Skull found in Oakland was from Native American burial ground

By Angela Hill, The Oakland Tribune, Calif.

OAKLAND, Calif. (MCT) – A human skull and bone fragments unearthed June 5 by a construction crew working on a sidewalk on Dennison Street near the Oakland Estuary have been determined to be from an American Indian burial site, police said.

“The coroner had a historian working with the Native American Heritage Commission examine the skull and fragments,” said Oakland police homicide Sgt. Rachael Van Sloten. “He was able to determine they came from a burial site through various observations, such as noting that the teeth showed wear consistent with individuals eating food ground by stone. In addition, this was found in a location well-documented as burial grounds.”

The site is adjacent to the Hide-A-Way Cafe in the 1900 block of Dennison, near the Embarcadero, and historians say maps from 1878 and 1910 show that area was indeed the site of numerous American Indian burial grounds, also known as shellmounds.

The skull found last month was about three feet below ground when the construction crew started digging to remove two sections of sidewalk on a contract job for AT&T to replace an underground cable, police said.

There was clearly “no evidence that would make it a recent burial. No items such as modern dental work, a pocket watch, rings, and so on,” said historian Andrew Galvan, who examined the bones. Galvan can trace his ancestry to Native Americans in the East Bay before 1769 and holds the designation as a “Most Likely Descendant.”

He said the burial site dates anywhere from 250 to 2,000 years ago. The age or gender of the person was not determined. According to Native American practices, the remains will be reburied near the site where they were found, he said.

A similar case occurred in January, when human remains – which were later determined to be those of an American Indian child about 4 years of age – were found underneath an Alameda street when public works crews dug up a section of the 3000 block of Washington Street.

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When Yosemite Miwok elders were Paiutes

Even though Jay Johnson and his brother Burleigh have children who are currently enrolled members in Nevada Paiute tribes he does have Miwok ancestry. But the Miwok ancestry was not from Chief Tenaya. Johnson was not a direct descendent of Chief Tenaya on his Miwok side. Henry and Mary Ann Johnson, Jay Johnson's paternal grandparents stated on their 1928-1929 California Enrollment Applications that their chief was Chief Bautista, the same chief who was the ally of James Savage of the Mariposa Battalion and enemy of Chief Tenaya. It was Bautista who gave the term "Yosemite" to the Ahwahnee Indians, which in his language meant "The Killers" and said he was afraid to enter Yosemite Valley.
Jay Johnson's maternal great grandparent, Captain Sam, stated on his 1928-1929 California Indian Application that he and his wife Susie Sam were Mono Lake Paiutes and Johnson's maternal grandfather, Bridgeport Tom, said on his application he was a Mono Lake Paiute. None stated they were related to Chief Tenaya, who by the way was born at Mono Lake.

So apparently the Miwok elders of the group did not always identify themselves as Miwok, but as the original Yosemite Indian tribe, the Paiutes.

In this video on Youtube one of the elders of the Southern Sierra Miwuks is identified as a Paiute in a recent video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEmZtqCCELk