Ohlone Village Field Trip ~ Sunday, April 29, 2018

Nathan and his class were looking forward to this field trip for a long time, and they finally (OK, a few weeks ago) got to visit an Ohlone Village in Coyote Hills Park (in Fremont).

The park has a small museum:

I tried looking these words up in an Ohlone/English Dictionary. The only one I could find a match for was ma'yan=coyote; -kma is a plural ending (here is an Ohlone grammar--the author, incidentally, later invented Klingon) so maybe šáatošikma=hills? (This dictionary and grammar are actually for a different one of the Ohlone (Costanoan) Languages).

Our docent selected two students to dress up for roles in Ohlone society. Here is Nate as a hunter!

We walked a ways on a boardwalk through swamp/wetland to a kind of island which is the site of an actual historical village that has been partially reconstructed. The class got to crawl into a sweatlodge (the Ohlone word is Temescal, which has been memorialized in the name of a lake in Oakland, which the Sacramento Northern once had a bridge over--hey this is a officially a trolley blog. Just trying to stay on-topic here!).

The name of the village is Tuibun.

Note that you can normally only peek at this through a fence. If you want a closer look, call the park to ask about when they are doing a tour--or chaperone a field trip!