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Original Residents: The
Ohlone
For more than 2,500 years before the Spanish
missionaries first arrived in the Bay Area in the 1770s, dozens of small,
politically independent native "tribelets" belonging to the Ohlone
language group inhabited the upion. Recent studies suggest that
theTemescal area was once part of the ancestral homeland of the Huchiun
people, whose territory is thought to have extended north to present-day
Richmond. While actual village sites are not known, our understanding of
native practice suggests that the Huchiun Ohlone hunted, fished, and
gathered seeds and acorns all along Temescal Creek, including in what are
now the Temescal and Rockridge neighborhoods. They built their modest,
dome-shaped shelters of willow branches covered with tules, and erected
sweat houses, or temescals, on the banks of the creek. Thus, using a wide
range of time-tested technologies and with acute knowledge of their
environment, the Huchiun successfully lived off the bounty of the
land.
The arrival of the Spanish radically altered the Bay Area's
indigenous communities. It is estimated that by 1815, the native
population had been reduced by three-quarters, in large part due to
European diseases. Most of the Indians who survived lived in the missions
in poverty and close to starvation. When, in 1834, the missions were
disbanded by the newly independent Mexican government, many mission
Indians, significantly cut off from their traditional ways of life, found
work as servants and ranch hands on the large Spanish and Mexican land
grant estates that had been established during the previous two
decades.
While there is no record of any Huchiuns having survived
the dislocation and hardship caused by the mission system, it is likely
that through intermarriage the Huchiun lineage persists today. Meanwhile,
Ohlone descendants from other parts of the Bay Area are actively renewing
and celebrating their rich cultural heritage.
Vicente Peralta's
Chosen Place
In 1836, with the construction of a modest adobe
dwelling on his father's Spanish land grant, José Vicente Peralta became
the first person of European descent to settle in this area. Situated
between present day Telegraph Avenue, highway 24, 55th Street and Vicente
Streets, the adobe was but a stone's throw northwest of Temescal Creek
(now flowing in an underground culvert behind the DMV building).
Eventually, this adobe formed the nucleus of Vicente's Rancho Encinal de
Temescal–the portion of his father's estate, inherited in 1842, that
stretched from present-day downtown Oakland to the Berkeley
border.
Over the next 30 years, Vicente and his wife, Maria
Encarnación Galindo, built additional adobes on this site (including the
first chapel in the East Bay north of Mission San Jose), planted orchards
that stretched to present-day Emeryville, and oversaw their extensive herd
of cattle, raised primarily for the hide.
The gold rush and
California statehood in 1850 brought an end to the Peraltas’ way of life
when droves of squatters descended on the land grant estates of the East
Bay. In the years that followed, Vicente fought for–and eventually
won–legal title to his land. However, by the time his court battles were
over, all but 700 acres of his original rancho were gone–either
relinquished to squatters or sold off to cover his legal fees.
Vicente Peralta died in 1871 at the age of 58, and was buried
nearby in St. Mary's Cemetery, where his tomb can still be seen. Shortly
thereafter, his remaining land was subdivided and individual lots were
sold to new arrivals, thus furthering the growth of the small town of
Temescal. No trace of Vicente's adobes remains today.
Although Don
Vicente and Doña Encarnación had no surviving children, dozens of Peralta
family descendants make their home today in the East Bay, remembering
their ancestors and honoring their early Spanish California heritage.
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