Outcasts, from The Ohlone Way

following from the seminal work of Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way:

To be sure, there were a few people among the Ohlone who did not fit in--people who were felt to be greedy or aggressive.  They generally lived on the outskirts of the village or sometimes across the stream, shunned and sneered at by the rest of the people.  If a person's manners were completely unbearable--say, if he was a bully or a murderer--his family might ultimately desert him; and once deserted, the other people of the community might assault him or drive him from the village area entirely to live as an outcast.  Such a person would survive as best he could, without friends, without anyone to help him when he was sick or old, without anyone to protect him from evil shamans and malignant spirits who would instantly recognize his vulnerability.  He would lead a lonely, impoverished, and frightened life, an object of distaste to the whole tribelet and a lesson in morality to youngsters.

Such outcasts, however, were rare, and the Ohlone ethic of sharing worked to the satisfaction of almost everyone.  The poor, the weak, and the elderly were taken care of.  Even lazy or incompetent people were fed and housed--for they too had relatives.  IN fact, the way of sharing worked so well that, as several early visitors remarked, there was absolutely no robbery among the Ohlones--this despite the fact that, as la Perouse put it, "they have no other door than a truss of straw laid under the entrance when all the family are absent."  Stealing was simply unnecessary ina  land so varied and fruitful and among a people so generous.

Shraring was the underlying element in the Ohlones' economic system.  But sharing was much more than just economic.  Born into a tribelet of no more than one, two or three hundred people, the Ohlones felt very close to family and community.  They had no choice.  To be an Ohlone meant that one could not move away and start afresh somewhere else.  To be born into a certain family and bound to certain relatives and a certain triblelet--these were the major, totally inescapable facts of one's life.