For a long time, the Alamedans believed that the shellmounds in Alameda were built by “a branch of Miwok Indians”. This was mainly because the Alameda Museum, and most of the historians in Alameda relied upon the master’s thesis of a geologist called Imelda Merlin. Imelda Merlin included several shellmounds in her thesis in a Map of Live Oak Trees which was the sole source of information for the Alameda Museum and local historians.
While Merlin had correctly located at least one Mound, she did not include citations to the references she used for her map, and (for some reason) Merlin never referred to the “Shellmound Map” created by anthropologist N.C. Nelson, even though Merlin was a student at UC Berkeley. I can’t underscore this enough: UC Berkeley is absolutely famous for its study of Native Americans, their anthropology department was headed by the infamous Alfred Kroeber; and, N.C. Nelson himself was performing research under the auspices of said department when he created the “Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Area.”