Friends of Sausal Creek
Shellmounds at the Base of Sausal Creek

by Eleanor Dunn

Although the Emeryville shellmound is the best known mound in the East Bay, there are a large number of mounds scattered throughout the region. The mouth of Sausal Creek in the area now known as Alameda, with fresh water from the creeks and large oyster beds in San Leandro Bay, was a perfect site for Native American habitation. This was reflected by the presence of six shellmounds. The largest was called Sather Mound because, in the late 1800s, P. Sather owned the land that it was on. It measured 400 by 150 feet and was 14 feet tall. It was located in an area that is now bounded by Central Avenue, Court Street, Johnson Avenue, and Gibbons Drive.

This mound was studied extensively by a man named Captain Clark, an 1860s Californian historian named Theodore Hittell, and early archaeologists such as Nelson, from UC Berkeley. Large quantities of shells of the native oyster Ostrea lurida were found in the mounds. Their shells were larger than the Ostrea shells found there in the early 1900s and far larger than the shells discovered by the Friends of Sausal Creek oyster-monitoring group last year.

In addition, the mound contained bones of elk, deer, seal, sea otter, lynx, mountain lion, and part of a whale skeleton. There were also remnants of tools such as needles made of bone, stone sinkers for fishing nets, obsidian spearheads, and mortars and pestles for grinding. The largest mortar and pestle weighed 80 pounds and was created from Jurassic sandstone, which does not occur in the close vicinity of the mound. Another interesting find was a brass medal dated 1768 with an image of George III. It was suspected that this medal had been given in trade for sea otter pelts, a lively trade before 1841. Obviously, the native tribes must have traded or traveled extensively. In addition, 450 Native Americans were buried within the mound.

In 1892 a railroad line was cut through Sather Mound. Then in 1908, the mound was leveled and the shells and bones were used as the base of the roadbeds for Bay Farm Island. In the days when making gravel was very difficult, the shellmounds made for an easy substitute. In the eastern United States today, oyster shells are still used as a surface for driveways and small roads near the coast.

Information for this article was derived from Alameda, a Geographical History, by Imelda Merlin, copyright 1977 by Friends of Alameda Free Library (available at the Alameda Historical Society), and on "Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region," an article by Nelson in University of California Publ. in Am. Arch. and Ethn., Vol 7, 1909.