Keeping Tradition Alive

Miwok from what is now Olompali hiked over the coast ridge to Bolinas, Tomales and Bodega Bays to collect Washington clam shells to make into trading beads. For the Miwok, whose territory included most of Marin and some of southern Sonoma County, this was like having dibs on the mint.

The beads weren't just decoration -- they were real money accepted throughout Northern California in exchange for usable goods they didn't have, like obsidian for arrow points.

"The Miwok would have used a bit made of chert instead of metal," explains Thalman, a longtime student of Miwok customs and author of The Coast Miwok Indians of the Point Reyes Area. "And there's a technical took I forgot to bring -- called a rock," used to bust up clam shells into pieces. She and others found pictures of necklace-making from around 1900, and they also talked to elderly people of Miwok descent about how their grandparents made the necklaces.

"That's how we discovered they polished the whole necklace at one time on a flat stone," says Thalman. "It takes a lot of time, but who's in a hurry?"

When students of famed Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber showed up in the late 1920's to interview "the last Miwoks," only two stepped forward: Tom Smith and Maria Copa Frias. Their recollections formed much of what academia repeated about the "extinct" Miwok culture for the next few decades. In fact, eight or ten families were still in the area, and today their descendants are actively working to keep alive Miwok culture and achieve official tribal status, assisted by enthusiasts like Thalman and a park support group called the Olompali People.

"This was an especially rich area because there are five species of oak here," says Doreen Smith of the California Native Plant Society. "If one oak crop failed, they could get by on the others."

Oak was a staple for Native Americans throughout much of California. "Acorn was basically their pasta -- a starchy staple that fills in the corners," says Thalman. But acorn, cooked in baskets as mush or shaped into bread, was just the foundation of a diet rich in local additions and condiments. Manzanita berries were made into a kind of lemonade with a sour-apple taste, says Smith. They ate native clover and wild oats, and in a really lean year they would eat the fruit of the buckeye -- but only after leaching out its toxins. (Buckeye nuts and soaproot both yield a toxin they used to stun fish.)

Judging by the remains in middens, says Thalman, the Miwok ate a lof bent-nose clams, as well sturgeon and water birds. They hiked over the ridge to the ocean for clams and abalone, which aren't found in San Francisco Bay. They also ate crab and -- when they were really hard up -- starfish. Archaeologists analyzing fragments in the middens found the bones of various fish as well as the armor plates of chitons.

Judging from the diverse resources, the Miwok weren't hard up very often. Deer and elk were abundant, and north of Petaluma, antelope grazed. "There was little warfare, because it was such a rich area," says Thalman "And villages were small -- the typical Miwok only met about 100 people in a lifetime."

Plants supplemented the game and seafood and also filled other needs. "Miwoks were a basket society," says June Gardner, author of Olompali -- In the Beginning. "They fished with baskets, cooked in baskets -- they essentially lived in baskets." They used willow branches for framing and sedge for the weave.

"Their houses were basically baskets," says Thalman. Near the ranch complex, park advisors and Miwok descendants are currently recreating a Miwok village with houses of willow and tule that look much like upside down baskets.

Miwoks didn't use plant dyes to color their baskets, but they did employ dyes for tattooing themselves. "They"d scar themselves and then rub poison oak charcoal into the wound to create tattooes." explains Jan Mix, a park aide whose ancestry, she says, is about half Miwok.

The elk are gone but deer are a common site along the trails of Olompali. The Miwok admired the movements of the deer -- "the most graceful of the animals," says Lanny Pinola -- and incorporated them in their dances. A ranger at Point Reyes National Seashore, Pinola is the great-grandson of Tom Smith. He's also the leader of a dance troop performing at Olompali's Heritage Day. While Pinola and others keep time with music sticks, four young men step to the ancient rhythms. The long feathers in their costumes rustle as the boys mimic the quick movements of startled deer, then cock their heads like curious and wary birds.

Sometimes heritage has to make concessions to modern circumstances. Traditional costumes, says Pinola, were made with the feathers of five kinds of birds: egrets, red-tailed hawks, ravens, barn owls and great blue herons. Modern costumes, however, are mostly made with turkey feathers. "We're not allowed to trap the birds now," says Pinola, "so we had to go commercial to keep the tradition alive."