Earliest European view of the Coast People. Unique among California Indians, the double-bladed paddle was a special innovation of the coast people. With its pointed prow the buoyant balsa could carry four people, swiftly and easily, into inlets and coves, from island to island in the bay. The Spanish invention in this view is the woven, striped blanket, made by the woman neophytes at the mission. This is the earliest view we have of the Coast People, made in 1816 by Louis Choris, a world traveler of acute perception who wrote, “I have never seen one laugh. I have never seen one look one in the face. They look as though they are interested in nothing.” By 1816, this was true.6

Image: Bancroft Library (brk00001587_24a)

It is uncertain when the wandering coast people first appeared on Mission Bay. Burial mounds with artifacts and middens dating back to an estimated 3,500 BC were found on Hunters Point, some near the shore at Candlestick Park.9 The people of these mounds may have been the ancestors of the Costanoans, as the Spanish named the coast people. The Costanoan linguistic group, comprised of eight separate languages spoken by 50 autonomous tribes (each with its own dialect), has been traced to 500 A.D. At the time the Spanish arrived the coast people had fished the waters of Mission Bay for 1,275 years. They numbered 10,000, all in the same linguistic group, of which 1,400 are thought to have spoken Ramaytush—the language spoken by the group most closely associated with Mission Bay.10

( Foundsf.org)