August 25, 2024
“The land understands the language.” Leland Kinter, the treasurer on the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation Tribal Council, uttered the words just before delivering a blessing, in the Patwin language, for the newly christened 1,500-acre Patwino Worrtla Kodoi Dihi Open Space Park along Rockville
Road.
The park name is pronounced Put.win.no War.klaw Kaw.doy De.he and means “Southern Rock Home of the Patwin People.”
Kinter, in an interview Friday, said much of the language is from the environment from which the Patwin people evolved. A quail or woodpecker, he said, have names associated with the sounds they make.
“So the language that we are using is tied to the land for so long,” Kinter said.
While the Solano Land Trust is using signs and other means to emphasize the park’s connection to the native people who undoubtedly hunted and gathered food and used other seasonal resources from the land, the handful of artifacts and other physical evidence of those Patwin people are purposefully “hidden” in the open spaces.
“We have found artifacts like flints and evidence connected with grinding stones,” said Steve Chung, a Land Trust docent and California naturalist.
Kinter said there are other places only the Patwin descendants know about, places of worship and other significant rites around rock croppings and water habitat.
He dismisses the idea that because there is not much in the way of archeological evidence that the assumption is people did not live there.
“My grandmother knew people from the area,” Kinter said.
“It is a prime oak woodlands property. It is an extension of the Sonoma Volcanics,” Chung said. Sonoma Volcanics dates back to the Pliocene, which dates back to 2.6 and 5.3 million years ago.
Patwino Worrtla Kodoi Dihi Open Space Park, while dry for much of the hot summer, does have a striking water culture during the wet seasons, with a running creek and waterfalls and pools of water that form atop of volcanic base.
Chung said the entire landscape is dependent on the seasons, with animals migrating in and out to their advantage, and a mix of plant uprisings depending on the time of the year.
One such plant is the very rare Hermonia, with this specific plant found in only one other area. The Land Trust has named one of its trails after the plant, a pathway into the shrub’s springtime domain.
There are more than 14 miles of trails in the park.
Kinter said the seasonal life cycles also would have been true for the Patwin people, who may have lived in those foothills part-time. However, it was likely someone would have lived there year-round as a kind of caretaker
Certainly, the Patwin people were in Solano County when the Spanish arrived. A number of their village sites have kept the interpretive, phonetic names such as Putah, Suisun and Ulatis.
Some family tribal names, however, have been bastardized.
“Our family name is Lorenzo. And so your name was given to you from the first name of your captor,” Kinter said. “I don’t know if that happened everywhere, but it happened in our family.”
“The county derives its name indirectly from that of the Franciscan missionary, Father Francisco Solano, whose name was given in baptism to the chief of one of the Indian tribes of the region. Before receiving the name Solano, the chief was called Sem Yeto, which signifies ‘brave or fierce hand.’ At the request of General Vallejo, the county was named for Chief Solano, who at one time ruled over most of the land and tribes between the Petaluma Creek and the Sacramento River,” a short history on the Solano
County website states.
For Kinter and his older sister, Yvonne Perkins, it takes little or no imagination to see the children who would have been running and playing among the oak trees and volcanic rock at the new park.
It would not be unlike their own childhoods on the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation lands in Brooks, or where they visited family often at the nearby Kletsel Dehe rancheria west of Williams – except they had cardboard on which to slide down the hills.
Perkins remembers making their own fishing rods. She remembers camping trips when the boys would go out hunting for rabbits, and the girls would gather firewood and fetch water.
But at all times, there was respect for the land.
“You don’t go out stomping and yelling. You go up humble,” said Perkins, even to the point of being careful not to have shiny objects that might disturb the land.
Being one of the older children, she took care of the younger kids, and those memories are some of her favorite. She would wake them and take them off for various activities.
Another part of their life growing up, however, was when they would be brought into a room and repeatedly taught the history of their ancestors and their lands.
“My family had 17 aunts and uncles … and they would go over and over and over (the stories),” Kinter said.
The central figure was Mary Mae (Wright) Norton, their grandmother.
She was just 5 feet, 2 inches tall and carried traditional Patwin traits to her looks. Kinter still laughs a bit at her big earlobes.
“But she could command a room,” Kinter said.
In fact, a black and white photo of her still hangs in the state Capitol from when she advocated for Indian rights.
Kinter remembers that while he was serving as chairman of the Tribal Council, he had occasions to meet with Gov. Jerry Brown, who sometimes would just show up for a kind of social visit.
Brown, too, has ties to the Williams area. His grandmother is buried in the local
cemetery.
Every time, Kinter said, Brown asked about Mary Mae Norton.
Like many native children, Norton was taken from her home and placed in a boarding school. Hers was the Stewart Indian School in Stewart, Nevada, where she excelled in math and other subjects, but all the while, held deeply to the values she learned from her parents and grandparents.
What Kinter and Perkins know follows the same oral lines of history.
They know the Patwin people lived and worked and played in the place now called Patwino Worrtla Kodoi Dihi Open Space Park, and he knows the land knows them.
“We were never gone; we were always here,” Kinter said.
Kinter said he was very moved when the group that gathered for the ribbon-cutting and dedication on Wednesday learned to pronounce the name of the park.
“It was great for me to hear people speak our language. It was something that would have never happened when I was a teenager,” Kinter said.
“That gave me a physical response.”
Fairfield Daily Republic August 25, 2024
Newest open space park tied to Patwin heritage
By Todd R. Hansen