The Road from Olompali to Hopland

“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 osprey home.

But that was before the soldiers came.

It somehow came to be, Camillo was killed with an arrow, when she was about 16. She inherited what was left of Olompali, but was forced, along with her sister, to sell it and move up north where Hopland was founded, but basically a melting pot for many neighboring tribes. So Native families from Marin, Petaluma, Novato, Corte Madera, Sausalito, etc., — were to be marched north. A forced removal to sell the land that was left of the ancestorial land. A trail of tears through dust and wind and a rough treacherous journey, away from the land the people had been a part of, through family and all relations, for thousands of years, in the Villages of Marin in the Redwoods!

Maxima remembered the morning they were taken. The sky was gray, like ash. She walked beside her sister, who was very sad to be leaving, so Maxima had to be the strong and protective sister. She kept Maria close at all times. She had no trust of anyone. They took their homeland and forced them out. Three long days it took... From Olompali to Hopland, with all their worldly possessions on a horse.