The Ohlone Way

The Ohlone Way by Malcolm Margolin. The Ohlone was one of the Native American tribes in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are a few things named after them, like the Ohlone college and the Ohlone trail, so when I saw the book cover it caught my attention. The book describes the way of life of this native tribe based on records from jesuits.

One interesting bit I learned is that being semi-nomadic (i.e. moving constantly but not going too far) they couldn’t own heavy clay pottery, so they weaved baskets that were tight enough to hold water. To boil it they would heat a stone on fire and drop it inside, since baskets can’t go directly over fire.

This entry was parsed from an older retrospective post.