San Francisco Estuary Institute's Hidden Nature SF Yelamu: the Native Peoples of San Francisco Hidden Nature | SF 05 / 08 For at least 13,500 years Indigenous peoples have lived along the San Francisco Peninsula.¹ Prior to the region’s colonization by Euro-Americans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Ramaytush Ohlone were the inhabitants and stewards of this land. Specifically in what is the County of San Francisco today, the area was home to a group of the Ramaytush Ohlone referred to today as the Yelamu. The Yelamu are a local tribal group within Ramaytush Ohlone territory made up of speakers of the Ramaytush dialect of the San Francisco Bay Ohlone/Costanoan language.²˒³ We do not know how the Yelamu and other Ramaytush tribes referred to themselves, so the term Ramaytush is derived from the Chochenyo term “rámaitush,” meaning people from the western side of the San Francisco Bay.² Although the Yelamu did not leave written documentation prior to Euro-American colonization, archaeological research and early Spanish accounts provide many insights into the Yelamu culture and the landscape they inhabited and stewarded. Several Yelamu villages are known to have existed in the area around the present-day limits of San Francisco,⁴ with a combined population size of approximately 160.² The primary villages occupied by the Yelamu included Sitlintac and Chutchui along Mission Creek, Amuctac and Tubsinte around Visitacion Valley, and Petlenuc in the Presidio near Crissy Field.²˒⁴⁻⁶ These villages represent both physical places and the groups of people who inhabited them, both of which were dynamic. Residents moved seasonally between these villages and other temporary sites, seeking shelter from the elements and taking advantage of available resources, and the physical placement of villages themselves likely also shifted over time. This map represents the current understanding of the general locations of these village sites at the time of Spanish contact, but there is still much more to learn. The Ramaytush Ohlone, of which the Yelamu were a part, utilized a variety of natural resources provided by the land and the sea, including fish, shellfish, waterfowl, land mammals, acorns, tules, and a wide range of other plants and animals.⁷⁻¹⁰ Father Pedro Font, for instance, reported seeing “three tule balsas,” or boats, upon arriving at the freshwater lake known as “Pozo de los Marineros” just east of Fort Point in March 1776. Describing some of the food resources of the indigenous people in the vicinity of Mission Dolores, Father Francisco Palou wrote:¹¹ The gentiles of this port live on the wild seeds of the field… the women… grind them to flour, of which they make their atóle (gruel). Among them there is a kind of black seed, of the flour of which they make tamáles in the shape of a ball the size of an orange…. The Indians also help themselves to fishes… [and] shellfish… [and hunt] deer, rabbits, geese, ducks, quails and thrushes… They also avail themselves of the opportunity when a whale runs aground on the shore… They also have acorns, of which, when ground, they make their gruel and balls. There are also in the mountains nearby, and in the ravines, a kind of hazel nut… and along the hills and sand dunes many strawberries… On all the plains and hills there is an abundance of amóle, which is is the size of the onion with a large and round head. These they place in holes beneath the soil, and above it they have a fire burn for three or four days until the Indians are satisfied that they are well baked. Then they unearth them and eat them. Fire was commonly used by Ohlone tribal groups as a land management tool to help increase game habitat, maintain grasslands and restrict shrublands, increase the abundance of edible plants, and achieve a number of other goal.⁸˒¹² For example, while camped near the Presidio in October 1816, Adelbert von Chamisso reported that "all night, great fires burned on the back of the harbor; the natives are in the habit of burning the grass, to further its growth." ¹³ In 1777, the Yelamu were the first Native people to be baptized and indoctrinated into Mission Dolores, which was situated near the village of Chutchui along Dolores Creek.¹⁴ Over the course of the next 65 years, the Yelamu and surrounding Ramaytush Ohlone people were forced to assimilate and to work in the mission system. Due to disease, overcrowding, malnourishment, and poor conditions, these native peoples died at rapid rates. Life expectancy after baptism was only 4.5 years at Mission Dolores. All native people recorded by missionaries as coming from the San Francisco Peninsula were baptized and indoctrinated into the mission system by 1801, and by 1842, only 15 persons native to the San Francisco Peninsula were still living at Mission Dolores.² Today, it is believed that the Yelamu have no living descendants; however, the descendants of the Ramaytush Ohlone are alive today and reclaiming their cultural heritage and traditions. The Association of Ramaytush Ohlone is working with agencies and other partner organizations to research and revitalize traditional culture, restore native ecosystems and steward ancestral lands, and engage in community service and public education. Their efforts have contributed to the Indigenous Peoples' Day Proclamation, to the establishment of the American Indian Cultural District in San Francisco, and to land acknowledgment resolutions by a number of San Francisco city agencies. The histories of the Yelamu and San Francisco’s historical ecology are intertwined. While we have unearthed many stories that speak to San Francisco’s natural history and diversity, there is still much to learn about the relationship between the land and its original peoples. Learning more about how San Francisco’s Native inhabitants used, managed, and stewarded the land helps us see and appreciate the complexity of San Francisco’s ecology and how intricately connected it was with the Indigenous traditions and practices of the Yelamu. San Francisco’s historical landscape was deeply interconnected with the Native peoples prior to the land’s colonization. Restoring the ecology of San Francisco is incomplete without an acknowledgement and centering of the Native peoples who have known and stewarded the land we call San Francisco for thousands of years through to today. Footnotes Panich L, J Holson, A Vanderslice. 2009. “Historic Context and Archaeological/Architectural Survey Report for the Habitat Reserve Program, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, And Tuolumne Counties, California.” Prepared for San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Milliken RT, LH Shoup, BR Ortiz. 2009. “Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and Their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today.” National Park Service Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Cordero J. 2020. “Who are ​the original peoples of San Francisco and of the San Francisco Peninsula?” Association of Ramaytush Ohlone. http://www.ramaytush.org . Accessed: 7 Sept 2021. Milliken RT. 1983. “The Spatial Organization of Human Population on Central California’s San Francisco Peninsula at the Spanish Arrival.” Sonoma State University. Milliken RT. 1995. A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers, no. 43. Hull KL, BL Voss. 2016. "Native Californians at the Presidio of San Francisco: Analysis of Lithic Specimens from EI Polín Spring." International Journal of Historical Archaeology 20(2): 264-88. Kroeber AL. 1976. Handbook of the Indians of California. New York: Dover Publications. Levy R. 1978. “Costanoan.” In R. F. Heizer (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8, California. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Pp. 485–495. Bocek BR. 1984. “Ethnobotany of Costanoan Indians, California, based on collections by John P. Harrington.” Economic Botany, 38(2): 240-255. Clark MR. 2001. “Final report of archaeological investigations at the Crissy Field prehistoric site, CA-SFR-129, Presidio of San Francisco, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.” Prepared for Division of Resource Management and Planning, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, National Park Service. Engelhardt Z. 1924. San Francisco or Mission Dolores. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. pp. 62-63. Anderson MK. 2005. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources. Berkeley: University of California Press. von Chamisso A. 1936. A Sojourn at San Francisco Bay 1816. San Francisco: The Book Club of San Francisco. pp. 9. Association of Ramaytush Ohlone. 2020. “Spanish Arrival in Aramai Lands.” https://www.ramaytush.org . Accessed: 7 Sept 2021. Hidden Nature San Francisco is made possible by Science Sandbox, an initiative of the Simons Foundation. Initial funding was provided by the Seed Fund and additional support by the Google Ecology Program. Thanks also to our partners at the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, the Exploratorium, the Presidio Trust, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Hidden Nature San Francisco San Francisco Estuary Institute