The Verona Band of Alameda County is the name the

Muwekma Ohlone The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is an unrecognized organization for people who identify as descendants of the Ohlone, an historic Indigenous people of California. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is the largest of several groups in the San Francisco Bay Area tha ...

operated under while they had federal recognition in the early twentieth century."California Indians and Their Reservations."
''SDSU Library and Information Access.'' 2010 (retrieved 30 June 2010)

History

The ancestors of the Verona Band were the various

Ohlone The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the ...

peoples from what is now

Contra Costa County ) of the San Francisco Bay , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = California , subdivision_type2 ...

and Alameda counties in California. Starting in the 1790s they became part of the San Jose Mission in modern

Fremont, California Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...

.Muwekma History for the Tribe's website
After the missions were secularized in 1835 they continued to live in the area. Many of them lived in

Sunol, California Sunol ( es, Suñol) is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Alameda County, California. Located in the Sunol Valley of the East Bay, the population was 913 at the 2010 census. It is best known as the location of the Sunol Water ...

and neighboring Pleasanton, California. Some of them were displaced by George Hearst's building of his mansion at Sunol. This was known as the Verona Mansion and gave this group its name. In 1906 it was discovered that there were 18 unratified treaties related to

Indigenous peoples of California The indigenous peoples of California (known as Native Californians) are the indigenous inhabitants who have lived or currently live in the geographic area within the current boundaries of California before and after the arrival of Europeans. ...

. It was decided to try to provide recognition to these groups. The Verona Band of Alameda County was one of these groups and in 1906 Congress passed a bill to provide money to purchase land for the use of this band. The money appropriated was not enough to purchase a suitable tract of land. Lafayette A. Dorrington the Indian commissioner for the Sacramento Indian Agency in 1928 decided instead of sending Congress a list of the Verona Band and 133 other California Bands that had not yet received land grants, that he would just drop their 134 groups from being federally recognized.

Today

Today the group is seeking recognition as the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

References

{{authority control Ohlone 1906 establishments in California Native American tribes in California Alameda County, California Unrecognized tribes in the United States