The Palo Alto History Project

The Ohlone Indians

2006

The Ohlone Indians: A Tale of Woe

The history of the Palo Alto area is indeed rich, but most it actually belongs to the Muwekma Ohlone Indians
--- at least 5,000 years worth. The tale of the Muwekma Ohlone’s demise has a sad and familiar ring.
Ohlone Indians lived along the San Francisquito Creek in the Bay Area and Palo Alto until 1769 when the
Spaniards arrived. Within a seventy year period, the Indians were rounded up, taught Christianity, made to
live and work under Spanish rule, and eventually succumbed to disease.

The beginning of the end for the Ohlone came on November 6th, 1769, when a Spanish officer, Don Gaspar
de Portola, brought a band of scouts and Franciscan fathers into Palo Alto. They were looking for Monterey
harbor, where they planned to meet two supply ships and establish the first Northern California mission.
They camped for five days along the creek under what is now “El Palo Alto.” Friendly Indians brought the
Spaniards black tamales and atole, a kind of porridge, while they waited for scouts sent ahead.

The Spaniards arrival would not bode well for the Ohlone. The Franciscan fathers soon tried to convert the
Indians to Christianity and teach them the manners, morals, and crafts of Europe. The fathers envisioned the
Indians as future loyal subjects of the church and the Spanish crown. Most were transferred to live and work
in the missions at Santa Clara and San Francisco.

Here they were baptized, given Spanish names and mixed with over twenty other tribes, all with various
customs and languages. Once at the mission, the they were not allowed to leave. Detachments of soldiers
were stationed at each to force the Indians to remain on the mission. In 1795, the system broke down. Too
many Indians were brought to the missions in a short period and an epidemic and severe food shortages
resulted. The cramped conditions in the missions contributed to disease and lower birth rates among the
Ohlone. Syphilis and other illnesses caused many miscarriages, still-borns and infant deaths. In 1806, the
missions were hit with a devastating measles outbreak. Within March and May of 1806, one quarter of the
mission Indian population of the San Francisco Bay Area died out.

When the missions became secularized in 1834, life did not get much better for the Ohlone. They were cast
out to fend for themselves. Reorganizing their previous life was impossible. By then, a whole generation of
western settlers had imposed its culture, economics and acquisition policies on the land. When Americans
arrived in 1840 a new wave of diseases swept through the Ohlone. By 1852, they numbered just 1,000 and
falling. By 1880, the Northern Ohlone were all but extinct and the Southern Ohlone were mostly were
homeless and landless, living on the edge of towns working as ranch hands.

Before the Spanish arrived, the Muwekma Ohlone lived in self-sufficient villages of about 100 to 250. They
were hunter-gatherers who kept busy, honed their skills, lived frugally and ate omnivorously. Hunger always
loomed as a threat, but by harvesting heavy crops of acorns and catching waterfowl feeding in the nearby
Baylands, the culture survived.

In the course of Palo Alto’s growth, forty mounds containing Ohlone bones have been found. Many bones
have been returned to modern-day Ohlone for reburial. Stanford University has maintained artifact research
sites near Sand Hill Road, some of which were the subject of great controversy when Stanford decided to
build the Stanford West senior housing complex. Stanford and opponents to the project disagree
viahmentally on whether the site contained Ohlone artifacts (opponents to the project even began calling the
site Ohlone Field). Following the Great Flood of 1998 and during the height of the controversy, the remains
of two Ohlone were discovered when a bank of the San Francisquito Creek collapsed. The bones were
discovered just north of where Stanford was planning to (and eventually did build) the apartments.
-Matt Bowling

.

A plaque near El Palo Alto
commemorating the "Early
People of the Creek"

An Ohlone hunter

Palo Alto Home Page

Ohlone, Palo Alto's original
inhabitants

Palo Alto Landmarks

Ohlone living along the creek