Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
COMMON YARROW
Native Americans favored the native plant common yarrow for making certain
kinds of baskets. Many local tribes in the watershed still weave today. To help
them maintain their basketmaking materials, those planning riverbank restora-
tion work for the Merced and San Joaquin river projects have been including
common yarrow in their planting palettes.
Even though Native Americans living around San Francisco Bay en-
joyed unusual access to aquatic foods and did little to alter the salt marshes,
dunes, and beaches, they did harvest and manage plants. According to Kat
Anderson in her book
Tending the Wild
, “Through coppicing, pruning,
harrowing, sowing, weeding, burning, digging, thinning, and selective
harvesting, [California Indians] encouraged desired characteristics of in-
dividual plants, increased populations of useful plants, and altered the
structures and compositions of plant communities. Regular burning of
many types of vegetation . . . created better habitat for game, eliminated
brush, minimized the potential for catastrophic fires, and encouraged a
diversity of food crops.”
By the time Europeans arrived, the Native Americans around the bay
had been living in a sustainable, balanced relationship with the fish, trees,
and wildlife around them for thousands of years. “The white man sure
ruined this country,” said James Rust, a Southern Sierra Miwok elder
quoted in Kat Anderson's topic. “It's turned back to wilderness.”
Spanish explorers discovered San Francisco Bay in 1769, finding it by
climbing a ridge rather than sailing into the Golden Gate. Sir Francis
Drake and others exploring the coast had already passed the bay's narrow
opening, often masked by fog, several times. But when Gaspar de Portola
climbed up onto what is now Sweeney Ridge on the coastal mountains
near Daly City, he saw what he described as “an arm of the sea” immense
enough “for all the navies of Europe” to shelter in. From the very begin-
ning, the Spanish saw in this “arm” what other explorers, settlers, entre-
preneurs, and immigrants were to see who came after them: an extraordi-
nary natural harbor.
At first, the Spanish merely set up a small fort at the Presidio to defend
their find, allowing their Franciscan padres to build missions to convert
and conscript the Indians. During the Mission Period (1770-1834), thou-
