Early Settlements in the Region.
Fages, the first traveler who passed through the country, from south to north, traveled along the eastern shore of the Bay of San Francisco in 1774,[[1]] and came upon Indian settlements where he found a friendly welcome. His account of this expedition however, fails to throw any light upon the question whether or not the shellmounds were still occupied at that time. The neighboring creek bears the name of “Temescal” from a region between Berkeley and Oakland through which it passes.[[2]] This name appears to be a mutilation of the Nahua word “temazcalli,” hot-house, the name of sweat-houses in Mexico, and the place may have been so named by Mexicans living on the Bay, from an Indian sweat-house standing there. Hence it may be assumed that an Indian settlement was in existence on the banks of this creek at a time from which the name could pass over into the existing vocabulary.
Other evidences of early Indian settlements in this section of the eastern shore country of the Bay are the shellmounds, twelve of which may be found along the coast between Point Richmond and Alameda in a stretch of twelve miles ([pl. 1]). They may be seen near Point Richmond upon the eastern side, facing the peninsula, upon Brooks Island, near Ellis Landing, northeast from Stege upon a marshy ground intersected by narrow channels, near Seaver’s Ranch to the west from Stege, on Point Isabel, in West Berkeley, in Emeryville, and in the eastern section of Alameda between Mound, Central, and Lincoln avenues. There is also said to have been one in East Oakland on the canal between Oakland Harbor and Lake Merritt, but it has disappeared owing to building over that section of ground. In all probability many others may have met with a similar fate.
All these evidences of an early occupation of the country are but a few of the mounds that skirt the Bay upon all sides, continuing along Suisun Bay and the Sacramento and Feather rivers. Besides these, there are numerous mounds dotting the coast land of Northern California, those surrounding swamps and rivers along the Tulare and Kern lakes in southern California,[[3]] and on the shore near Santa Cruz. Others are found in the regions of San Luis Obispo,[[4]] of Santa Barbara,[[5]] and the islands opposite that place.
[1] Cf. H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races, 1886, II, p. 595.
[2] Cf. also “San Francisco Quadrangle” with the topographical maps of California by the U. S. Geological Survey.
[3] Warren K. Moorehead, Prehistoric Implements, 1900, p. 258.
[4] Paul Schumacher, Smithson. Reports, 1874, p. 335 ff.
[5] Schumacher, Bulletin of the U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey of the Territories (F. V. Hayden), 1877, III, p. 73 ff.; F. W. Putnam, Reports upon Archaeological and Ethnological Collections from vicinity of Santa Barbara, Cal., etc.; Report upon U. S. Geogr. Surveys west of the 100th Meridian (G. M. Wheeler), 1879, VII, Archaeology. From more northern sections of the Pacific Coast may be mentioned specifically the shellmounds of Oregon (P. Schumacher, Bulletin, l. c.), of Vancouver, and of the mainland of British Columbia opposite (H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, 1886, IV, p. 739), also those upon the Aleutian Islands, explored exhaustively by W. H. Dall (in U. S. Geogr. and Geol. Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, J. W. Powell, Contributions to the North American Ethnology, 1877, I, p. 41 ff.). Together with those of California these shellmounds are an important counterpart to those found along the Atlantic coast, found from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the river valleys of nearly all the southern states (Charles C. Abbott, Primitive Industry, 1881, p. 439; Short, The North Americans of Antiquity, 1892, p. 106), and almost all of which have been carefully studied in some of their aspects, although not yet conclusively.