against British and Russian encroachment.During the Spanish era, the area was known as Yerba Buena, meaning “good herb.” In 1846, American forces occupied it and renamed it San Francisco. Just two years later, the Gold Rush transformed it from a village of 800 into an international port of over 30,000. Along the waterfront rose a jumble of ships, traders, brothels, gambling dens, and theaters—a city born wild, adventurous, chaotic, and inclusive from the very beginning.