Ohlone

The Ohlone, once called Costanoans from the Spanish word for coast dwellers, are the Native people of the Northern California shoreline, from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. They were never one people but more than fifty autonomous village lands, among them the Mutsun, Awaswas and Chochenyo.

Their languages form the Costanoan branch of the Utian family. They lived by hunting, fishing and gathering, above all by pounding acorns into meal, and shared the Kuksu ceremonial religion with other Californian groups.

The Spanish expedition of 1769 opened their country to mission rule: Franciscans founded Mission Dolores in 1776 and San Juan Bautista, which gathered the Mutsun, in 1797. Disease and forced resettlement cut their numbers sharply, and when the missions were secularized in 1834 the surviving Ohlone were left landless among the ranches of Mexican California.