COSTANOAN

Beginning in the 16 th century, when Europeans explored the west coast of North America, they encountered Native peoples of various language groupings living on or near the Pacific Ocean. As early as the 18th century, the Spanish called the peoples of one language family living around and south of San Francisco Bay (present-day California) the Costenos or Costanos, for “coast people,” eventually anglicized as Costanoan (pronounced cos-TAH-no-an). The Costanoan were rare among CALIFORNIA INDIANS in that they spoke a Penutian language, their dialects, according to some scholars, grouped with those of the MIWOK, neighbors to the north and east, as the Miwok-Costanoan language family. A name once used for their various Penutian dialects is Mutsun. The tribal name Ohlone has also been applied to tribes of both the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas.

Costanoan territory, consisting of scattered villages, extended from San Francisco Bay to the south as far as Big Sur and the territory of the ESSELEN and SALINAS, both thought to be Hokan-speaking people. To the east, in addition to the Miwok, were the YOKUTS, Penutian-speaking like the Costanoan. These California peoples were organized into what is referred to as tribelets, consisting of one or more villages headed by a chief and a council of elders. Typical to the region, the Costanoan depended on the gathering of wild plant foods, especially acorns, as well as fishing and hunting. They made houses and rafts of tule (a type of bulrush). They crafted baskets but no pottery. Clothing was minimal, with women wearing aprons front and back; men went naked in warm weather. Robes of rab-bitskin, deerskin, or duck feathers were worn in wintertime. Shamans had considerable influence in spiritual and social life. The Sun was considered a principal deity. Some among the Costanoan considered the eagle, hummingbird, and coyote the original inhabitants of the world. Like other central California tribes, the Costanoan participated in the Kuksu Cult (see WINTUN).

In 1770, Spanish missionary Junipero Serra founded San Carlos Borromeo de Monterey. The mission was soon moved south to the Carmel River, becoming known as San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. The Spanish founded six other missions in the homeland of the Costanoan: Soledad, San Juan Bautista, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Jose, and San Francisco. Peoples of different villages, not all Costanoan, were grouped together, among them the Esselen. In historic times, different Indians came to be classified according to the nearest mission and not according to their own tribelets. By the time the Mexicans secularized the missions in the 1830s, the ancestry of many of the MISSION INDIANS was mixed. Moreover, their numbers had decreased dramatically. The California gold rush of 1849, following the takeover of California from Mexico by the United States the year before, and growing non-Indian settlement in ensuing years also contributed to the decline of the Costanoan, and some scholars were all too ready to consider them extinct by the early 20th century. Yet pockets of Costanoan endured. Tribal members continued to speak their Native language, and descendants eventually revitalized their culture.

Various modern tribes maintain their identities as Costanoan: the Amah Band of Ohlone/Costanoan Indians; the Costanoan Band of Carmel Mission Indians; the Costanoan Ohlone Rumsen-Mutsen Tribe; the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Indians; the Indian Canyon Mutsun Band of Costanoan Indians; the Muwekma Indian tribe; and the Pajaro Valley Ohlone Indian tribe. One group who consider themselves primarily Esselen have chosen the modern name Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation because of the ancestral and cultural ties among Esselen and southern Ohlone/Costanoan peoples; they even shared their respective Hokan and Penutian languages to a degree, loan words passed between the two groups.

In 2005, Rotary International sponsored an exchange between groups of Aborigines of Australia and Native Americans in order that they visit their respective homelands and learn about their corresponding indigenous cultures. At Monterey State Historic Park six Rotarians from South Australia received a walking tour and a lecture on Costanoan culture.