Modern residents would hardly recognize the Bay Area as it was in the days of the Ohlone Native Americans. Tall, sometimes shoulder-high stands of native grasses (now almost entirely replaced by the shorter European grasses) covered the vast meadows and tree-dotted hills. Marshes spread out for thousands of acres around the shores of the bay. Thick oak and redwood forests covered much of the hills.
The intermingling of grasslands, savannahs, salt and freshwater marshes, and forests created wildlife habitats of almost unimaginable richness and variety. The early explorers and adventurers, no matter how well-traveled in other parts of the world, were always surprised by the amount of wildlife here. “There is not any country in the world with more fish and animals,” noted a French explorer. Flocks of geese, ducks, and seabirds were so enormous that when they were scared by a rifle shot they rose in a dense cloud with a noise like a hurricane. The birds flocked so densely that if a hunter shot into the flock, he would often kill several birds with one bullet.
Herds of elk grazed the meadowlands in such numbers that they were often compared with cattle. Pronghorn antelopes, in herds of one or two hundred, or even more, dotted the grassy slopes. Packs of wolves hunted the elk, antelope, deer, rabbits, and other game. Bald eagles and giant condors glided through the air. Mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes were a very common sight. And of course there was the grizzly bear. These enormous bears were everywhere, feeding on berries, lumbering across the beaches, congregating beneath oak trees during acorn season, and stationed along nearly every stream and creek during the annual runs of salmon and steelhead.
It is impossible to estimate how many thousands of bears might have lived in the Bay Area before the arrival of the Europeans. Early Spanish settlers captured plenty of them for their famous bear-and-bull fights and ranchers shot them by the dozen to protect their herds of cattle and sheep. The histories of many California towns tell how bears would sometimes wandered into town, gathered around butcher shops and terrorize the inhabitants. Early Californians chose the grizzly bear as the emblem for their flag and their state. To the Ohlone Indians the grizzly must have been omnipresent. But today there is not a single grizzly bear left in California.
Life in the ocean and in the unspoiled San Francisco Bay was also plentiful. There were mussels, clams, oysters, abalones, seabirds, and sea otters in abundance. Sea lions covered the rocks at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. One Spanish missionary said that there were so many sea lions that they seemed to cover the entire surface of the water like pavement.
Flocks of pelicans filled the air. Clouds of gulls, cormorants, and other shore birds rose, wheeled, and screeched at the approach of a human. Rocky islands like Alcatraz (which means pelican in Spanish) were white from the droppings of great colonies of birds.
In the days before the nineteenth century whaling fleets, whales were commonly sighted within the bay and along the ocean coast. An early visitor wrote: “It is impossible to conceive of the number of whales that surround us. Every half-minute they surfaced near our ship and spouted from their blow-holes.” Along the bay and ocean beaches whales were often seen washed up on shore, with grizzly bears –or in many cases Indians – streaming down the beach to feast on their remains.
In the days of the Ohlone Indians the water-table was much closer to the surface. The first settlers who dug wells struck water within a few feet. The land was moist, even swampy. There were many more springs, creeks, and ponds. The San Francisco Bay, in the days before landfill, was much larger than it is today. Surrounding the bay were vast marshes filled with bird and animal life.
The environment of the Bay Area has changed drastically in the last 200 years. Some of the birds and animals are no longer to be found here, and many others have diminished in number. Even those that have survived (surprisingly enough) altered their habits and characters. The animals of today do not behave the same way they did two centuries ago; for when the Europeans first arrived they found, much to their amazement, that the animals of the Bay Area were relatively unafraid of people.
Foxes, which are now very secretive, were virtually underfoot. Mountain lions and bobcats were prominent and visible. Sea otters, which now spend their entire lives in the water, were once easily captured on land. The coyotes were so daring that they would entire human’s houses at night and take whatever they wanted.
“Animals seem to have lost their fear and become familiar with man” noted an early European visitor to the Bay Area, Captain Beechy. He claimed that rabbits and quail could be caught with the hand. And geese were not even afraid when they were being shot at. Beechy was amazed at the amount of animals to hunt. Sometimes there were too many animals. One hunter killed a pelican only to be beaten severely by the rest of the flock. Many Indians and Europeans were eaten by bears.
It is obvious from these early reports that the animal world used to be a far more immediate presence than it is today. When the European arrived with guns everything changed. For a few years the hunting was easy. But the advantages of the gun were short lived. Within a few generations some birds and animals had become totally exterminated, while others survived by greatly increasing the distance between themselves and people.
From The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin
