Ramaytush

The Ramaytush are one of the linguistic subdivisions of the Ohlone Native Americans of Northern California. Historically, the Ramaytush inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in the area which is now San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. The Ramaytush were not thought to be a self-conscious socio-political group. Instead they were defined by modern anthropologists and linguists, initially in the early twentieth century as the San Francisco Costanoans – the people who spoke a common dialect or language within the Costanoan branch of the Utian family. The term Ramaytush was first applied to them during the 1970s.

Historically, Ramaytush language territory was largely bordered by ocean and sea, except in the south where they bordered the people of the Santa Clara Valley who spoke Tamyen Ohlone and the people of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Pacific Coast at Point Año Nuevo who spoke dialects merging toward Awaswas Ohlone. To the east, across San Francisco Bay, were tribes that spoke the Chochenyo Ohlone language. To the north, across the Golden Gate, was the Huimen local tribe of Coast Miwok speakers. The northernmost Ramaytush local tribe, the Yelamu of San Francisco, were intermarried with the Huchiun Chochenyos of the Oakland area at the time of Spanish colonization.

European disease took a heavy toll of life on all tribal people who came to Mission Dolores after its creation in 1776. The Ohlone people were forced to use Spanish resulting in the loss of their language. Hundreds of Ohlone people at Mission Dolores were taken to the north bay to construct Mission San Rafael which was then used as a hospital for sick neophytes. Alfred L. Kroeber claimed that the west bay people were extinct by 1915. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, descendants of closely related Chochenyo and Tamyen Ohlone speakers, have been vocal advocates for Native American issues on the San Francisco Peninsula, as have some Ohlone descendants from the Monterey Bay Area farther south.