Coast Miwok Tiburon

Before the fog had a name, before the bay was crossed by sails, the Coast Miwok lived along the curves of the Tiburon Peninsula, where the hills meet the salt water and Angel Island rises from the bay like a sleeping guardian.

Their villages sat near the shore and the creeks, dome-shaped homes woven of tule and willow, warm in winter and cool in summer. Smoke lifted gently from central fires where stories were shared and food was prepared. Dogs moved freely among the people, companions and helpers, warming children at night and watching the edges of the village.

The Coast Miwok knew the tides and the seasons. They gathered shellfish from the mudflats, fished the bay, and hunted deer in the oak-covered hills. Acorns were their steady gift, ground into meal on stone, washed clean, and cooked with care. Baskets—tight as water, light as air—carried seeds, fish, and babies, each one a work of knowledge passed from hand to hand across generations.

The land remembered them, and they remembered the land. Shellmounds grew slowly, layer by layer, not as trash heaps but as living places—ceremony, memory, and home together. Songs rose there, naming the world into balance.

When outsiders came, the world broke unevenly. Villages emptied. Language was pushed quiet. The people were told they had vanished—but they had not. They stayed in the hills, in the work, in the families, in the stories carried forward.

Today, the Tiburon Peninsula still holds their footprints. The wind off the bay still moves the grasses the way it did then. And the Coast Miwok remain—remembering, teaching, restoring—so the story does not end where others once tried to stop it.