History of San Francisco - Precolonial History

Precolonial History

European visitors to the San Francisco Bay Area were preceded approximately 8,000 years earlier by Native Americans. Linguistic and paleontological evidence is controversial as to whether these earliest inhabitants of the area now known as San Francisco were the ancestors of the Ohlone population encountered by the Spanish in the late 18th century. The cultural unit, Ohlone, to which the San Francisco natives belonged did not recognize the city or county boundaries imposed later by Americans, and were part of a contiguous set of bands that lived from south of the Golden Gate to San José.

There is no mention of Native Americans in Sir Francis Drake's accounts of his trip to the San Francisco Bay in 1579, which is consistent with the seasonal use pattern of the area described in the archaeological record.

When the Spanish arrived, they found the area inhabited by the Yelamu tribe, which belongs to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone. The Ohlone speakers are distinct from Pomo speakers north of the San Francisco Bay, and are part of the Miwok group of languages. Their traditional territory stretched from Big Sur to the San Francisco Bay, although their trading area was much larger. Miwok-speaking Indians also lived in Yosemite, and Ohlone-speakers intermarried with Chumash and Pomo speakers as well.

The Spanish conquest of the San Francisco Bay Area came later than to Southern California. For one thing, San Francisco's characteristic foggy weather and geography led early European explorers such as Juan Cabrillo to bypass the Golden Gate and miss entering San Francisco Bay, although it seems clear from historical accounts of navigation that they passed close to the coastline north and south of the Golden Gate.