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Picture was captioned "Last One from Petaluma," probably meaning last Coast Miwok in Petaluma.

After thousands and thousands of years inhabiting the land, it was not a drama-free takeover in California in the mid 1700s. This is what the first encounters were like. Don't know if the Coast Miwoks were aware or realized that this would be the beginning of the end of their time as the main caretakers of the earth, the redwoods and the land of Marin, although resilient and still survive today, but in much smaller, very small numbers, and no one that doesn't have a story of

In the mid 1800s, when the Europeans came, it was about — lace-collared dresses, stiff portraits, polite society clubs.. were popping up. People admired the young girls who wore ribbons in their hair and posed in photographs with straight backs and practiced smiles. But hidden in plain sight were two girls who did not belong to that world at all. Their names were Maxima and Maria, Coast Miwok children whose families had survived mission rule, land seizures, and the forced mar

“The Road from Olompali to Hopland” — A Short Story (a two minute read.) She was still just a girl when the world broke open. Her name was Maxima, daughter of Camillo Ynitia, last recognized chief of the Coast Miwoks of Marin County. In those years, she wore her hair in long braids, sometimes tied with string, sometimes flying loose behind her when she ran along the edge of the bay. She loved the wind most of all — the way it spoke in the tule reeds, the way it called the osp