The proto-historic is the period of European-Native American contact—the time between the prehistoric period with no written records, and the historic period when written records became common. This section presents a descriptive documentation of the Native American people and culture of the project area, and on behavior that is remembered by living people—a branch of anthropological study known as ethnography.
The Mi-Wuk is the Native American group that was present in the study area at the time of European contact. Their culture was documented by early explorers, settlers, and missionaries in dairies and mission records, and further studied in the 19th and early 20th centuries by ethnographers who spoke with Mi-Wuk descendents. The Mi-Wuk people today take a strong and active role in the study and documentation of their culture.
The Mi-Wuk traditionally occupied a large portion of the central Sierra Nevada range -- generally, the watersheds between and including the Merced and Consumnes Rivers, the adjacent foothills, and a portion of the adjacent Sacramento-San Joaquin river valley 1 2. Anthropologists and linguists are not certain when the Mi-Wuk arrived in central California, or from where; the native people themselves believe that they were created on this land and have always been here. Heizer and Elsasser 3 (p. 10) list the Mi-Wuk as one of the “five Penutian nations”; that is, they all traditionally spoke languages of the Pen-Utian stock as first defined by Dixon and Kroeber 4 5. Linguistic studies suggest that the ancestral Mi-Wuk occupied the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area early-on, but did not arrive in the Sierran foothills and mountains until much more recently. Levy 6 (p.398) reports that the Western (Bay/Coast) and Eastern (Valley/Foothill/Mountain) Mi-Wuk languages separated some 2,500 years ago, and that the “internal time depth of Sierra Mi-Wuk is approximately 800 years.”
The first large-scale contact between native people and outsiders (not counting the occasional trapper or explorer) took place in the second half of the eighteenth century, when Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived. They had already missionized most of the coastal groups—those that had survived the European diseases—and now looked toward the interior for new converts. Many Mi-Wuk people, along with their neighbors, ended up at Mission San José. A few generations later, those Mi-Wuk still living in their traditional territory were overrun by gold seekers and settlers, who appropriated their hunting grounds and limited their access to other resources.
Although many among the general public today assume that the Mi-Wuk were an ancient people who “passed from the scene,” they are, in fact, alive and well, and working to maintain as much as they can of their cultural and religious traditions. Today the Calaveras Mi-Wuk community is centered on the area around West Point, on the ridge that separates the North and Middle forks of the Mokelumne River.
Regardless of when the Mi-Wuk arrived in central California, the first non-natives entering the area found a well-established society of hunters, fishermen, and plant-food gatherers whose territory stretched from the edge of the San Joaquin Valley to the high elevations of the Sierra Nevada. This wide topographic and vegetative range provided the native people with all manner of foods: antelope, elk, rabbit, salmon, waterfowl, and valley-oak acorns in the lowest zone; deer, rabbit, salmon, valley quail, gray pine nuts, and blue- and live-oak acorns in the foothills; and, at higher elevations, deer, squirrel, trout, mountain quail, pigeons, sugar-pine nuts, and black-oak acorns 1 (p.10). Acorns were particularly important and, according to Heizer and Elsasser, “the [ethnographic-period] Sierra Mi-Wuk carefully preserved the oak trees from which they annually gathered their staple food” 2(p.23).
In Calaveras County, the old Mi-Wuk villages that are known to anthropologists were clustered along the Mokelumne, Calaveras, and Stanislaus river drainages. Traditional Mi-Wuk houses reportedly were made of thatching, tule matting, or slabs of bark over a conical framework of poles 3 (p.408). In fine weather the people cooked and prepared food outdoors; in bad weather they used an interior hearth and oven. Some families also dug storage pits into the floors of their houses. Other important structures were the sweat lodge and the dance house, both of which are still in use today. Sweathouses are used mainly by men for health and purification, while the semi-subterranean dance houses were used as an assembly hall and for important ceremonies. Remains of some of these large structures have been found at archaeological sites in the central foothills.
The archaeological record also contains remnants of a rich material culture, with flaked stone hunting and butchering tools; plant-processing implements; cooking, eating, and storage vessels (including beautifully made stone bowls); and beads and ornaments made of shell, animal bone, and stone. No doubt there were a great many other items made of basketry, cordage, or wood which have not survived. Like other northern and central California groups, the Mi-Wuk made (and still make) excellent baskets, but as far as we know they did not traditionally make or use pottery. Small lumps and objects of baked clay have been found at several sites in the valley and lower foothills (e.g., 4), but no pots or dishes. The foothill groups did make vessels from soapstone, and many of these also have been found in archaeological deposits.
Stone sourcing studies from sites in Calaveras County and the Mokelumne and Stanislaus river drainages indicate that the Calaveras Mi-Wuk obtained nearly all of their obsidian toolstone from the Bodie Hills source, on the eastern side of the Sierra; also found in much smaller amounts are glass from Napa Valley and from Casa Diablo on the east side 5. While their obsidian had to be imported, the Mi-Wuk had access to many other toolstones in the geologically complex foothills, such as slate and basalt.