Another Perspective: Coast Miwok elder wants his Petaluma heritage to be respected

Joe Sanchez, a 74-year-old Coast Miwok elder, traces his ancestry to a once thriving village called Péta Lúuma, which in the Miwok language means “sloping ridge.”

He is a member of the Huukuiko Band of Coast Miwok of Marin County. After running a business that recycled fluorescent lights, ballasts and batteries for 13 years, he retired this year. As a tribal council elder, he gives talks on the Coast Miwok life at North Bay City council meetings, schools and community events.

When Sanchez visited the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma he was told he needed permission to enter. In the administration office he introduced himself and said, “I am a Coast Miwok. This is my ancestral land, and I’d like to walk on it.”

Last month, he was invited to speak at the ninth meeting of the Petaluma Fairgrounds Advisory Panel held between May and July. Among the audience were 36 Petaluma residents selected by a computerized lottery to discuss the future of the fairgrounds. I was one of them.

We were asked to come with an open mind, to listen and to suggest ideas for what to do with the 55-acre site as the city’s $1 per year lease to its present tenant, the Fourth District Agricultural Association (4DAA), expires in April 2023.

As well as annual fairs and music events, the site is home to various businesses including a paintball field, a car racetrack, a dog daycare, a charter school and a daycare center. At the city meeting, the fairgrounds history, heritage and tradition were recurring themes, but Sanchez’s words took those themes to a deeper level.

“I have a direct connection to this sacred land,” Sanchez revealed. “My great-great-great-great grandmother, Tsupu, was from a village called Péta Lúuma, which was located along the hills on the east side of Petaluma.”

The large village of several hundred residents was part of the Lekatuit Nation that extended from Petaluma Valley to Freestone, he explained. There were two or maybe three Coast Miwok villages in this area, as evidenced by shell mounds found. The original inhabitants gathered acorns, their staple diet, harvested from several kinds of oak trees. They gathered seeds, pine nuts, roots, and herbs. Using sedges, tule and other materials, women wove beautiful intricately designed baskets. Men hunted ducks and other birds for food and used their feathers for ceremonial dress.

Sanchez invited the audience to “Imagine a black cloud moving in the sky in your direction a mile wide and six miles long.” The cloud he described was composed of millions of Monarch butterflies. “We've never seen this in the present time because it doesn't happen anymore,” he said.

“Our people knew how to live in harmony with nature,” Sanchez continued. “They took only what they needed, and actively tended the environment.” Techniques such as seasonal controlled burning, pruning, harvesting, planting, fertilizing, caring for habitats for native plants and animals, were ancient indigenous practices. Nowadays, conservation scientists and biologists recognize their efficacy and the need for them as we face challenges of climate change.

Many early European arrivals fell in love with Petaluma, a beautiful land of plenty. The most well-known among them was General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo who built Rancho Petaluma Adobe, which is now a State Historic Park. On his first visit on May 5, 1833, he reported. “Everything was ready-made for civilization — soil, climate, abundant water, a great harbor, an opportunity for commerce with the world and landscape, for variety, a land of pure enchantment.”

Vallejo received 66,000 acres in Sonoma County from the Mexican Government which occupied California then. This was his reward for brutal military campaigns against indians. Using a diverse labor force of California Indians from the region, Mexican colonists, and Native Hawaiian wood carvers, Vallejo built the Petaluma Adobe, and ran a cattle ranch, farm, and tannery. Researcher Stephen Silliman writes extensively about this in his book “Lost Laborers in Colonial California: Native Americans and the Archaeology of Rancho Petaluma.”

As a teenager, Sanchez’s ancestor, Tsupu, ended up working on Vallejo’s ranch, where hundreds of indigenous people were effectively enslaved, to build and grow his business. By the late 1830s, deadly smallpox outbreaks began to spread in the region. Vallejo did not vaccinate his indigenous workers even though a smallpox vaccine was available. Historians have estimated that the death toll may have exceeded 90% of the indigenous population.

Henry Cerruti’s account, written in 1877, claims smallpox exterminated the inhabitants in "the valleys of Sonoma, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Russian River, Clear Lake, the Tulares (i. e., Sacramento) and extended to the slopes of Mount Shasta.”

“Tsupu escaped to Fort Ross and spent the rest of her life moving around Sonoma County,” Sanchez said.

Like Sanchez, Greg Sarris — the Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria — was also descended from Tsupu. He writes. “When Tsupu was born … about 1820, the village of Petaluma was in crisis. At least a third of its citizens had died within the last 10 years of European diseases … and the great herds of deer and elk, frightened by blasts from Spanish muskets, were scattering, migrating north, replaced by mission livestock — cattle, horses, and sheep — which spread foreign seed in dung, giving rise to oat grass, among other invasive species, supplanting the native bunch grasses and sedges.”

Tsupu survived against all odds, Sanchez reflects, “even as people around her died or became dispossessed of their land and way of life. We’ve always been here, but those who survived had to ‘hide’ to do so. We couldn’t speak our language, practice our traditional ways, or live as before.”

The Petaluma valley we know now is completely different from the world of Sanchez’s ancestors, whose land was stolen, grazed, farmed, carved up, sold and built upon.

The Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin is part of a global Indigenous-led movement to reclaim self-determination and stewardship of their ancestral land. Right now, the council is seeking federal recognition and access to land where they can practice their culture and spiritual ceremonies. Although the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin is not seeking land from the Fairgrounds, Sanchez hopes that Petaluma residents and the city council will recognize that the city occupies Coast Miwok people’s ancestral land.

Sanchez’s comments resonated with panelists at the Fairgrounds Advisory Panel meeting. As they voted on various options for the future of the Fairgrounds site, they overwhelmingly supported an ecology center or a park with trees chosen with help from Coast Miwok people.

Almost a quarter voted for returning a few acres of land.

“Things are much different today, but I would like to see people in Petaluma cooperate, living and sharing the beauty of the sacred land in peace,” Sanchez remarked. “Think not only of yourselves but also the plants and animals that have no voice. I would like to see plants brought back, trees brought back, and a way of life that is beautiful and in harmony with nature.”

Lina Hoshino’s “Another Perspective” runs the third Friday of every month in the Argus-Courier.