History |
The Book |
Resources |
Map |
New Sites |
Contact |
100 Year Plan for the Volvon Village in Morgan Territory
— an early version of this letter was originally submitted to Beverly Lane and Jerry Kent at the East Bay Regional Park District in January 2001, with copies to Malcolm Margolin
(News From Native California) and Seth Adams (Save Mt. Diablo)
Vision for Morgan Territory Regional Preserve Indian Village
The Indian Village at Morgan Territory provides a distinct opportunity to re-enliven a dormant Indian Village and, in terms more graphic than any textbook, illuminate the actual living environment of a 9000 year old Indian Village culture, situated at the confluence of the most heavily used trading ground in pre-Spaniard California.
This location was used by the ancestors of this land for thousands of years because of its unique geographical setting. Except for a couple of phone wires and fences, a cow pond and a dirt road, the physical site remains exactly as it has been for thousands of years of human habitation. Real people lived and loved here for hundreds of generations.
It appears to have never been excavated, examined, or acknowledged in any way. This site should be recognized as a sacred and restorable link to the past of this land which we all now live on.
A 100 Year Plan should be developed and implemented.
It could include:
1. Recognize the value and significance of the site which already lies protected
by Los Vaqueros Watershed and EBRPD Park lands.
2. Remove all evidence of the modern world, i.e. phone wires, barbed wire fences, dirt roads
and the cow pond, and allow the site to re-vegetate naturally.
3. Recreate, using native materials, portions of the village to the best of documentable
and imagined accuracy.
4. Re-populate, in a very minor and non-intrusive manner, in order to both protect the site and
to provide a basis for the educational and interpretive opportunities which will gradually unfold.
5. Manage the site with the intention of preserving forever the integrity of the remarkable
unchanging nature of this particular village, and rediscovering its importance to the development
of human beings in the San Francisco Bay Area.
6. Bring small groups through on tours or seminars that will allow them to get in touch with the
importance of the native culture and life experience and what it can teach us.
If there are a few people interested in this idea it can happen.
The location already exists, and is virtually unused.
The mitigation needed is minimal.
The importance to our developing culture is major.
The timing is right.
Yours Truly,
James Benney
925 930-6094
jtbenney@sbcglobal.net