Natives on Bay-SF Presidio 1806

Description:
Drawing, ink, and wash, on paper of "View of Spanish Establishment of San Fransciso in New California," with Native Californians paddling a tule reed boat in the foreground. This drawing is possibly the earliest known view of San Francisco and the Presidio.

Date of Document:
circa 1806

Document Author:
Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff (1773-1850)

Geographic Location:
San Francisco Bay

Context:
For more than 2,500 years before the Spanish missionaries first arrived to the Bay Area in the 1770s, dozens of small, politically independent native tribelets inhabited the region. Each tribal territory, which covered about ten square miles and generally corresponded to natural drainages, was home to between 200 and 400 persons dispersed among small villages. Of these Bay Area tribelets, 40 or so belonged to the Ohlone language group (which encompassed many dialects) whose region extended from Monterey to the Carquinez Straits. Exact tribelet boundaries might possibly never be known, but based on analyses of mission records by anthropologist Randall Milliken, the Temescal Creek watershed fell within the ancestral lands of the Ohlone tribelet known as the Huchiun. The Huchiun lived successfully on the natural resources of the bay, Temescal Creek, and the surrounding area. [Source: A Time of Little Choice by Randall Milliken]