Placing Refuge and the Archaeology of Indigenous Hinterlands in Colonial California

Abstract

Indigenous negotiations of European colonialism in North America are more complex than models of domination and resistance reveal. Indigenous people—acting according to their own historically and culturally specific ways of knowing and being in the world—developed strategies for remaking their identities, material choices, and social configurations to survive one or multiple phases of colonization. Archaeologists are making strides in documenting the contingencies and consequences of these strategies, yet their focus is often skewed toward sites of contact and colonialism (e.g., missions and forts). This article examines places of refuge for native people navigating colonial programs in the San Francisco Bay area of California. I use a resistance-memory-refuge framework to reevaluate resistance to Spanish missions, including the possible reoccupation of landscapes by fugitive orfurloughed Indians. Commemorative trips to shellmounds and other refuges support the concept of an indigenous hinterland, or landscapes that, in time, provided contexts for continuity and adjustment among Indian communities making social, material, and economic choices in the wake ofmissionization. By viewing colonialism from the outside in, this reoriented approach can potentially enhance connections between archaeological and Native American communities.