MANO Y METATE

theresadonovanbrown
Jul 10
2 min read

I took these photos at the San Mateo County Historical Museum when I was visiting their archives. The museum houses a lovely, intimate collection of objects mostly from the 19^th and 20^th centuries in the region where my novel, BAY LANDS, takes place. It also features pre-colonization items that give us clues to the lives of the native peoples of the San Francisco Bay region. These natives, called by us Ohlones or Coastanoans, comprised many different, localized tribes. The museum also displays items and information about the Spanish military and mission cultures and the Californio culture that preceded the Gold Rush and subsequent development and industrialization of the region.

I could eat this kind of local history for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I especially love exhibits that connect human activity to the natural environment. As well, I love indicators of what life was like for women in the past. So two displays grabbed my attention.

The mortars and pestles that may have been used by Ohlones to grind acorns (see my post on Quercus Lobata – Tree of Life, Nov. 9, 2022) allure a viewer with their full curves and textural heft that link the inorganic stone, the packed botanical life of seeds, and the suggestion of mammal reproduction with their well-fitting female and male components. I especially love the object description's information that native people would seasonally return to bedrock (that served as the female part) to grind their flours.

The metate and mano have a rougher texture than the Ohlone tools. Used to grind hard corn into masa, the flour for making tortillas, these were standard household fixtures for both the Spanish-Mexican and Mexican-Californio cultures that thrived in the San Mateo region 1796-1840ish.

(By the way, Spanish has some lovely double meanings, "mano" indicating this powerfully shaped stone and "hand.")

I think the assumption that these tools were used by women must be based in first-hand accounts of the normal setup of households, both native and colonist. I do know that someone with strong arms used these tools of daily sustenance. I like to think about the women who wielded them, and the women who perhaps did not, by virtue of having different skills to put to use.

Objects like these land quietly in the best parts of historical fiction.