Blog | MarinCoastMiwok

Note: The contents of this book was written by Dr. Robert C. Thomas in 1977, one of the last surviving Coast Miwok descendants of the Marin County area. It is in no way meant to offend any group of people mentioned. All text of this book is the unedited text of the author.)

Excerpt: "The People were the aboriginal people of Alta Californian, the half-million American Indians, sometimes more, sometimes less, whose ancestors had lived in that far western strip of coastal land for many thousands of years until, in the little more than one century, they were almost exterminated by the invasion by European aliens that started in 1769. In these stories, Alta California is the name of that long and narrow section of the west coast of North America that is rather precisely defined by the same borders which now define the modern state of California. In the days before it became one of the United States of America, it was the northern of two Mexican California territories, and was called Alta California to distinguish it from Baja California, the Maa territory being a long and narrow peninsula which extends southward from the Alta part of the Californias. Separated from mainland Mexico by the Gulf of California, the Baja peninsula is still a part of the Mexican nation today. Originally, the northern territory that was called Alta California by the invaders from Mexico was much of three other later states: Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. As used in these stories, Alta California names only the smaller area that is now the State of California in order to limit my considerations to only those pre-invasion Indian populations who lived in what is now the state of California. Residents of the Alta California homelands for many millennia before the Hispano invasion which started in 1769, and almost destroyed by that and the following Yankee invasion, The People are not yet extinct. Even now, a few thousand of them still survive in the land of their ancestors. "

Before the Gold By John Alioto

Book 2 of California Natives (and the truth about what happened, pdf coming soon!)

Bring Our Statue Home! (and buy a book!.. Drake at Olompali, Edition 2)