USA > California > Marin County > History of Marin County, California also an historical sketch of the state of California > Part 11
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58
But there are facts which go to prove the case other than mere Indian legends. Titus Fey Cronise in his admirable work entitled " The Natural Wealth of California," says: "It is clearly settled that the place where he (Drake) landed is near Point de los Reyes. The locality will probably be ever known hereafter as Drake's Bay. The most conclusive argument that could be advanced to prove that he did not discover the bay of San Fran- cisco is found in the name he gave the country-New Albion. There is nothing about the entrance to this bay to call up images of the 'white cliffs of old England,' so dear to the hearts of the mariners of that country. Its beetling rocks, which must have been additionally dark and dreary at the season of the year when the great navigator saw them-neither green with the verdure of spring, nor russet by the summer's heat, while near Point de los Reyes there is sufficient whiteness about the cliffs which skirt the shore to attract attention, and as it is 'out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh,' the 'bold Briton,' longing for home, may have pictured to his
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' mind's eye' some resemblance to ' Old Albion.' Besides, Drake lay thirty- six days at anchor, which it would have been impossible for so experienced a sailor to have done, had it been in our glorious bay, without being im- pressed with its great importance as a harbor, on a coast so destitute of such advantages as this; but he makes no allusion to any feature traceable in our ' bay. He never had the honor of seeing it." In this connection it may be further stated that the headland forming the Point is composed of granite, which may have presented, at that time, a white or greyish color, and this appearance is still perceptible at certain angles of the sun's rays. It is urged that the bay at Point Reyes would afford no shelter from a southeast storm, and hence could not be the "good harbor " spoken of by Drake's chronicler; but it must be remembered that he was there in the month of June, and that at that time of the year all the winds are from the northwest, and no more secure anchorage from winds from that direction can be found along the coast than is to be had under the lee of Punta de los Reyes.
Summed up then the matter stands as follows: Favoring the idea that Drake's and San Francisco bay are one is a general sweeping statement, based upon no proofs, and only attempted to be sustained by those who dis- like to acknowledge that the best harbor along the whole coast line was the last one to be discovered, or who wish to give to England's navigators the honor of the discovery. On the other hand, pointing to what is now known as Drake's bay as the place, stands, firstly, the indisputable evidence of the log-book and chart made by Drake himself, which locates the place to within sixteen seconds, or within one-fourth of a mile; secondly, the traditions among the people with whom he met while here, and thirdly, all that can be said in favor of the bay of San Francisco can be as justly and truthfully said of Drake's bay. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude from the evidence adduced that to the present Drake's bay belongs the honor of being the one in which that famous traveler spent his time while ashore in Cali- fornia.
On the 22d of July, after having repaired his ship and doubtless taken on board a goodly supply of fresh meat and water, Drake set sail for England, going by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and arriving in Plymouth, November 3, 1580, being gone about two years and ten months. He was the first Eng- lishman who circumnavigated the globe, and was the first man who ever made the entire voyage in the same vessel. He was graciously re- ceived by the Queen (Elizabeth) and knighted. She also gave orders for the preservation of his ship, the "Golden Hind," that it mnight remain a monument to his own and his country's glory. At the end of a century it had to be broken up, owing to decay. Of the sound timber a chair was made, which was presented by Charles II. to the Oxford University. Sir Francis Drake died on board ship, at Nombre de Dios, in the West Indies, January 28, 1595.
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But there is quite an amount of historical interest attached to this bay aside from the fact that it was the locale of Drake's sojourn. In 1595, Se- bastian Cermenon, while on a voyage from Manilla to Acapulco, was wrecked near Punta de los Reyes. This was doubtless the first shipwreck which ever occurred on the California coast. Nothing is known of the fate of the crew, but evidently they, or a portion of them at least, reached Acapulco or some other Spanish seaport and reported the wreck. In 1602, General Se- bastian Viscaiño, under orders from Philip III. of Spain, made an explora- tion of the coast of Upper California, in the course of which he discovered the harbor of San Diego on the 10th of November. After remaining a few days he proceeded to the north, and on December 16th discovered the bay of Monterey, which he named in honor of Gaspar de Zunniga, Count de Monte Rey, the then Viceroy of Mexico. It was at first called the Port of Pines. We now come to a very peculiar entry in his diary or log-book, which is as follows: "In twelve days after leaving Monterey, a favorable wind carried the ship past the port of San Francisco, but she afterwards put back into the port of Francisco." At a first glance this would seem to point to the present bay of that name, and would seem to rob Governor Portala and his band of adventurers of the honor of either discovering or naming the bay, and instead of its being named after the Jesuitic patron saint in 1769, it was known by that name more than a century and a half previous. But let us peruse this diary still further. Taking up the thread where it was dropped above, it states :- " She anchored, January 7, 1603, behind a point of land called Punta de los Reyes, where there was a wreck." This then establishes the exact location of the " port of San Francisco" mentioned above, which is the same as that of the present Drake's bay, and was doubtless one and the same, for the wreck which he saw could have been none other than that of the ship lost by Sebastian Cermenon in 1595, " near Punta de los Reyes." But there is still other evidence that Drake's Bay and the "port of San Francisco " are the same. A map was published in Europe in 1545, three years after the voyage of Rodriguez Cabrillo, in which a San Francisco bay is mentioned, and also the Farralones, which islands were named by Cabrillo after his pilot, Farralo. Now, it is well known that this famous navigator did not enter the present bay of San Francisco, therefore, if the bay of San Francisco and the Farralone islands are marked on this map as conterminous, it is more than reasonable to conclude that the bay referred to is none other than the present Drake's bay which opens out directly towards the Far- ralones, and it is quite probable that Cabrillo himself gave the name of San Francisco to it." There is also a work extant, written by Cabrera Bueno, and published in Spain in 1734, which contains instructions to navigators for reaching the "Punta de los Reyes, and entering the port of San Francisco.'' This would go to show that the two places were contiguous, and it is more than likely that these "instructions " were compiled from the map mentioned
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above and similar ones, on all of which the port of San Francisco was marked " behind a point of land called Punta de los Reyes." It may be further stated that the Russian navigators recognized the "port of San Francisco" to be separate and distinct from the present bay of San Francisco, for when, in 1812, Baranoff, chief agent of the Russian-American Fur Company, asked permission from the Governor of California to erect a few houses and leave a few men at Bodega Bay, he designated that place as " a little north of the port of San Francisco." San Francisco bay had been visited before that by the Russians and was known to be nearly sixty miles from Bodega bay, hence we must conclude that they recognized some place quite near to the latter place as the " port of San Francisco," which place could be none other than that laid down on the charts spoken of above, which has been proven conclusively to be the Drake's bay of to-day.
There are several accounts as to how the headland came to be christened Punta de los Reyes, one of which is to the effect that it being the boldest and most prominent point met with from Point Conception to Cape Mendocino, was called the King of the Points, but the construction of the name does not bear that version out. Its name literally translated is the " Point of the King." It is also stated that in sailing by the headland, just from the proper point of view, a throne may be seen in the granite cliffs with a king seated upon it, hence the title Point of the King, This name was conferred upon the point by General Sebastian Viscaiño in 1602, who, it will be re- membered, was driven past the point by a southeastern wind, and after- wards turned about and anchored behind the point of land in Drake's bay. Hence it would seem very probable that as they passed the point they ob- served this striking resemblance in the cliffs, and at once christened it " Punta de los Reyes."
On September 17, 1776, the Presidio and Mission of San Francisco were founded, on what was then the extreme boundary of California, the former in a manner being a frontier command, having a jurisdiction which extend- ed to the farthest limits northwards of Spanish discovery. How the arts and sciences have bridged time! What do these comparatively few years in a nation's life show ? They speak for themselves! San Francisco to-day is a marvel! Short though her life has been she has worked wonders; to- day she is the center of civilization as regards the western portion of this vast continent; she is the heart which sends pulsations through the different commercial arteries of the coast; the throbbings of her veins are felt from Behring's straits to those of Magellan; across the oceans the influence of her system is known, while at home she is looked up to as the youth is whose care in the future will be the old, the sick and the maimed.
At this epoch voyagers who had previously visited Bodega bay on entering the harbor of San Francisco and seeing the formation of the Marin peninsula, came to the natural conclusion that there was communication between
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these sheets of water, hence an expedition was organized to test the truth of this conjecture. The exploring party was placed under the command of Captain Quiros, who left San Francisco in September, 1776, and gaining the entrance of the Petaluma creek followed its many sinuosities as far as he .Could, but ultimately returned without finding the connection he sought. This was an undertaking requiring no doubt a vast amount of time, labor, endurance, and caution as well, for even at the present time the mouths of the creeks which flow into the San Pablo bay are difficult to detect, what then must it have been to those explorers who had to find the landmarks and fix them for all time ! As we fly along the bays, rivers, creeks and rail- roads of our State we are prone to gaze on either hand and view with charmed eye and contented mind the miles upon miles of cultivated fields, and the thousands of happy homes we pass, taking all as an accepted fact, at the same time totally forgetful of those intrepid men who had the hardi- hood first to penetrate into them when unknown wilds, thus paving the way for generations yet unborn, and by their labor assuring both peace and plenty.
About the time of the establishment of the mission in San Francisco, which we have already noted as having occurred in the year 1776, a party of Spaniards traveling northward in quest of discoveries by land arrived at Olompali, now in Novato township, near the Sonoma line, where they were received by the natives, who then had a large rancheria there, with every mark of friendliness. Owing to the time of year the streams en route had ceased to flow, hence on arrival at Olompali, were they the more grati- fied to find a gurgling brook splashing merrily along the well-wooded hill- sides, where they could refresh their jaded steeds and be themselves regaled with crystal water, after a weary ride in the Summer's sweltering sun. This accomplished, the surroundings gave evidence of the fact that the spot had been long used as the camp of the tribe of Indians who gave their name to the place. Here the Spaniards were content to remain among their kindly hosts, and in return for their hospitality commenced the instruction of the Indians in the art of adobe brick-making and house-building. This resulted in the construction of the old adobe residence which stood at the southeast corner of the dwelling of Doctor Burdell, on the old Olompali ranch, and which will doubtless be well remembered by many an old traveler on the Petaluma road. The building of which we speak was in size sixteen by twenty feet, with walls eight feet high and having a thickness of three feet; it was thatched with tules, contained only one room, which had a hole perforated through the center of the roof to permit the escape of smoke. Running at right angles to where the erection just described stood is the adobe building now used as a residence by Doctor Burdell, and which was constructed at a date posterior to the other, from the fact that while the first mentioned one has decayed the second is still in an excellent state of preservation. The former of these, it.
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is almost right to conjecture, was erected by the father of Camillo Ynitia, the last chief of the tribe, and the latter by the son himself, and therefore we have little hesitation in saying that to Marin county belongs the honor of having the first dwelling house in California north of the Bay of San Francisco.
At Olompali, as indeed in almost every part of the county coast line, are to be found what may be termed Indian remains. That the reader may have some knowledge of these curious relics, we here produce from the Over- land Monthly of October, 1874, an elaborate article entitled " Some Kjök- kenmöddings and Ancient Graves of California," by Paul Schumacher:
" During my last visit to that part of the Californian coast between Point. San Luis and Point Sal, in the months of April, May and June of this year I had occasion to observe extensive kjøkkenmoddings, like those I found, about. a year ago, so numerous along the shores of Oregon. These deposits of shells and bones are the kitchen refuse of the earlier inhabitants of the coast regions where they are now found, and, though differing from each other in their respective species of shells and bones of vertebrates-according to the localities and the ages to which they belong-they have yet, together with the stone implements found in them, a remarkable similarity in all parts of the North American Pacific coast that I have explored-a similarity that. extends further to the kjøkkenmoddings of distant Denmark, as investigated and described by European scientists.
"In Oregon, from Chetco to Rogue River,* I found that these deposits con- tained the following species of shells: Mytilus Californianus, Tapes sta- minea, Cardium Nuttallu, Purpura lactuca, etc .; eight-tenths of the whole being of the species first mentioned. In California, on the extensive downs between the Arroyo Grande and the Rio de la Santa Maria-the mouth of which latter is a few miles north of Point Sal-I found that the shells, on what appear to have been temporary camping places, consist nearly altogether of small specimens of the family Lucuia ; so much so that not only can hardly any other sort be found, but hardly even any bones. My reason for sup- posing these heaps to be the remains of merely temporary camps is the ex- ceptional paucity of flint knives, spear-heads, and other implements found therein, as also the absence of any chips that might indicate the sometime presence of a workshop where domestic tools and weapons of war were manufactured-a something that immediately strikes the accustomed eye in viewing regularly well-established settlements. On further examining this. class of heaps by a vertical section we find layers of sand recurring at short intervals, which seem to prove that they were visited at fixed seasons; those moddings exposed towards the northwest being vacated while the wind
*Of the collections made by Mr. Schumacher at that place, the complete and illustrated description will be found in the Smithsonian Report for the year 1874.
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from that quarter was blowing sand over them, and mutatis mutandis, the same happening with regard to camps with a southwest aspect while the southwest wind prevailed. It is fair, then, to suppose that these places were only the temporary residences of the savages to whom they appertained, and that they were tenanted during favorable times and seasons for the gathering of mollusks, which, having been extracted from their shells by the help of the flint knives found here, were dried in the sun for transpor- tation to the distant, better sheltered, permanent villages-the comparatively small quantities of shell remains now found at these regular settlements going also to support this theory. No graves have been found near those temporary camps of the earliest known Californian pioneers. I discovered, indeed, one skeleton of an Indian, together with thirteen arrow-heads, but it was plainly to be seen that the death of this person had happened during some short sojourn of a tribe at this place, as the burial had been effected in a hasty and imperfect manner, and the grave was without the usual lining which, as we shall see, is found in all the other tombs of this region.
" On the extremity of Point Sal, the northern projection of which is covered by large sand-drifts, we find down to the very brink of the steep and rocky shore, other extensive shell deposits, which, with few exceptions, consist of the Mytilus Californianus and of bones, flint chips being also found, though very sparsely, in comparison with the mass of other remains. The sea having washed out the base of this declivity, and the top soil having, as a consequence, slid down, we can see on the edge of the cliff shell-layers amounting in all to a thickness of four or five feet; that part closest to the sub-lying rock appearing dark and ash-like, while the deposit becomes better preserved as the surface is neared. At other places, for example, on the extreme outer spur of this Point Sal, the shell- remains have so conglomerated and run together with extreme antiquity as to overhang and beetle over the rocks for quite a distance.
" Leaving now these temporary camps, we shall visit the regular settle- ments of the ancient aborigines. Traces of these are found near the southern Point Sal, at a place where it turns eastward at an angle of something less than ninety degrees behind the first small hill of the steep ridge which trends easterly into the country, and which, up to this spot, is, on its northern slope, covered with drift-sand and partially grown over with stunted herbage. Further traces of a like kind are to be seen on the high bluff between north and south Point Sal. Here the shells are piled up in shapeless, irregular heaps, as they are met in all localities on the coast where there were the fixed dwelling-places of people whose principal food consisted . of fresh shell-fish; for, in the neighborhood of these permanent homes the shell-remains were always put away in fixed places, while in the temporary camps they were carelessly distributed over the whole surface of the ground. Very vividly did these bleached mounds recall to my mind the immense
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remains of such heaps that I had seen in Oregon on the right bank of the Checto, as also near Natenet, and near Crook's Point, or Chetleshin, close to Pistol river. I remembered also how I had watched the Indians in various places -- for example, near Crescent City on the Klamath, and on the Big Lagoon-forming just such shell heaps; two or three families always depositing their refuse on the same modding.
" To return to Southern California. A deposit similar to those of Point Sal, although much smaller, stands on the left bank of the Santa Maria river, near its mouth. Both at the first described fixed camps, and at this place, there are to be found tons of flint-chips, scattered about in all directions, as also knives, arrow-heads and spear-heads in large quantities. I was somewhat perplexed, however, by being unable to find any graves; such numerous moddings revealing the existence of important settlements that should have been accompanied by burying-places. I therefore moved further, inland, seeking a locality where the soil could be easily worked, where a good view of the surrounding country could be had, and where, above all, there was good fresh-water-all of which requirements appear to have been regarded as necessary for the location of an important village. I soon recognized at a distance shell-heaps and bone-heaps, the former of which gets scarcer as one leaves the shore. Approaching these, on a spur of Point Sal upon which a pass opens through the coast hills, and on both sides of which are springs of fresh water, though I did not succeed, after a careful examination, in distinguishing single houses, I believe I found the traces of a large settlement on a kind of saddle on the low ridge, where flint-chips, bones and shells lie in great quantities. Further search at last revealed to me in the thick chaparral a few scattered sandstone slabs, such as in that region were used for lining graves. Digging near these spots, I at last found the graves of this settlement-a settlement that the old Spanish residents call Kesmali.
" Here I brought to light about one hundred and fifty skeletons and various kinds of implements. The graves were constructed in the following manner : A large hole was made in the sandy soil to a depth of about five feet, then a fire was lit in it until a hard brick-like crust was burned to a depth of four or five inches into the surrounding earth. The whole excava- tion was then partitioned off into smaller spaces by sandstone slabs, about one and a half inches thick, one foot broad, and three feet long, in which smaller partitions the skeletons were. One of these slabs generally lay horizontally over the head of the corpse as a kind of protecting roof for the skull, just as I had found them at Checto river, although in the latter instance the graves were lined with split redwood boards instead of stones. Such careful burial is not. however, always met with, and must evidently be taken as a sign of the respectability or the wealth of the deceased; the more so, as in such graves I found usually many utensils, something not the
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case with the more carelessly formed tombs, which were only very slightly lined, and in which the heads of the dead were covered with a piece of rough stone or half a mortar. The slabs above mentioned were generally painted, and a piece which I carried off with me was divided lengthwise by a single straight, dark line, from which radiated on either side, at an angle of about sixty degrees, thirty-two other parallel red lines, sixteen on each side, like the bones of a fish from the vertebra. In most cases the inner side of the slab was painted a simple red.
"In these graves the skeletons lay on their backs with the knees drawn up, and the arms, in most cases, stretched out. No definite direction was observed in the placing of the bodies, which frequently lay in great disorder, the saving of room having been apparently the prime consideration. Some skeletons, for example, lay opposite to each other, foot to foot, while adjoin- ing ones again were laid crosswise. The female skeletons have, instead of the protecting head-slab, a stone mortar placed on its edge so as to admit the skull, or a stone pot, which latter, if too narrow in the neck to admit the skull, is simply buried underneath it. Cups and ornaments, both in the case of men and women, lie principally about the head, while shell-beads are found in the mouth, the eye-sockets, and in the cavity of the brain, which latter is almost always filled with sand pressed in through the foramen magnum. The skeletons were in some cases packed in quite closely, one over another, so that the uppermost were only about three feet below the surface of the ground. The stain of poverty is very evident on these, except, perhaps, where they are females, as they are in the majority of cases. I cannot accept the hypothesis that these were the slaves of some rich man and buried with their master; for the lower skeletons were generally found to have been disturbed in a very singular manner, such as could only have been occasioned by a reopening of the grave after decomposition had set in. I found, for example, a lower jaw lying near its right place, but upside down, so that both the upper and the lower teeth pointed downward; in another case, the thigh-bones lay the wrong way, the knee-pans being turned toward the basin; and, in other instances, the bones were totally separated and mixed up-all going to show that the graves had been repeatedly opened for the burial of bodies at different times. Once I even found, upon piercing the bottom crust of one sepulcher, another lying deeper, which perhaps had been forgotten, as the bones therein were somewhat damaged by fire. Plenty of charcoal is found in these tombs, usually of redwood, rarely of pine ; and I could not determine any third variety. Sometimes there were also discovered the remains of posts from three to six inches in diameter, and of split boards about two inches in thickness. These are probably the remains of the burned dwelling of the deceased, placed in his grave with all his other property, after a fashion I observed in Checto last year.
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