The Unseen People: A History of the Saklan and the Land They Call Home

Introduction: The Hidden History of a California Valley

This is the face of modern Northern California. A landscape of rolling hills and manicured communities known as Lamorinda—a name that is itself a 20th-century invention, a blend of the towns it encompasses: Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda. It appears as a place of quiet affluence, a land whose history seems to have begun with the freeways and subdivisions. But this modern veneer, like a thin layer of soil, covers a much deeper, more ancient story.   

Beneath these homes and highways lies the aboriginal territory of a people who thrived here for millennia. This was the homeland of the Saklan, a tribelet of the Bay Miwok people, whose world was intricately woven into the very fabric of this land. They were known to the Spanish as the Sacalanes, and they were part of a vibrant network of interconnected peoples, including the broader Miwok and Ohlone communities.  

This is the story of that hidden world—a world of profound ecological balance, of fierce resistance in the face of invasion, and of a resilience so powerful that it endures to this day. For the Saklan are not a vanished people of the past. Their story did not end with the arrival of strangers. It continues in the lives of their descendants, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, who carry the legacy of their ancestors and continue their fight for sovereignty and recognition in the 21st century.   

This is the story of a people and their land. It is a journey to uncover a history that was systematically buried, a testament to a culture that refused to be erased, and a chronicle of the enduring connection between a people and the place they will always call home.

Table 1: Timeline of the Saklan People

Date/Period	Event
c. 1500–1772	Pre-contact era. The Saklan people inhabit their ancestral homeland in what is now Lamorinda, practicing sophisticated land management and participating in a wide regional trade network.
1772	The first Spanish land expedition, led by Father Juan Crespi, enters the region, marking the beginning of European encroachment.
1776	Mission San Francisco de Asís, also known as Mission Dolores, is founded, creating a center of colonial power that will profoundly impact the Saklan.
1794–1795	The first significant wave of Saklan and other Bay Miwok people move to Mission Dolores, possibly due to a combination of drought, disease pressure, and Spanish influence.
1795	A group of Saklan converts flees Mission Dolores, initiating a decade-long period of armed resistance against the Spanish colonial system. They kill a party of Christian Indians sent to retrieve them.
1797	A major Spanish punitive expedition attacks a Saklan village in the area of modern-day Lafayette, killing seven natives and capturing others.
1821	Mexico gains independence from Spain. The mission system is later secularized, but instead of returning land to native peoples, the government grants it to private citizens as ranchos, dispossessing the Saklan.
1848	The United States takes control of California. The discovery of gold triggers a catastrophic influx of settlers, beginning a period of state-sanctioned violence and genocide.
1850	The California legislature passes the "Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians," a law that effectively legalizes the enslavement and dispossession of Native peoples.
Early 1900s	Survivors of the Saklan and other regional tribes coalesce into new communities, including the federally-recognized Verona Band of Alameda County.
1927	In a bureaucratic act of erasure, a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent arbitrarily removes the Verona Band from the list of federally-recognized tribes, stripping them of their legal status.
Present Day	The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the direct descendants of the historic Verona Band, continue their multi-generational struggle to have their federal recognition reaffirmed while actively revitalizing their language and culture.

Part I: A World in Balance – Life Before the Strangers

Before the arrival of Europeans, the world of the Saklan was one of deep connection and intricate balance. Their homeland was a clearly defined territory nestled between the ranges now known as the Las Trampas and Briones Hills, a domain that stretched from the area of modern Highway 24 south to the Alameda County line. This was not a wilderness, but a carefully managed and populated landscape.   

The Saklan Homeland: A Land of Abundance

The lifelines of Saklan society were the watersheds. The Lafayette, Las Trampas, and San Leandro Creeks provided fresh water for drinking and bathing, pathways for travel, and a reliable source of fish migrating upstream from the Pacific. Along these watercourses, the Saklan established their villages, communities that could house anywhere from 70 to 200 people each.  

Their homes were elegant, dome-shaped structures called tule houses. Built with pliable willow branch frames and thatched with the abundant tule reeds that grew in the wetlands, these dwellings were both practical and sustainable. Inside, blankets woven from deerskin or rabbit fur would be arranged around a central fire pit, providing warmth and comfort for one or two families.   

The Saklan were one of several distinct but related tribelets that constituted the Bay Miwok people. This complex political landscape included neighbors like the Chupcan to the north near Concord, the Volvon on the slopes of Mount Diablo, and the Tatcan in the San Ramon Valley. Far from being isolated, they were part of a thriving network of indigenous cultures connected by trade, diplomacy, and kinship. This complex social map, with its defined territories and political relationships, reveals a region that was fully settled and organized, a stark contrast to the empty wilderness imagined by later colonizers.  

Table 2: The Bay Miwok World - Neighboring Tribelets and Territories

Tribelet	Primary Language	Approximate Aboriginal Territory (Modern Landmarks)
Saclan	Bay Miwok	Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Orinda, Moraga
Chupcan	Bay Miwok	Concord, northern slopes of Mount Diablo
Volvon	Bay Miwok	Eastern slopes of Mount Diablo, Clayton, Marsh Creek
Tatcan	Bay Miwok	Danville, Alamo, San Ramon Creek watershed
Julpun	Bay Miwok	Lower Marsh Creek, east of modern Antioch
Ompin	Bay Miwok	Pittsburg, north toward Suisun Bay
Jalquin	Bilingual Chochenyo Ohlone / Bay Miwok	San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Hayward, south Oakland

A Life Woven from the Land: Sophisticated Ecology

To label the Saklan as simple "hunter-gatherers" is to fundamentally misunderstand their relationship with the land. Theirs was a world built on generations of accumulated knowledge, a sophisticated system of ecological science that sustained a dense population without depleting the resources around them.

At the very center of their economy was the acorn. The nuts from the Coast Live and Valley Oaks that dotted the hills were their staple food, the grain that fed their world. Each fall, the entire community would work together in a massive harvest, collecting enough acorns to last through the year. These acorns were then meticulously processed—leached of their bitter tannins and ground into a nutritious meal using pestles on large bedrock mortars, the physical imprints of which can still be found today.   

This abundance was no accident. The Saklan were not passive recipients of nature's bounty; they were active stewards of their environment. Evidence shows that they tended to the oak groves through successive generations, using controlled fires and other techniques to clear underbrush, promote growth, and ensure a reliable and plentiful acorn harvest year after year. This was a form of horticulture, an active management of the landscape that represents a sustainable, multi-generational science.   

Beyond the oak groves, their diet was remarkably diverse. Men hunted deer, rabbits, and other game with bows and arrows, while women gathered a wide variety of seeds, berries, and edible roots. The creeks provided a bounty of salmon and steelhead. Their fishing techniques were ingenious, ranging from spears and woven weirs to a clever method of crushing the fruit of the California Buckeye and tossing it into the water, where its toxins would stun the fish, causing them to float to the surface for easy collection.   

Their craftsmanship was equally skilled. They wove intricate, watertight baskets from deer grass, fashioned tools from bone and wood, and created jewelry from shells obtained through a vast trade network that connected them to peoples across California. Their strategic location near the great rivers and the coast made them key participants in this network, trading their local resources for valuable goods like obsidian from the north, a volcanic glass prized for crafting razor-sharp arrowheads.  

Society and Spirit: The Human World

The Saklan social world was as ordered and balanced as their relationship with the land. Each village was guided by a hereditary leader, or headman, who served as a respected judge and mediator of disputes. The title was passed from father to son, but their political influence extended far beyond their own village.   

In a brilliant act of regional diplomacy, the children of leaders were expected to marry members of other tribelets. This practice wove a complex web of kinship across the landscape, ensuring that most villages had relatives in neighboring territories. This was a deliberate political strategy to maintain peace and build alliances. These very networks of family and obligation, established to keep the peace, would later prove essential, forming the backbone of a coordinated, multi-tribal resistance when a common enemy threatened their entire world.   

In their daily lives, personal adornment was important. Both men and women wore their hair long, cutting it short only as a sign of mourning for a lost loved one. Tattoos were common, as was jewelry crafted from shells and bone. They were a people who loved to celebrate, and dance and ceremony were woven into the rhythm of their lives.   

Their spiritual world was one in which all living things, from the mighty oak to the smallest insect, possessed a spiritual power. Their beliefs were expressed through the Kuksu religion, a ceremonial system shared with other tribes in the region. This involved elaborate dances, where participants wore intricate, feather-decorated regalia and impersonated animal spirits, their ancestors, in subterranean dance rooms. The great peaks that defined their landscape, especially the towering Mount Diablo, which they shared with their neighbors, undoubtedly held immense spiritual significance, sacred places at the center of their cosmos.   

This was the world of the Saklan before 1772: a stable, prosperous, and deeply spiritual society, living in a state of dynamic equilibrium with the land they had shaped and that had, in turn, shaped them.

Part II: The Cross and the Sword – The Mission Era and the Saklan Rebellion

This balanced world, which had existed for thousands of years, was about to be shattered. In 1772, the first Spanish land expeditions began to probe the valleys of Contra Costa County, their diarists noting the "many good creeks, with numerous villages and many gentle, peaceful Indians". These were the first intrusions into Saklan territory. They were the harbingers of a new power that would seek to remake the land and its people in its own image.   

The Arrival of the Strangers (1772-1794)

The instruments of this transformation were the missions. In 1776, the Spanish founded Mission San Francisco de Asís, known as Mission Dolores, followed by Mission San José in 1797. These were not merely churches; they were colonial outposts, designed to subjugate the native population, erase their culture, and turn them into a labor force for the Spanish crown.   

Beginning in 1794, the first large groups of Bay Miwok, including many Saklan, began to enter Mission Dolores. The reasons were complex. A severe drought may have strained the acorn and seed resources they relied upon, making the mission's promise of food appealing. Others may have been drawn by the novel trade goods and the perceived spiritual power of the black-robed friars. But whatever the reason, the move to a mission was a step into a new and brutal reality.   

The Reality of Mission Life

The promise of salvation was a lie. Life at Mission Dolores was a nightmare of forced labor, cultural suppression, and disease. The Spanish forced the native converts, whom they called neophytes, to build the very structures of their confinement and then perform all the work needed to run the mission—from farming and herding livestock to weaving and blacksmithing. A report from the time details the conditions: "long tasks, scant rations, and cruel punishments," including frequent whippings for any perceived infraction.   

The assault was not just physical, but spiritual. The missionaries forbade the speaking of native languages and the practice of native ceremonies, forcing all to learn Spanish and adopt Catholic rituals. Yet even in this oppressive environment, acts of resistance, both subtle and overt, emerged.  

On the very ceiling of the Mission Dolores church, Native artists, working under the watchful eyes of the priests, painted a series of chevrons and patterns. To the Spanish, they may have been mere decoration. To the artists, they were traditional basket designs, a secret and defiant declaration of their identity, hidden in plain sight at the heart of the colonial project.  

A Decade of Defiance (1795-1805): The Saklan Rebellion

NARRATOR (V.O.): For the Saklan, this subtle defiance soon erupted into open war. In April of 1795, a group of Saklan and other Bay Miwok who had recently been baptized left Mission Dolores, ostensibly on a sanctioned visit to their homeland. They refused to return. This act of self-liberation marked the beginning of a decade-long insurgency that would push the Spanish colonial authorities to their limits.   

The conflict escalated quickly. When the missionaries sent a party of Christian Indians to retrieve the fugitives, the Saklan attacked and killed seven of them. They began harboring other escapees from the mission and issued a direct challenge to Spanish authority, threatening to kill any mission Indian who continued to work for the priests and any soldier who dared to interfere.   

The Spanish governor, Diego de Borica, reacted with alarm. This was not a minor incident; it was a direct threat to the mission system itself, which relied on a compliant native labor force. He ordered his military to respond. The ensuing conflict was not a single battle, but a protracted, low-intensity war. The Spanish were forced to launch major punitive expeditions into Saklan territory in 1797, 1800, 1803, 1804, and 1805.   

In 1797, Spanish troops under Sergeant Pedro Amador marched into the Lafayette area and attacked a Saklan village. Seven Saklan warriors were killed in the fighting. Amador's report back to his superiors reveals the Spanish mindset. He wrote that it was necessary "to set the pagans straight," because the Saklan, he claimed, "have the idea that we fear them". The statement shows that the Saklan's fierce defense of their sovereignty was perceived by the Spanish not as a legitimate act of war, but as arrogance that needed to be punished.   

This decade of resistance was a testament to the Saklan's courage and the strength of their pre-existing political alliances. It required a "tremendous effort" from the Spanish military, which had few men to spare, demonstrating just how effectively this small tribelet and its allies could challenge a global empire.   

The Great Dying: The Invisible Enemy

But in the end, the Saklan and their neighbors were defeated not by the sword, but by an invisible enemy. The Spanish missions were petri dishes for European diseases. Crowded, unsanitary conditions allowed for the rapid spread of typhus, measles, and smallpox, illnesses for which the native population had no immunity.   

The death toll was catastrophic. Mission records reveal a horrifying mortality rate, with hundreds dying within a single year. The epidemics swept through the missions and out into the remaining free villages, causing a societal collapse. By the 1810s, the once-thriving Saklan homeland, a land of bustling villages, was described in historical records as being "essentially devoid of humans".   

The mission system, which was designed to assimilate and control, had become an engine of death. Yet, paradoxically, within these very institutions of destruction, the seeds of a new future were being sown. By forcing members of different tribes—Bay Miwok, Ohlone, Patwin, and Wappo—to live together, the missions became a crucible. In their shared suffering and shared resistance, new families were formed through inter-tribal marriages, and a new, blended community began to emerge. It was this new, pan-tribal identity, forged in the fires of the mission era, that would ensure the survival of their lineages into the next, even more brutal chapter of their history.   

Part III: A Deluge of Gold – Erasure and Genocide

The end of Spanish rule in 1821 did not bring freedom or restoration for the surviving Native people. The new Mexican government secularized the missions in the 1830s, but the vast mission lands, which had been the ancestral territories of countless tribes, were not returned to their original owners.

From Vassals to Trespassers: The Rancho Era

Instead, the Mexican governors carved up the Saklan homeland and the surrounding territories into massive private estates called ranchos. Rancho Acalanes was granted in what is now Lafayette, and Rancho Laguna de los Colorados covered the lands of Moraga and Orinda. With the stroke of a pen, the surviving Saklan and their neighbors were legally dispossessed, transformed overnight from the rightful inhabitants of the land into landless trespassers. Many had no choice but to work for meager sustenance on the very ranchos that had been carved out of their ancestral homes, their status reduced to that of serfs.   

The Gold Rush Cataclysm (1848 onwards)

This new oppression, however, was nothing compared to the cataclysm that was to come. In 1848, the United States seized California from Mexico. In that same year, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. The news ignited a global frenzy. Hundreds of thousands of gold-seekers descended upon California, an invading army driven by greed and a profound, violent racism.   

These new American immigrants saw the land's Native inhabitants not as people, but as obstacles—a primitive impediment to progress and profit that needed to be swept aside. The result was a wave of violence so extreme, so systematic, and so sanctioned by the new state authorities that it can only be described by one word: genocide.   

Vigilante militias and even units of the U.S. Army carried out countless massacres, hunting Native people for sport and for bounty. The Native population of California, estimated at 150,000 in 1848, plummeted to just 30,000 by 1870. It was one of the most rapid and devastating population collapses in human history.   

Genocide by Law: The American System

The American period introduced a new, and in many ways more sinister, form of colonization. While the Spanish had sought to incorporate Native people into their empire as a subjugated labor class, the goal of the Americans was largely extermination and total erasure. This goal was not just pursued with guns, but with laws.

In 1850, the very first California state legislature passed a bill cynically titled the "Act for the Government and Protection of the Indians". This law was a foundational document of the California genocide. It gave local white justices of the peace total authority over all Native people, who were denied the right to testify in court against a white person. It legalized the kidnapping and indenture of Native children, who could be forced to work without pay until adulthood.   

Perhaps most cruelly, it included a vagrancy clause. Any Indian found to be "loitering"—which could mean simply existing without a white employer—could be arrested. Within 24 hours, they were "hired out" at public auction to the highest bidder, who could force them to labor for up to four months. It was a system of slavery in all but name, a legal mechanism for creating a captive, unpaid labor force to build the new state's farms, towns, and infrastructure.   

This combination of genocidal violence and legal oppression was ruthlessly effective. The last remaining Native rancherias in Contra Costa County, which had held on through the Spanish and Mexican periods, were destroyed. By 1860, the official census recorded fewer than 100 Native people left in the entire county. The Saklan and their neighbors had been pushed to the very brink of extinction.   

Part IV: The Enduring Legacy – The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe

But they were not extinguished. Against all odds, they survived. The story of the Saklan and their neighbors did not end in the blood-soaked gold fields or the oppressive ranchos of the 19th century. It entered a new phase—a story of survival, coalescence, and an unrelenting fight to reclaim a stolen identity.

The Survivors: From the Ashes

The scattered survivors of the Saklan, Chupcan, Jalquin, and other decimated tribes found refuge where they could. They formed new, multi-tribal communities on the fringes of the rapidly expanding American society, often on the lands of the few Mexican-era ranch owners who allowed them to stay, or in small, unrecognized settlements around the East Bay.   

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these survivor lineages had coalesced into a distinct community centered in Alameda County. This community, known as the Verona Band of Alameda County, was formally recognized by the United States federal government. For a brief moment, it seemed that after decades of genocide, a small measure of security and sovereignty had been achieved. Historical records and photographs from this period show the faces of the founding matriarchs and patriarchs of the modern tribe, tangible proof of their persistence.   

A Fight for Identity: Erasure by Pen

 But the colonial project had not ended; it had merely changed its tactics. In 1927, the Verona Band's federal status was erased. They were not terminated by an act of Congress, the legal process required to sever a government-to-government relationship with a tribe. Instead, a single Bureau of Indian Affairs agent named Lafayette A. Dorrington, tasked with identifying lands for homeless Indians in California, simply and arbitrarily dropped the Verona Band and dozens of other tribes from the list of federally-recognized entities.   

It was a second, quieter genocide—a genocide by pen. With this bureaucratic sleight of hand, the tribe was rendered legally invisible. They lost their political standing, their rights to land, and their access to federal health and education services. The violence of the 19th century had given way to the administrative erasure of the 20th.

A Living Culture, A Living People: The Muwekma Ohlone Today

Today, the direct and lineal descendants of the Saklan and the other aboriginal lineages of the San Francisco Bay Area, all of whom comprised the historic, federally-recognized Verona Band, are known as the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. They are a vibrant, thriving community of more than 600 enrolled members, and their story is one of profound cultural revitalization and an ongoing quest for justice.   

For decades, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has been engaged in a painstaking struggle to have their federal recognition reaffirmed, to force the United States government to acknowledge the historical error that rendered them invisible.   

At the same time, they are undertaking the vital work of decolonization from within. They are reviving their ancestral traditions and breathing new life into their languages. In a powerful example of this cultural resurgence, the tribe has partnered with linguists at the University of California, Berkeley, to revitalize the Chochenyo language, the tongue of many of their ancestors.   

This partnership is deeply symbolic. UC Berkeley, like many American institutions, was built on occupied Native land and for decades held the remains of thousands of Muwekma ancestors in its museum collections. Now, the tribe is strategically leveraging the resources of that same institution to heal their community and reclaim their linguistic heritage. It is a sophisticated modern strategy for survival, one that subverts the power of a colonial institution for the tribe's own decolonizing purposes.   

The Muwekma are also at the forefront of efforts to protect their ancestral heritage sites from development and to repatriate the remains of their ancestors, allowing them to finally be laid to rest with the dignity they were denied in death.   

Conclusion

 To look upon this landscape today is to see it with new eyes. The manicured lawns and bustling highways no longer seem to represent a history that has just begun, but one that has been deliberately paved over. The story of the Saklan is a powerful reminder that history is not always visible on the surface. It lives in the land itself, in the names of the creeks, in the ancient bedrock mortars, and most importantly, in the blood and spirit of their descendants.

The Saklan are not gone. They are present in the advocacy, the language, and the ceremonies of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. Their story is not a tragedy of a vanished people, but an epic of endurance, a testament to the unbreakable bond between a people and their home, and a call for justice that echoes from the ancient past into the heart of the 21st century.

The University of California, Berkeley, sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe continues its fight for the reaffirmation of its status as a federally-recognized tribe.