Who were the first Californians? When was the area settled? What is known about how the earliest aborigines lived? How did countless generations of their descendants interact with the natural environment? These are important questions for which there are few simple, definitive answers. This is the case for several reasons. Because there were few written records before the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s (the pre-contact period), historians are dependent on the often conflicting and tentative findings of scientists, especially anthropologists and archeologists. Also, what passes for the prehistory of California must correlate with what geologists, physicists, and ecologists have learned about land-forms, the dating of human and animal bones, and sustainable habitats for game, plants, and people. Such correlations, likewise, can be problematic. For example, anthropologists and archeologists sometimes dispute the results of radiocarbon tests used to date the arrival of the first humans in the area.
With these cautions in mind, historians are in general agreement that perhaps as early as 50,000 years ago humans had followed big game - such as mammoths, mastodons, and bison - eastward across the Beringia ice bridge that once connected Asia to Alaska. Ten to fifteen thousand years ago, as climate warming set in and Beringia melted into the Bering Strait, the descendants of these Paleo-Indian migratory hunters continued on their way eastward and southward throughout the New World in pursuit of game. They traveled through ice-free corridors, “Paleo-Indian superhighways” according to UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Brian Fagan, into lands that would become California and the remaining bulk of the Americas. From the California mainland, various groups built watercraft that carried them to the Channel Islands of the Santa Barbara Channel, contend some anthropologists. The skeletal remains of the so-called Arlington Woman at a site on Santa Rosa Island have been radiocarbon dated to as early as 11,000 years ago.
Until recent years, this ice-free corridor explanation was clearly the dominant one regarding the earliest human inhabitants of North America’s western coastline. Today, however, anthropologist Jon M. Erlandson of the University of Oregon and other researchers have found that prehistoric Asian seafarers most likely voyaged along the northernmost coastal waters of the Pacific Rim, reaching California’s Channel Islands at least 13,000 years ago, and possibly even millennia earlier. This so-called coastal migration theory refers to the ancient offshore route as the “Kelp Highway,” in reference to the clusters of edible marine life inhabiting these lush kelp beds, as well as accessible birds and nearby terrestrial game.
Archeological evidence, including fish hooks and other gear, have been excavated on the Channel Islands and carbon-dated to 13,000 years ago. Moreover, Erlandson claims that geologic evidence suggests that the ice-free corridor may not have been passable until 14,000 years ago, if then, and archeological remains found in 14,300-year-old caves on Oregon’s coastline seemingly predate the ice-free corridor migration. In short, a growing body of scientific evidence holds that California’s first human inhabitants were probably northeast Asian Pacific Rim voyagers. Whether or not they predated the Beringia land-crossers (the archeological debate continues), ancient Pacific seafarers were clearly among the first human settlers of what became California.
As the Arlington site suggests, Indians have been living in California for between 12,000 and 15,000 years or longer. For thousands of years afterward the growing aboriginal population spread into all regions of the land, adapting to the diverse, ever-changing environmental conditions they encountered.
Long before Europeans arrived, California natives had lived in considerable harmony and balance with their natural surroundings. Food, prepared by the women, was usually plentiful and its sources were diverse. Indians ate ocean and freshwater fish, mollusks, sea otter, deer, elk, birds, reptiles, insects, acorns, pinon seeds, mushrooms, squash, corn, and more. Nutritionally, their diets were superior to those of the Europeans who would later claim the land. Men hunted and fished; women gathered, stored, and processed acorns and other foods. Acorns were a high-fat dietary staple that required leaching out the tannic acid
Figure 1.2 The Kelp Highway. Drawn by Michael H. Graham. Source: Jon M. Erlandson, Michael H. Graham, Bruce J. Bourque, et al., "The Kelp Highway Hypothesis: Marine Ecology, the Coastal Migration Theory, and the Peopling of the Americas,” The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2/2 (2007). Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd and Michael H. Graham.
By rinsing and using mortars and pestles for grinding the meal into flour for cooking. While these activities entailed work they seldom required excessive labor since many carried out these tasks. If ever there were a Pacific Arcadia, a terrestrial paradise of rustic beauty and relatively simple living, California came as close as anywhere else to realizing that ideal.
During the millennia before European contact, California’s Indians built an extraordinary knowledge base about how elevation and climate related to food resources, about edible and medicinal plants, and forestry management. Tribal territories sometimes spanned different elevation levels, each level featuring its own edible vegetation and animal resources as well as climatic characteristics. For example, Indians crowded into the foothill woodland areas because of the widespread availability of acorns. The Indians in the Colorado Desert used creosote bushes to treat nausea and other intestinal problems as well as respiratory ailments.
By the standards of their time and today, the California Indians of the distant pre-contact period excelled in forestry management and plant cultivation. Their major management tool was the controlled burning of trees and the dense underbrush that otherwise choked more valuable vegetation. The frequent fires they set in forests and oak woodlands favored the growth of such flame-tolerant trees as black oak, giant sequoia, and ponderosa pine. Certain native grasses also benefited. As a result of less cluttered forests native hunters could better see game and dangerous predators, like grizzlies, black bears, and mountain lions. By pruning trees and plants, and relocating some species, natives sought to maximize the productivity of their environment.
As forestry managers, California’s early Indians lived sustainably and close to nature’s rhythms and balance, which they understood well. Their interactions with the environment were governed by two precepts: do not waste; do not hoard. Hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming were conducted accordingly, ensuring ample food resources for the future. Favored by an environment of plenty, the natives’ stewardship of resources and the land fostered the ecology of aboriginal California.
World History
