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| Before Westerners arrived, the Miwok enjoyed thousands
of peaceful years of in the pristine beauty of Angel Island. Native
American use of the island began when people first came to live in the San
Francisco Bay Area. The Coast Miwok Indians, who lived in what is now
Marin County, reached the island with boats made from tule reeds. Some of
these boats could carry eight to ten people. Though they tended to become
waterlogged after prolonged use, these boats were adequate for short trips
because their lightness made them fast and maneuverable. Long poles were
used to propel the boats in shallow water; double ended paddles were used
in deep water. Miwok Indians established camps at
what we know today as Ayala Cove, Camp Reynolds, Fort McDowell, and the
Immigration Station. The Indians using the island were expert at fishing,
and also hunted deer, seals, sea lions, and sea otter. Several kinds of
fish and shellfish were available year-round, and salmon and other highly
prized fish were seasonally plentiful. The annual spawning runs were made
though Raccoon Strait, just offshore from Angel Island. The Indians also
hunted duck and other sea fowl, and gathered acorns, buckeyes, and other
seed crops, as well as certain roots and leaves, in order to round out
their varied diet. |
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| The Miwok had an animistic philosophy: they
wanted no walls and trod lightly on the land, leaving no footsteps, always
apologizing to the spirits in animals or nature whenever they disturbed
them in whatever fashion. There is no evidence the Miwok had words
for such concepts as war or prostitution. Their oral history was
transmitted through the stories of the elders and shamans. Tribal
boundaries were taught to children by rote. |
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| Miwok tribelets preferred to live in villages of about
one hundred persons. They kept their villages small in order to
enjoy living at the peak of the environment around them without the need
to destroy. There was a male elder in each village with a woman who was
responsible for organizing the ceremonies. The Shamans provided both negative and positive
rituals. They used local plants to create trances. It was
accepted that the Shaman had the power to cure, kill, predict the future,
and start the rains. |
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| Only temporary houses were built on Angel Island: they
did not live there permanently. Houses were made of branches covered with
mats of tule. Each house had a small acorn house constructed on legs
in order to store the acorns they would collect and protect from deer and
insects. The Miwoks had no pottery, made no
fabric, and planted no seeds. They kept no domestic animals.
Instead, they were gatherers, fisherman, hunters, and basket makers.
Several middens on Angel Island have produced bones,
shell money from clams, abalone jewelry, skins, snail shell beads, mortars
and pestles, wreckage from ships, and redwood driftwood from crematoriums.
Obsidian points used in arrows were common. |
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| Men and women had special roles, but equal standing.
In the winter, men would make foot drums, rattles, reed flutes, and bone
whistles. They would work on their boats, and hunted and fished all
year long, the prey depending on the season. Women would make tule
mats, baskets, collect beads, feathers, and shells, and prepare skins to
make both ceremonial clothing and capes for wear during the cool season.
Women also made tule skirts, which was generally the only clothing they
wore, along with their jewelry. In the spring,
women would collect greens such as lettuce, clover, and nettle, to
supplement their winter diet. Miner's lettuce would be collected and
placed near a red ant hill. The ants walked on the leaves and exuded
a vinegar-like substance, which became the Miwok's salad dressing.
In the summer, they collected seeds from wildflowers to make pinole, the
basic ingredient for their bread. Autumn brought intensive labor for
the whole family, as many hundreds of pounds of acorns had to be collected
from the oak trees, sorted, prepared, and stored for the year ahead.
Angel Island provided excellent nutrition for the Miwok. Plants and
wildlife provided everything they needed.
The Miwok did not appear to differentiate between work
and play. Everyone down to the smallest child was productive.
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| Hunting required extensive preparation, building the
sweat lodge so that the hunters could get rid of the human smell.
They made deer heads to wear, pulled bows and arrows through the smoke to
take away the human odor, and rubbed their bodies with angelica and
mugwort. The philosophy of the hunt was retreat and lure, rather
than chase and flee. They caught birds using baskets, put plant
bulbs in the water to stun the fish, and prepared various types of nets to
catch salmon, geese, seagulls, and other wildlife.
Food preparation required intensive labor. Cooking
was mainly done in water-proof baskets. Rocks were heated, mush and
water were placed in the basket and rocks added carefully, being replaced
as they grew cold. Meat, fowl, and fish were broiled over fires.
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Other Plant Uses:
| Many plants on Angel Island were also used for health
care. Galls from oak trees were chewed as their toothpaste, tea from
iris bulbs was used for kidney stones, acorn mush was set aside to age and
the mildew-like substance that resulted was scraped off and used like
penicillin. Ceanothus leaves were used like tobacco. |
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Western Encounters and Influence:
| In 1579, Chaplain Fletcher with the Sir Francis Drake
wrote: "They are of a free and loving nature, without guile or
treachery." In 1775, Father Vincente with Captain Ayala said,
" I found the Indians very humorous, with courteous manner, mimicking my
prayers with chuckles --- they acted like tender lambs, had fine stature,
clean and of good color, very elegant of figure --- about four hundred
naked men appeared." There were major differences
in how various western groups treated the Miwok.
A letter from a Russian colonel to the lieutenant he is
sending out to trade with the people: "Strictly forbid and punish the
slightest rudeness toward the local inhabitants by your men. Seek to
win their friendship and love in every way, by various favorable
enticements stemming from the courtesy and love of mankind .
Strictly forbid anyone to accept the smallest trifle as a gift, not even a
morsel of food, but pay for everything with whatever seems appreciable to
them. Train them to consider the Russians as benevolent friends."
The Spanish needed labor for cattle lands and charged
their nutrition to western , thereby weakening their immune systems and
making them vulnerable to diseases, which killed many of them.
The Americans started boarding schools and brought
children from the villages with the intent of taking the Indian out of the
Indian. Several still alive today have stories from their boarding
school days. If you would like to learn more and share your
knowledge with others, please consider becoming a
volunteer! |
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