Muwekma Ohlone
The Muwekma Ohlone are an Indian tribe that is native to the San Francisco Bay area . The original settlement area extended to the regions of San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and parts of Napa, Santa Cruz, Solano and San Joaquin. The tribe was Christianized by the Spaniards in the 18th century. In the 19th century, at the time of the gold rush , their land was robbed by European / American settlers.
Historically, they were also referred to as Coastanoans because of the settlement area on the Pacific coast and assigned to the Penuti language family. They have been archaeologically detectable since the 8th century. It is believed that around the time of the first contact with Spaniards they lived in at least 50 individual village associations that used significantly different languages. These village structures were divided into about eight main groups.
Culture
Due to the mild climate in the coastal region, the male Ohlons typically did not wear clothes, while the women made a kind of skirt from rushes that covered the front and back of the body from the waist down. In bad weather they wore cloaks made of feathers from water birds or furs, including deer, rabbits and various marine mammals. Mud was also used to protect against the cold.
Body painting and tattoos showed the ethnicity and village affiliation. Stripes on the thighs, which are often seen in historical illustrations, are typical of Ohlone. Piercings in the ears were adorned with feathers, pearls, flowers and grass, and occasionally a piece of leg was worn in the septum by men . Other jewelry were necklaces with pearls, feathers and mussel shells.
The Ohlons built simple, temporary huts out of curved timbers that were covered with rushes or foliage. Occasionally large pieces of peeled bark from conifers were also used to cover the huts. They used rushes to build rafts similar to the South American balsa rafts .
They carved other tools and utensils from wood and seashells. They were also skilled basket weavers.
Web links
- Official Homepage of the tribe (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ^ National Park Service: Presidio of San Francisco - Indigenous Period
- ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the information on historical culture is based on: John Phillip Langelier & Daniel Bernard Rosen: El Presidio de San Francisco: A History under Spain and Mexico 1776-1846 . National Park Service, 1992. Prologue, pp. 5-7