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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Learning about the Ohlone Native American Culture on California's Central Coast with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget




Learning about the Ohlone Native American Culture (Monterey and San Benito  Counties in California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget



When my daughter Florence began her studies at the Waldorf Charter School in Pacific Grove, California, the students were studying the culture of the Ohlone Native Americans.

The Ohlone live on California’s Central Coast from Big Sur up to San Francisco.  (The Ohlone are also called Costanoan further down the coast by Carmel and Big Sur.)

The children were weaving baskets as an art project.  Parents were asked to help their children complete this art project at home, because basket weaving is very hard to do.

The thin branches you need to weave are straight and stiff.  You have to gently bend the branches until they are pliable enough to be woven in and out and be pushed down around a central knot.  I thought this was a cute craft and put it up as artwork on my office wall for years.

Florence learned in school that the Ohlone cooked with tightly woven baskets by placing rocks that had been heated in fire in baskets full of water.  The Ohlone also placed baskets on their baskets on their backs to pick berries and gather nuts, seafood such as oysters and crab, and birds’ eggs.

When we drove home, I told Florence that this kind of food collection was called foraging.

“Foraging is not as reliable as farming as a way to obtain food,” I told Florence.

“If the weather is bad, for example, the supply of berries and nuts might disappear,” I explained to Florence.

“That vegetable garden your school has is not an example of foraging.  You plant seeds in it, and if you have enough water and sunlight, you can have a pretty sure supply of food,” I said.  We had personal chefs in the school, who used vegetables from this garden to make the children vegetable soup and bread on Wednesdays.

The children continued learning about the Ohlone by going on a weeklong camping trip to Point Reyes and the Tomales Bay outside San Francisco.

There are many species of wildlife there, but the children spent most of their time hiking among the wildflowers. Their teacher showed them which of the wildflowers could be eaten.

I knew there were several things Florence and I could visit in Monterey County and San Benito County about the Ohlone after reading The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco – Monterey Bay by Malcolm Margolin.

It is hard to arrange field trips for an entire class, which is why we took the big class trips together, but went on smaller trips with just our family.

The first place we went in Monterey County was the Elkhorn Slough.  Sloughs are almost as endangered as the wildlife they harbor.  Sloughs connect ocean water with fresh water and extend far inland.

Elkhorn Slough has hiking trails, kayaking, and sightseeing boats.  It is home to egrets, sea otters, crab, fish, and hundreds of birds, which fly south over Elkhorn Slough in winter.  Other birds nest in the Slough and have nest high up in the trees.

There are several hiking trails in Elkhorn Slough.  The first time we went there, I took my family to see the Ohlone Middens (graves), which face the sea and are inaccessible.

The Ohlone descendents refuse to have the graves opened or moved to a museum.  Most people do not know what they are, so they remain unmolested.  Florence loved learning a Monterey secret that she could not tell anyone else.  The Elkhorn Slough itself represents the ecosystem that the Ohlone had to use for food.

The second place we went to for an understanding of Ohlone history was the Carmel Mission by our home. I told Florence that the Spanish founded the California Missions, which go all along the California coastline.

They are supposed be one day’s walk away from one another and usually grew wine and vegetables.  I told Florence that the Ohlone continued foraging and hunting, but worked on Spanish lands at the missions as well.

From Carmel Mission, we spent about 50 minutes going north to the mission at San Juan Bautista.  I told Florence that the Ohlone worked on Spanish mission lands here, too.

The interesting thing about the San Juan Bautista Mission is that it runs along the San Andreas Fault, which is why it has had to be rebuilt a few times.  We walked along the San Andreas Fault path to the cemetery outside town.

One side of the fault is twelve feet high and the other side sits below it.  I told Florence that if there were an earthquake that we would be down in the brush below quickly.  She started flailing her arms and screaming, “Earthquake!!”

“Run for cover!” I shouted, and we both tore down the path to the cemetery.

When we reached the cemetery, I told her that Anne-Marie Sayers, who maintains the Ohlone tribal lands, said many Ohlone Native Americans took Spanish names to avoid discrimination in Spanish America.

I told Florence that many of the graves we saw contained the remains of Ohlone not Spanish people.  The Ohlone were choosing to reveal their ancestry at this point in history, because people in California had become more accepting of people of different ethnicities.

A few years later when I was working as a freelance writer for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000), I covered an Ohlone storytelling festival.

My family went twice to the Ohlone Tribal Lands and checked out the sweat lodges and sacred waterfalls.

We learned that Coyote is the trickster character in Ohlone myth and resembles Anansi the Spider in African mythology.

Coyote causes trouble, but the tribal elders eventually convince him to come back to the village and have fun in the community.

I thought this was a very good tale for California, because almost all of our tribal elders have been coyotes in their youth.


By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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