Some Local History (Read This Its Cool)
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 inde-
pendent native "tribelets" belonging to the
Ohlone language group inhabited the region.
Recent studies suggest that the very place where you are now stand-
ing 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 sties are not known, our under-
standing of native practice suggests that the Huchiun Ohlone
hunted, fished, and gathered seeds and acorns all along Temescal
Cree, including in what are now the Temescal and Rockridge neigh-
borhoods. 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
mission 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, Jose Vicente Peralta became the
first person of European descent to settle
in this area. Situated less than 100 yards
from here at what is now the center of this block, the adobe was but
a stone's throw northwest of Temescal Creek (now flowing in an
underground culvert). 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 Encarnacion
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 and tallow trade.
The gold rush and California statehood brought an end
to the Peralta's 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 Dona Encarnacio had no surviv-
in children, dozens of Peralta family descendants make there home
today in the East Bay, remembering their ancestors and honoring
their early Spanish California heritage.