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Introduction
Left: Native Californian Languages from California Indians and Their Environment : An Introduction (ebook available through Santa Clara University Library).
Right: Native polities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area from California Indians and Their Environment : An Introduction (ebook available through Santa Clara University Library)
Before European contact in the second half of the 18th century, there were an estimated 300,000 native peoples living in California. In the San Francisco Bay Area there is evidence of aboriginal habitation for at least 10,000 years previous to the current day. The group of Native Americans generally defined as Ohlone inhabited most of the San Francisco Bay Area down to Monterey, excluding the North Bay, although recent opinion argues that people of Monterey/Mission Carmel (Rumsen) and San Jaun Bautista/Santa Cruz (Amah Mutsun) are politically distinctive enough to be differentiated from Ohlone. The Muwekma Ohlone subgroup is the largest politically cohesive modern group of Ohlone. They are centered around the SF Bay Area and their name means "people." People who identify as Ohlone trace their ancestry through the Missions Santa Clara, San Jose, and Dolores in San Francisco. The Ohlone have also been historically identified by the term Costanoan (a term considered offensive by many) and the term Tamien/Tamyen/Thámien. Costanoan comes from the Spanish "Costaño" (meaning people who live on the coast) and is a term that refers to their language as studied by the anthropologist John Peabody Harrington and has since fallen out of favor. Meanwhile, Tamien/Tamyen/Thámien Ohlone is a geographical term that most probably refers both to the triblet or band of Ohlone nearest to SCU and the name this triblet or band originally gave their land pre-contact. This is the region around the San Jose Airport. The VTA light rail station called Tamien Station honors this namesake.
In 21st century California, Ohlone work, live, and worship in modern day Silicon Valley and the surrounding region. While they have not received tribal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and do not have a reservation or land to call their own, individuals who identify as Ohlone subsist in the Bay Area and throughout the state of California—they are not extinct and were not eradicated by colonialism. Members host pow-wows and other events to reclaim and keep their culture alive.
This research guide is organized by time period: pre-contact, mission era, and post statehood to the present; but, there is overlap of resources within each of these categories. It combines locally held resources at Santa Clara University Library with websites, electronic articles, and archival material held at the Smithsonian and other institutions to provide depth to the topic.
Within each section there is a variety of types of sources, including primary and secondary sources. It is important to critically analyze secondary sources like books for bias. In the best cases, trained scholars analyze and interpret archival, archeological, ethnographic, historic, and natural evidence to propose conclusions about Ohlone culture. In the worst of cases, authors make generalizations about Ohlone culture not critically investigated, cited with primary evidence, or backed up by recent theories.
General Background Websites
- Ohlone Heritage HubWebsite created by the Community Heritage Lab to educate the SCU community about the Ohlone heritage of Santa Clara.
- Muwekma Ohlone Tribe WebsiteThe tribe's website is a great starting place for your research. In addition to linking out to other resources and giving rich historical and current day information, it is created by the tribe members themselves and therefore prioritizes hearing from the tribe directly rather than through post-colonial narratives and unaffiliated scholars.
- Tamien Nation WebsiteThe Tamien Nation identifies itself as the tribe most directly indigenous to Santa Clara County.
Image courtesy of Quirina Luna Geary, Chairwoman of the Tamien Nation
- The day natives showed Europeans SF Bay: ‘The end of their world, and they didn’t know it’Article from the San Francisco Chronicle published on the 250th anniversary of the "discovery" of the San Francisco Bay by Spanish explorers in November 1769.
- There Were Once More Than 425 Shellmounds in the Bay Area. Where Did They Go?General background article from KQED on the persistence of Ohlone culture in the Bay Area described through the lens of the archeological shellmounds.
Kanyon "Coyote Woman" Sayers-Roods Explains the term "Ohlone"
General Background Books
- Tamien: 6000 years in an American City byCall Number: Archives & Special Collections Folio E78.C15 W56 1978Publication Date: 1978
A Time of Little Choice by Call Number: E78.C15 M55 1995 (Main Stacks)ISBN: 0879191325Publication Date: 1995-01-01
The Ohlone Way by Call Number: ARS Main Stacks E78.C15 M3ISBN: 0930588029Publication Date: 1978-06-01
The Ohlone Past and Present by Call Number: ARS Main Stacks E99.C8744 O45 1994ISBN: 0879191309Publication Date: 1994-11-01
Narratives of Persistence: Indigenous Negotiations of Colonialism in Alta and Baja California by ISBN: 9780816540778Publication Date: 2020-04-21
The Costanoan - Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area by Call Number: ARS Reference Collection Z1210.C67 T45 1997ISBN: 0879191414Publication Date: 1997-01-01- A history of the Ohlone Indians of Mission Santa Clara by Call Number: Archives & Special Collections Reading Room E99.O32 B37 1990aPublication Date: 1990
We Are the Land: a history of native California by ISBN: 9780520976887Publication Date: 2021-04-20Before there was such a thing as "California," there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood--paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today's casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.
Archaeologies of Indigenous Presence by ISBN: 9780813070001Publication Date: 2022-02-15Challenging narratives of Indigenous cultural loss and disappearance that are still prevalent in the archaeological study of colonization, this book highlights collaborative research and efforts to center the enduring histories of Native peoples in North America through case studies from several regions across the continent. The contributors to this volume, including Indigenous scholars and Tribal resource managers, examine different ways that archaeologists can center long-term Indigenous presence in the practices of fieldwork, laboratory analysis, scholarly communication, and public interpretation. These conversations range from ways to reframe colonial encounters in light of Indigenous persistence to the practicalities of identifying poorly documented sites dating to the late nineteenth century. In recognizing Indigenous presence in the centuries after 1492, this volume counters continued patterns of unknowing in archaeology and offers new perspectives on decolonizing the field. These essays show how this approach can help expose silenced histories, modeling research practices that acknowledge Tribes as living entities with their own rights, interests, and epistemologies.
Search Strategies and Terms
In addition to the curated resources individually listed on this guide, researchers are encouraged to use traditional library resources such as OSCAR (the library's catalog), OneSearch, news sources, Google Scholar, and basic web searches to conduct their research.
Recommended keywords:
- Ohlone
- Muwekma Ohlone
- Tamien/Tamyen/Thámien (in BOOLEAN: "tamien or tamyen or thámien")
- Costanoan
- Santa Clara Indians
- San Jose Indians
Recommended subject headings if searching with a controlled vocabulary, e.g. in OSCAR or the Anthropology Plus database.
- Ohlone Indians
- Ohlone Indians Antiquities
- Ohlone Indians Antiquities Congresses
- Ohlone Indians Bibliography
- Ohlone Indians History
- Ohlone Language
Recommended library databases:
- OSCAR - SCU Library Catalog This link opens in a new window
- OneSearchSearch the library catalog plus the content of many of the library's full-text databases and electronic journals at once.
- Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new windowAnthropology Plus is the combination of two databases: Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and Anthropological Index from the Royal Anthropological Institute (UK). It is an index to journal articles, reports, and edited works in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and folklore. Coverage is from the late 19th century to the present.
- AnthroSource This link opens in a new windowAnthroSource is the online collection of all 32 journals published by the American Anthropological Association (AAA). With materials dating back more than 100 years, AnthroSource journals support the research, teaching and practicing needs of anthropologists.
- America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThis database covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to the present, this database also provides full-text coverage of more than 196 journals and more than 92 books.
- Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new windowThis database covers the history of the world (except the United States and Canada) from 1450 forward. It provides selective indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955, as well as access to the full text of more than 316 journals and more than 138 books.