the only verified Miwok name found on the Point Reyes Peninsula, possibly 

 meaning "Coyote Pass." 1 



The Coast Miwok were hunters and gatherers, living in an environment 

 teeming with game, birds, fish, shellfish, nuts, fruits and vegetables. The 

 temperate weather allowed the inhabitants to occupy permanent villages such 

 as Olema-loke. 2 



At least two European explorers had contact with the Coast Miwok in the 

 16th century: the Englishman Francis Drake spent five weeks on the Marin 

 Coast, apparently at Drakes Bay, and had extensive contact with the Coast 

 Miwok in 1579; Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno, a Portuguese sailing for Spain, 

 lost his ship in Drakes Bay in 1595 and, like Drake, recorded impressions of the 

 native peoples he met. Both men claimed the land for their monarchs but 

 never returned. The Coast Miwok presented themselves in a simple, direct way 

 to these explorers and the Spanish pioneers who were the first whites to move 

 onto and settle the Indian lands in California. The Indians' open and friendly 

 acceptance of the early white men left them vulnerable to the ambitions of the 

 Catholic missionaries and Spanish military frontiersmen who first occupied the 

 lands around the Golden Gate beginning in 1776. 3 



Spanish Lieutenant Don Felipe de Goycoechea passed through the Olema 

 Valley in 1793 and left the following narrative: 



This place is very well fitted for any kind of 

 establishment. There are good lands for crops, a 

 sufficient supply of water and a great abundance of 

 wood-red pine, oak, madrone, laurel, willow and a 

 grove of hazelnut trees .... Here there is a 

 settlement which the natives abandoned for the 

 adjoining forests when we passed by it. I pacified 

 them by means of the interpreter and ordered them 

 to assemble in their settlement. Although they did 

 not all do so I divided among them two strings of 



'Sylvia Barker Thalman, The Coast Miwok Indians of the Point Reves Area (Point Reyes: Point 

 Reyes National Seashore Association, 1993), pp. 6-7; Beverly R. Ortiz, "A Coast Miwok History," 

 We Are Still Here: A Coast Miwok Exhibit (Bolinas: Bolinas Museum, 1993), p. 5. 



2 Thalman, The Coast Miwok. pp. 6-7. 



3 Marilyn Ziebarth, editor, "Special Issue The Francis Drake Controversy: His California 

 Anchorage, June 17 July 23 1579." California Historical [Societvl Quarterly 53. No. 3 (Fall 1974): 

 274-286, 287-288. 



