Master Ohlone basket weaver Linda Yamane taught herself the intricate and nearly extinct craft over 100 years after the last Rumsen basketmakers died.

One of her baskets required about 20,000 stitches, 1,200 handcrafted beads, and thousands of feathers. Her basket was completed in a ceremonial style that hadn’t been made in 250 years.

Linda Yamane weaving a twined work basket (photo by Neil Bennet)

Around the same time as beginning basketry, Yamane also discovered source materials for the Rumsen language, which she used to create a dictionary she now shares with individual community members, 85 years after the last fluent Rumsen speaker died.

Yamane wants to depict the ancestral villages of Achista, Tucutnut, Ishxenta, Echilat, and Shokronta.

“I want to reconstruct our five Rumsen villages and reconstruct them with our people as life was before the missions came,” Yamane said. 

From: HYPERALLERGIC
 

Piney Fire October 2024

 

From: Carmel Valley Locals

Piney Fire October, 2024

 

Photo from:https://www.facebook.com/WaltersLab

Tassajara Shrine

 

Tassajara Creek Canyon

For most of its history the Tassajara Creek canyon has been a sacred place of healing. Over thousands of years, many indigenous people seeking remedies for ailments of the body and spirit traveled to the area, knowing it was a place where shamans—those in deep reciprocity with the healing powers of the land and waters—resided and held ceremonies. 

Tassajara Zen Mountain Center

 

Tassajara Zen Mountain Center was the first to have men, women, and couples practicing together. Because nothing quite like this has ever been done before, many aspects of monastic life had to be determined. Whether to wear temple-type robes or American style clothes? Which ceremonies to adopt? How to arrange the living space? Kobun Chino Sensei and Dainin Katagiri Sensei (both of whom would later be called roshi) assisted Suzuki Roshi in helping the new students. A few other priests from Japan came later. 

Tassajara Zen Mountain Center opened on July 3, 1967

 

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a Zen master from Japan, came to San Francisco in 1959. Suzuki Roshi wanted a place in the mountains where Zen students could follow traditional practice, including meditation, study, and daily life.  The opening day for Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Zenshinji (the Japanese name) was on July 3, 1967.

La Mision del Gloriosisimo Patriarch San Jose

When this Mission was founded it was named "La Mision del Gloriosisimo Patriarch San Jose" in honor of St. Joseph.

Father President directed some of the escort to construct a large cross on the ground, and others to build in the open an enramada, of “bower of branches,” with an altar in its shelter, in preparation for the ceremony of founding the mission set for the next day.

“Very early in the morning,” the first day of the week, June 11, 1797, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, the reverend Fathers, the Spanish soldiers, and the Loreto Indians assembled for the dedicatory ceremony.  The unusual stir in the camp, the ringing of the bell, the firing of the muskets, the smoke of the incense, the lighting of the Mass candles, the sight of the beautiful vestments of the priests – all attracted groups of [Indians] to the scene.

The Secularization Act of 1833

 
Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. The California Missions continued to prosper under Mexican rule until the Secularization Act of 1833. What was left of Mission San Jose began to decline, and over time, the native populations were scattered. Very few were given their land, and many died of disease and starvation.

Mission San Jose Was Built on the Site Known as Oroysom

 

The site chosen for the only mission on the east side of San Francisco Bay had been inhabited for countless generations by the Ohlone Indians. Their village at this site was known as Oroysom. According to Spanish law, the mission's lands and resources belonged to the natives and would be put in their control when they had learned to manage themselves in the Spanish way.

Mission San Jose was founded in 1797

Mission San Jose was founded on June 11, 1797 by Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen on a site which was part of a natural highway by way of the Livermore Valley to the San Joaquin Valley. It was founded to secure Spain's claim to this land and to teach the native people Christianity and the Spanish way of life.

Mission San Jose

 

MISSION SAN JOSE

At the Ohlone Indian village of Oroysom, Padre Fermin Fransisco De Lasuen founded this fourteenth of twenty-one Franciscan missions June 11, 1797.  The Ohlone orchestra and choir became famous. By 1830 almost 2,000 Indians were living at the mission. The mission was secularized in 1836 and its lands divided into ranchos.

Ohlone Language Groups Map

From Sogorea Te' Land Trust

Carmel Valley Sunrise, January 2024

 

Photo by Thomas Schnader

Mouth of the Carmel River, January 2024

FROM: Carmel Valley Locals

Steelhead numbers in the Carmel River are on a downward trend

 

Steelhead are a threatened species whose decline in the Carmel River became a driving catalyst behind the state’s cease-and-desist order against Cal Am for the utility’s decades-long overpumping.

Over the long term, steelhead numbers in the Carmel River are on a downward trend. That is expected to continue as climate change continues warming the ocean and, locally, leading to more extreme droughts – just around 1 to 2 percent of steelhead that make the trip out to sea successfully return to spawn.

Info from MCW

Image from MPWMD

Garzas Canyon

 

Garzas Canyon

Photo from: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CarmelValleyLocals

The Los Padres Dam Alternatives Study

https://www.mpwmd.net/wp-content/uploads/Los.Padres.Alts_.Final_.Report.v2-1.pdf

By the Carmel River, June 2023

Photo from: CarmelValleyLocals

Rana Creek Ranch Was Recently Acquired by the Wildlands Conservancy for $35 million

 

Photo by: Courtesy of Hall & Hall

From: SF Gate

A sprawling 14,000-acre property in the Carmel Valley will become a public nature preserve. Known as Rana Creek Ranch, the land is an important site for the Esselen Tribe, and the tribe will be able to access the land again after the sale. Wolves, tule elk, beavers and the California condor all roamed the land 200 years ago.

Carmel River, April 2023

 

Photo from Ohlone Sisters

Snow in Carmel Valley, February 2023

 

From Monterey Herald

Above Carmel Point

The South-Central Coast Steelhead Have Declined to the Low Hundreds

 From: Carmel River Watershead

 The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published in 2013 a Recovery Program for our distinct population of steelhead trout named the South-Central Coast Steelhead (SCCS). 

The "grade" they gave the Carmel River steelhead recovery at that time was "Poor," as the numbers of adult steelhead in our river had declined to the low hundreds if even that many. 

NMFS stated that to delist (remove) our SCCS from the Threatened Species list a number of conditions would have to be met including: mean annual run size of 4,500 adults, adequate ocean conditions, density of spawning fish, and certain fish genetic histories in our river.

Carmel River Lagoon February 2023

 

Photo by Brian Mack from: Carmel Valley Locals

Carmel River January 2023

 

Carmel River November 2022

 

Lower Circle: Carmel Valley one of a kind neighborhood

 

Baltazar's Rebellion of 1779

Baltazar came from the Point Lobos area known as Isxchenta, a Rumsen Ohlone village. He came to the Carmel Mission sometime around 1775 (the year he was baptized).

What began as civil disobedience and casual opposition by Baltazar eventually turned into an attempted coup. Batazar fled the Carmel Mission in 1779 along with a band of several other mission natives. Baltazar turned south to the Big Sur coast, meeting his daughter and her people, the Sargentaruc, who organized ways to resist Spanish forces.

As Spanish forces continued to cut off resources and reinforcements to Baltazar’s rebellion, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the resistance. Baltazar died in the fall of 1780 of unknown causes, and many members of his group hesitantly returned to the missions for the promise of seeing their family and friends again.

Art by Louis Choris- “Indian of California.” Painting is not of Baltazar, but of a typical Ohlone man in the Bay Area and likely similar to what Baltazar looked like.

 FROM: Point Lobos

“Isxchenta” is known as Point Lobos

 

 The area in/around Point Lobos is known by many of the local indigenous peoples as “Isxchenta” (pronounced EESH-hen-tah). The Rumsen, Esselen, and KaKoon Ta Ruk peoples, who still live in the area today, have kept their cultures alive despite many attempts by settlers to erase them.

From: Point Lobos State Natural Reserve

Carmel River Tributaries

 

Approximately 96% of the Carmel River flows from the many tributaries in the Santa Lucia Mountains, including San Clemente Creek and Cachagua Creek subwatersheds.

In contrast, the combined flow from the Tularcitos, Rana, and Chupines subwatersheds of the Sierra de Salinas produces only 4% of the annual discharge of the Carmel River, but occupies 23% of the entire watershed.

From: Carmel River Steelhead Association

no stream is more important

On the California coast between Santa Cruz and the famous Hearst Castle at San Simeon, no stream is more important for native steelhead than the Carmel River.

From TU

Carmel River Winter 2022

 

From: Carmel Rancho

 

Franciscan missionaries were like “Nazis operating concentration camps.”

 

Through 1821, the Spanish built 21 Catholic missions in California to claim Native lands and convert Native souls. Journalist Carey McWilliams once compared this system to “Nazis operating concentration camps.” 

By 1833, Franciscan missionaries had baptized 81,586 California Indians and buried some 62,600, who perished from disease, displacement, and starvation. 

From: FIX

Image from: Wikipedia

Mouth of the Carmel River January 2021

 

From: Carmel River Watershed Conservancy

Oaks in Fog

Oaks in fog, Santa Lucia Preserve, Carmel Valley. 

Photo by William Guion, © williamguion.com

126 Steelhead Made it up to Los Padres Dam

 

"The Carmel River is small and picturesque, nestled in the hills of the Carmel Valley. The river itself is fairly small, only flowing about 30 miles from the peaks of the Santa Lucia and Sierra de Salinas to the lagoon at Carmel Bay. It is also a naturally intermittent system, with historic estimates suggesting the lower portions of the river may only have had year-round flow in about six of every ten years. Although these characteristics represent challenges for anadromous fish, it is believed that an average of 8,000 adult steelhead would historically spawn in the Carmel watershed every year.

As of 2015, for the first time in nearly a century, steelhead were able to move upstream unimpeded past the former site of the San Clemente Dam, which was removed due to both public safety and ecological concerns. Fish still face a barrier to movement at Los Padres Dam, but between January and May of this year, a total of 126 adults made their way to the dam."

From: FishBio

Carmel Fire 2020

 

From Carmel River Watershed Conservancy

Carmel Fire 2020

 

From: Carmel Valley Locals

The area in which the River Fire first gained traction hadn't had a fire in recorded history. This helped feed the flames that destroyed 43 structures and put about 20,000 people under evacuation warning.

Cal Fire previously attempted to carry out controlled burns but was stopped several times between 2013 and 2017 by members of the public who were leery of the controlled burn coming too close to their homes. 

From: The Californian

River Fire August 2020

 

Picture from San Clemente Rancho 

Air quality at ‘hazardous’ level, River Fire grows to nearly 34,000 acres

August 20, 2020: EVACUATION ORDERS

 

From: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CarmelValleyLocals/

Fire Above the old San Clemente Dam August 2020

 

From: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CarmelValleyLocals/

Archbishop says Satan is Behind Defaced Statues of Saint Serra

The archbishop of San Francisco claimed Father Junipero Serra, the man famed for bringing Catholicism to California in the 1700s, is a "great hero" and "great defender" of Indigenous peoples and partly blamed the removal of Serra's monument in Golden Gate Park on the Devil.

Serra is considered by some to be a de facto slave owner who used the labor of Native individuals against their will to build the missions.

From SFGate

Punta de los Lobos Marinos

After the establishment of San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo the mission's cowboys, or vaqueros, tended herds of cattle on the nearby grasslands and became the first non-native people to use what is now Point Lobos State Reserve property. It was also during the era of Spanish occupation that Point Lobos was first named, when the barking of sea lions inspired the name Punta de los Lobos Marinos, Point of the Sea Wolves.

From: Point Lobos

Case Studies in Demographic Collapse

"The Franciscan missionaries stationed at San Carlos Mission (established in 1770) recruited converts from the Carmel River basin and nearby areas from the 1770's through the first decade of the nineteenth century. 

The Indian  population increased in size until the last phase of active recruitment occurred in the 1803-7 quinquennium, during which period the missionaries baptized 108 converts, 71 in the year 1806 alone. After 1807 only 24 more converts came to the mission, and the population of the mission began a steady decline. 

The numbers reached a recorded maximum of 876 in 1795, to a mere 165 in 1834, on the eve of the secularization of the mission.

The mission population experienced a net decline of 62 percent per generation and mean life expectancy was low, averaging 7.6 years at birth.  "

From: Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization by Jackson and Castillo, 1995

Scott Barn 1863

Monterey County Register of Historic Resources: Scott Barn 1863

From Hastings Natural History Reserve

Finch Creek spawning habitat

Hastings Natural History Reservation secured a $100,000 grant from MPWMD to do the design/engineering/permitting work to replace this stream crossing! 

MPWMD found that the concrete ford at Hastings on Finch Creek was the 6th worst barrier on Carmel River tributaries. 

Finch Creek is high in the watershed and contains critical spawning habitat for Steelhead. 

From: Carmel River Watershed Conservancy

it has everything a river should have

From: Carmel River Watershed Conservancy

Big Sur Land Trust Acquires Patriarch Ridge

The Big Sur Land Trust has acquired 83.5 acres of property atop Patriarch Ridge in Carmel Valley.

The land is a mix of old growth mixed evergreen woodland, chaparral and grassland habitat. A dense canopy of stately trees creates an open, park-like understory with adjacent woodlands, grassy slopes and chaparral-covered hillslopes that drop steeply into shaded redwood canyons.

Patriarch Ridge is a very important part of the Esselen Tribe’s sacred lands and includes the upper watershed divide between Williams Canyon and the Garzas Creek drainage. The Esselen name for Patriarch Ridge is “Tebitylat” — meaning “resting spot.”

It has been used for countless generations of Esselen and Rumsen people for ceremonies and as a travel route and corridor for bringing in important food sources from the coast on the northern end of Big Sur at the villages of Sarhentaruc and Ixchenta.

From Monterey Herald

California Indian Pre-Contact Tribal Territories

From: CIMCC