It is important to acknowledge the land on which the Napa Valley college campus is located. For thousands of years, this land has been the home of the Wappo and Patwin people. Today, the Mishewal Wappo of Alexander Valley are a group composed of 357 descendants of the people who lived for thousands of years along the riverbanks and in the valleys of Napa and Sonoma counties. Among the Patwin tribes, there are three federally recognized: The Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community, Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, and Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.
The Wappo and Patwin people have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many centuries. It has been cherished and protected, as elders have instructed the young through generations. To honor this legacy and ensure people remain aware of the land they are on, the McCarthy Library dedicates this libguide to Napa's indigenous peoples.
Photo--black and white: Pomo basket makers--Mabel McKay--Cache Creek Pomo--Hill Patwin, tribal elder and scholar, noted doctor and healer, spiritual and religious practitioner, basket weaver of national renown, teacher and lecturer, member of the CA State Native American Heritage Commission (former). Pomo basket makers have long been recognized as some of the premier basket weavers in the world. Their baskets are extraordinarily beautiful and encompass a variety of shapes, function, designs and styles of weaving. Circa 1983.
Laura Fish Somersal, last Wappo speaker and weaver
Ralph Shanks, Photographer
July 28, 1982
UC Berkeley, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
This month's Library Guide is devoted to Indigenous People of Napa and the San Francisco North Bay Area. We honor and pay tribute to those who came before us to the beautiful Napa Valley.
Picture the area north of San Francisco in the early 1800s. It was an area where tule elk, pronghorn antelope, and grizzly bears roamed freely. The Napa River basin supported thousands of spawning steelhead and Coho and Chinook salmon in its clear waters. In the valley's lowlands, there were thousands of acreas of seasonally wet meadows surrounded by pockets of tall tule marsh. The river divided and reunited, creating natural islands. Many tributaries did not connect directly to the river but spread into valley wetlands. Native American people built pole houses and fashioned obsidian into shafts, spear points, and arrowheads. The Wappo and Patwin Indians made the valley their home. They sailed on rafts of tule bundles and caught fish and waterfowl from the maze of marshlands at the river's mouth. The group known as Mayakmah, meaning "water going out place," lived in the southern tidal waters of Napa and Sonoma Valleys. The actual derivation and meaning of Napa remains unclear. Some speculate that Napa was a Patwin word meaning "a meeting place, particularly a fishing colony". New arrivals to the lands, the Spanish and then the Mexicans, settled along the river's shore. The settlers who followed located their homes and businesses along the river and brought ships up the estuary to Napa City.
Napa City, Mark H. Strong, photographer, circa 1880.
The Great Fire
Patwin
Long ago a man loved two women and wished to marry both of them. But the women were magpies and they laughed at him. Therefore the man went to the north, and made for himself a tule boat. Then he set the world on fire, and he himself escaped to sea in his boat.
But the fire burned with terrible speed. It ate its way into the south. It licked up all things on earth, men, trees, rocks, animals, water, and even the ground itself.
Now Old Coyote saw the burning and the smoke from his place far in the south, and he ran with all his might to put it out. He put two little boys in a sack and ran north like the wind. He took honey-dew into his mouth, chewed it up, spat on the fire, and so put it out. Now the fire was out, but there was no water and Coyote was thirsty. So he took Indian sugar again, chewed it up, dug a hole in the bottom of the creek, covered up the sugar in it, and it turned to water and filled the creek. So the earth had water again.
But the two little boys cried because they were lonesome, for there was nobody left on earth. Then Coyote made a sweat house, and split a number of sticks, and laid them in the sweat house over night. In the morning they had all turned into men and women.
Take a look at this fascinating video on the Miwok Tribe of California:
