Where we live. Know the Land. Acknowledge the Land. Know the History.

The area where we now live, is just up from Lake Merritt and close to the border of Piedmont, but if we go back hundreds of years you can imagine that local indigenous people lived here. In fact, it is fact that they did. According to Bay Nature Magazine, "Few humans foraged the slough back then, although in the richly forested Oakland hills, Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone Indians seemed to have settled in a village along the banks "of Indian Gulch Creek in an area that became known as Trestle Glen. The Chochenyo fished the estuary, thanking Duck Hawk, the hero and benefactor who had made the earth a safe place for humans to live, for the food they took from it.

Know the Land: A Land Acknowledgement is a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous Peoples as traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. 

Why do we recognize the land: To recognize the land is an expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory you reside on, and a way of honoring the Indigenous people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial. It is important to understand the long standing history that has brought you to reside on the land, and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgements do not exist in a past tense, or historical context: colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation. It is also worth noting that acknowledging the land is Indigenous protocol. 

– Laurier Students' Public Interest Research Group

Why does this resonate for me? Firstly, an acknowledgment can be a powerful thing. It is the simple act of recognizing something. I work with formerly unhoused individuals and the thing that bothers them most is when people don't acknowledge them.

As a multi-ethnic person who has ancestors (Black) who were was taken away from their cultural context (Africa), I find this statement powerful. How long did it take for any elected official officially recognize or apologize for slavery. I have felt the pain of being disconnected from your history and not knowing something basic like where your ancestors came from. Thankfully DNA analysis has provided some clues. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in the Bay Area and know that 200 years prior your ancestors were physically removed and corporations and individuals now profit from to the tune of billions of dollars in the Bay Area alone. The worst part is that is the lack of acknowledgment that this history exists. 

Here is a map from the Centers for Education at UC Berkley:

According to Wikipedia: The Ohlone tribes were hunter-gatherers who moved into the San Francisco Bay Region around 500 CE, displacing earlier Esselen people. In Chochenyo territory, datings of the ancient Newark, West Berkeley, and Emeryville Shellmounds attest to people residing in the Bay Area since 4000 BC.

Here is another picture posted on the same website descrbed as: Painting of three Ohlone people crossing the waters in San Francisco Bay by Louis Choris. (Google Images)

According to Bay Nature, "By 1810, the Native Americans were gone, relocated to Mission San José by the Spaniards who had arrived with foreign presumptions: domination, possession, control. Title to the land passed, for the first time, into human hands."

Here is a picture of two women who lived on a rancheria in Pleasanton shown on Wikipedia: 

According to the historical information on the Peralta Hacienda state park website Our area of Trestle Glen "was part of the 44,800-acre Spanish land grant made to Sergeant Luís María Peralta (1759-1851) by the last Spanish governor, Don Pablo Vicente de Sol in 1820 in recognition of his forty years of military service to the Spanish king. Although he never lived there himself, his four sons built homes, took care of the family's livestock, and raised their families on the rancho Luis named Rancho San Antonio. Before the arrival of the Spanish, this land had been inhabited for approximately 15,000 years by native peoples, although by 1806 most of them had been removed to settlements called rancherías. Rancho San Antonio extended from present-day Albany to the northern part of San Leandro, and now includes seven modern cities." 

                                                            Luis Maria Peralta 

 "In 1842, apparently believing it was time to settle his estate, eighty-three-year-old Luís María Peralta journeyed to the rancho in order to divide the rancho land among his four sons. Luís had already given cattle to his three married daughters and planned to leave his San José adobe and land to his two unmarried daughters, who lived with him. Antonio received 16,067 acres of land from 68th Avenue to present-day Lake Merritt and up the eastern side of Lake Merritt to Indian Gulch, now known as Trestle Glen. Antonio's portion also included the peninsula of Alameda. Ignacio received approximately 9,416 acres from southeastern San Leandro Creek to approximately 68th Avenue in Oakland. Vicente received the acreage that included the entire original town of Oakland, from Lake Merritt to the present Temescal district. Domingo received all of what is present-day Albany and Berkeley and a small portion of northern Oakland. The acreage of each portion is only known because of the patents later received by the brothers from the US government. Both Ignacio and Antonio received separate patents for their portions, but Vicente and Domingo applied for a joint patent that totaled 19,143 acres." According to the Lakeshore homes association website, " Later, with the discovery of gold and the emergence of the “instant city” of San Francisco, the family sold lumbering rights to redwoods in the hills. Eventually the hills were bare save for scrub oak and buckeye.

Here is a picture of the Peralta family now living in a wood frame house Photo credit to Historian Gene Anderson. I'm not sure which arm of the family this is, but according to Alameda Magazine from which this photo was referenced : "Antonio received 15,206 acres, land from Seminary Avenue to modern-day Lake Merritt. The grant included the Bolsa de Encinal, today’s Alameda. Antonio lived on the 1820 grant’s original homestead. He built two adobes, one in 1821, another in 1840. The 1868 Great San Francisco Earthquake destroyed the 1840 adobe. The family moved into the 1821 adobe while a frame house was being built. The family moved into the frame house in 1870. That home stands as the centerpiece of Peralta Hacienda Park today.

According to the Lakeshore homes association website, " Later, with the discovery of gold and the emergence of the “instant city” of San Francisco, the family sold lumbering rights to redwoods in the hills. Eventually the hills were bare save for scrub oak and buckeye.

 As Oakland grew, and especially after the devastating drought of 1862-64 killed off the cattle herds, interest in the outlying land shifted from ranching to recreation." If you head over to Dimond Park a short walk over Park Blvd you can see a really old stone house which has adobe bricks which were used in the original Peralta home.

How did Dimond park get it's name? According to Erika Mailman,  "First of all, Dimond Park, and the entire Dimond district for that matter, is named for Hugh Dimond. He arrived in California a young 20-year old with three children, as yet another Gold Rusher. In 1867, he purchased the acreage that included the area now called Dimond Park. Adobe bricks from the 1897 Dimond cottage, described as a "playhouse" for the Dimond children, although a brief history on an Oakland Parks Department map references the adobe bricks as being from the Peralta home." 

According to historical lore, Hugh Dimond retired to his land in 1877 on the fortune he made in the mercantile and liquor trades during the Gold Rush. He built his home in the lower stretches of the canyon in what is currently Dimond Park. In 1896, the year of Hugh Dimond’s death, his son Dennis moved the adobe bricks from the original Peralta home to the area of Dimond Park, and built a studio cottage. The main Dimond house burned in 1913, leaving the adobe cottage. Four years later, the Dimond family sold the property to the city.

If you look closely you can see the bricks in above the rock foundation. I can walk from our house and see these adobe bricks still surviving to this day and it amazes me that this history survives. It's my thought that it's probable that the bricks were made by the local Indians who were descended from the people who lived in the Ohlone (Huchiun) village where Trestle Glen meets Lakeshore. 

As the ownership of the Peraltas dwindled in the area and the land eventually passed on to others like Peter Sather and his wife or Joseph Dimond, and then to corporations building railroads. Eventually, Wickman's Havens purchased the land, Frederick Olmstead was retained to lay out the design of the tracts. 

So we live in the area that was initially indian inhabited, granted by the King of Spain to the Peraltas and ranched by the peraltas and eventually inherited by Antonio Peralta from Luis Peralta, and then privately owned and publicly enjoyed then developed into tracts and sold. Here I am now several blocks from the Lakeshore Homes Association boundaries, but still in the same general area on Trestle Glen sitting in a chair right in the middle of all this history.

Here is a picture of what the area looked like around the time it was a park in 1920's and by this time devoid of some of the larger trees. The land where our house now sits would be off in the distance, in the area right off the last band of trees. You can see a beautiful oak tree in the foreground. 

Here is a photo above from the East Bay Hills Project that shows the trestle going down what is now Grosvenor street from Park Blvd. From what I can gather this area was called Sather park and Peter Sather's wife let people use it as a park. 

Frolickers in the park

Later as the area developed, houses were built like the one here #1279 down the street from us which is still standing. This photo is also on the East bay Hills project. 

(pictured above is the gate erected where an Indian village once stood) 

This area was developed before the great depression with some homes being built for over $50,000 dollars which at that time was an enormous sum. Noted architects like Julia Morgan designed homes in the area. 

According to SFGATE: "Earl Warren lived in a basic Tudor at 958 Larkspur while overlooking the legal system of Alameda County. The chief justice of the United States managed to get the Jim Crow laws of America overturned, but he apparently had no power over the Lakeshore bylaws, which prohibited people of African or Mongolian descent, "except in the capacity of domestic servants of the occupant thereof." According to the 80th anniversary history of Lakeshore Homes, the racial restrictions weren't formally stricken from the bylaws until 1979, and its most prominent resident, Earl Warren, didn't live to see it."

I was 3 years old when they took out these restrictions so the irony isn't lost on me that I live in an area that did not allow Black or Asians officially as dictated by the bylaws as late as 1979 when I was just 3 years old. Luckily for my daughter who is both Asian and Black times have changed. Now the neighborhood is more diverse, but it would be easy to look around an forget the past. This was not that long ago. I believe I read that the neighborhoods first Black homeowners did not appear until 1963. 

But getting back to the Indians, how easy it is to forget the past or worse not even know the past. As I sit here writing this post, just now piecing it together. I'm just one person and for every one person there are twenty or maybe a hundred who came before me or after who don't know or generally don't think about it. 

Know the Land. Acknowledge the Land. Know the History.