These paintings were inspired by the following passages in Malcolm Margolin's 'The Ohlone Way':
"Modern residents would hardly recognize the Bay Area as it was in the days of the Ohlones.
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“There is not any country in the world which more abounds in fish and game of every description,” noted the French sea captain, la Perouse. Flocks of geese, ducks, and seabirds were so enormous that when alarmed by a rifle shot they were said to rise “in a dense cloud with a noise like that of a hurricane.”
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Herds of elk — “monsters with tremendous horns,” as one of the early missionaries described them — grazed the meadowlands in such numbers that they were often compared with great herds of cattle. Pronghorn antelopes, in herds of one or two hundred, or even more, dotted the grassy slopes.
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Packs of wolves hunted the elk, antelope, deer, rabbits, and other game. Bald eagles and giant condors glided through the air. Mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes — now seen only rarely — were a common sight. And of course there was the grizzly bear. “He was horrible, fierce, large, and fat,” wrote Father Pedro Font, an early missionary, and a most apt description it was. These enormous bears were everywhere, feeding on berries, lumbering along the beaches, congregating beneath oak trees during the acorn season, and stationed along nearly every stream and creek during the annual runs of salmon and steelhead.
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Sea lions blackened the rocks at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and in Monterey Bay they were so abundant that to one missionary they seemed to cover the entire surface of the water “like a pavement.”
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Long, wavering lines of pelicans threaded the air. Clouds of gulls, cormorants, and other shore birds rose, wheeled, and screeched at the approach of a human.
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An early visitor to Monterey Bay wrote: “It is impossible to conceive of the number of whales with which we were surrounded, or their familiarity; they every half minute spouted within half a pistol shot of the ships and made a prodigious stench in the air.”
Page 7 - 'Land and Animals' from 'The Ohlone Way' by Malcolm Margolin
