Still looking for a special gift for a friend? Getting nervous, time is running out? Well, for starters, you could consider some of the whimsical cards Christine from Idora Design is making available here. Or you could get a book (or both).We've actually reviewed a number of books about or related to California native plants, and you can read all our reviews here. I've also added a librarything Bookshelf in our side bar. But before the year is over, I want to add two more reviews, and here's the first.
I'd long intended to read The Oholone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, by Malcom Margolin. I finally purchased the book in the San Francisco Arboretum store when I wanted to spend a little money as my way of leaving a donation. While the book, at 25 years old, may not have all the details completely right, I found it a fascinating and enjoyable read, and learned a lot.
The book paints a picture of what the Bay Area was like before the Europeans arrived. And this picture includes both the Indians who lived here and the natural world that surrounded them.
"Tall, sometimes shoulder-high stands of native bunch grasses covered the vast meadowlands and the tree-dotted savannahs...The intermingling of grasslands, savannahs, salt- and freshwater marshes and forests created wildlife habitats of almost unimaginable richness and variety." And here's where it gets interesting: "In the days of the Oholone, the water table was much closer to the surface...The explorers suffered far more from mosquitoes, spongy earth, and hard-to-ford rivers than they did from thirst." A very different world, even without summer rains. What would it be like?
The author then tells us about life in an Oholone Indian village. Villagers prepare food, gamble, sing and tell stories. All the food comes directly from the land: The men hunt and fish, and the women gather acorns, grasses, berries, and other fruits of the land. People also ate other animals including insects such as grasshoppers. And while hunter-gatherer peoples are often considered marginal, the Oholone where living in an area of abundance and used the available resources well. "...for century after century the people went about their daily life secure in the knowledge that they lived in a generous land, a land that would always support them".
The Oholones also harvested acorns, and different families had different seed meadows. "The Oholones, like most other California Indians, periodically burned their land. They did it deliberately, and by doing so they profoundly altered the ecology of the Bay Area...The first explorers who so lyrically and enthusiastically described the park-like forests and open meadows of the Bay Area had not stumbled upon a virgin wilderness untouched by human hands...They had instead entered a landscape that had been consciously and dramatically altered for centuries."
The book explores many of the aspects of Oholone life, including Marriage, Basketmaking, Dancing, Shamans, and, inevitably, the last two centuries, during which the missionaries almost obliterated the Oholone and their way of life. Some members of those tribes still remain, though, and a Wikipedia article has some interesting information.
I found the book offered so much food for thought. How do people interact with their environment? With each other? Is a society that is stable and changes little over thousands of years a good thing? What's the cost of such a society (not much individual freedom, for one)? Is it worth it? And I like learning new things, looking at things another way.
Furthermore, while the book is not about gardening, it is about how humans relate to the world around them. And when the Indians were collecting seeds, enjoying flowers, and making space by burning, was that not the start of what we now do when we garden?
Comments