Oral tradition recounts that the Creator brought humans into the world when he planted different feathers in the ground at Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys, in what is known today as California’s northern inland Sonoma County, thus bringing the Mahilakaune (“west water people”) and the Onátá.s (“the people who speak plainly and truthfully”) into being. Anthropologists named us Dry Creek Pomo and Western Wappo and have determined that humans have lived here in inland northern Sonoma County for at least 10,000 years, confirming that this land has been home to the ancestors of Dry Creek Rancheria members virtually since time immemorial.

For many millennia, the natural fertility of our homeland—fertility that was largely a product of our ancestors’ astute environmental management—provided a settled and satisfying life. Multi-generational extended families resided together in valley villages set near stream banks. They fished creeks teeming with salmon and steelhead and hunted herds of elk, antelope, and deer, along with flocks of waterfowl and other birds. They harvested and relished a wealth of plant foods, the most important being many sorts of nuts and grains—especially acorns from oaks and ripe seeds from native grasses and wildflowers. Many of these foods could be smoked, dried, and stored for later consumption, protecting our ancestors from hunger throughout the cold, wet winter months.

Native peoples’ sophisticated biological understanding of the natural world around them (what is often referred to today as Traditional Environmental Knowledge or TEK) was at the core of this life. This knowledge enabled the development of productive and effective environmental management techniques that allowed the ancestors of today’s Rancheria members to live sustainably in the same area for generation after generation, maintaining the health of their homeland and the diversity and abundance of its native plant and animal species.

Around 1800, Dry Creek Pomo and Western Wappo peoples began encountering non-Native people in their homeland. The Spanish established Catholic missions in the North San Francisco Bay area, where Indian “neophytes” died rapidly from disease and enforced work conditions. Because the mission system depended on Indian labor, Spanish soldiers went north into the Russian River Valley to capture and forcibly take new Native “converts” back to the missions to replace the deceased workers. Some of these converts, who mostly perished in the missions at San Rafael and Sonoma, were ancestors of Rancheria members.

California became a province of the newly created Mexican Republic in 1822. Shortly after, the California missions were privatized, and the Catholic Church lost title to its vast holdings. Instead, the Mexican government granted private landowners title to huge tracts of land known as ranchos. These were essentially family-run cattle ranches that did a booming business in the hide and tallow trade. Like the missions before them, these ranchos were built on the backs of Native labor. Indians were compelled to serve as vaqueros (cowboys), house servants, and farmhands. But local Natives, particularly Wappo peoples, began to fight back against the continuing Mexican invasion, aggression, and transformation of their homelands.

After some five years of armed warfare between California Indians and Mexican forces in the Santa Rosa Valley, Indian resistance was largely crushed. This, however, had less to do with military victory than an 1837-1839 smallpox epidemic that decimated Wappo and Pomo populations. Local Indians finally succumbed to the inevitable, clustering on the ranchos to become ranch laborers.

American settlers, hungry for land, began to trickle into Sonoma County in the 1840s. This trickle became a flood after the 1848 discovery of gold. These newcomers had even less respect for the rights of local Indians than prior Spanish and Mexican pioneers. Violent encounters between Native peoples and armed Americans increased in frequency and intensity. California’s governor at the time admitted, “much difficulty is apprehended in the management and control of Indians [here] from the fact that there is no recognized Indian country.”

In 1850, the federal government set out to correct this situation. It proposed to create a number of large reservations within the state, to which California’s numerous tribes would be relocated, concentrated together, and “civilized.” Federal agents traveled the state to negotiate treaties with tribal leaders. In agreeing to these treaties’ terms, California Indians gave up title to their lands in return for title to reservation land. The 1851 treaty negotiated with Sonoma County tribes established a reservation on the western side of Clear Lake, where these tribes would relocate.

This plan, however, was not popular with California’s citizens. They believed that the treaties put too much valuable land into Indian hands and successfully lobbied politicians in Washington D.C. to overturn them. But when they signed the treaties, Indian people believed that they became valid. So did the local settlers who formed ad hoc militias that rounded up local Wappo and Pomo people—young and old, men and women—and herded them more than 100 miles away to Clear Lake.

The militia rode on horseback, while Native people traveled on foot. Many did not survive the journey. And when they arrived at Clear Lake, they found no place set aside for them to dwell and no way to make a living. The granddaughter of one survivor remembers being told:

“They starved there. They ate manzanita and tules. They escaped from Clear Lake and walked back home to Dry Creek.”

The survivors of what came to be known as “The Death March” were few in number. Less than one-quarter of the Native people that left returned to northern inland Sonoma County. And when they did, they found that their land was now in the hands of American farmers and ranchers who recognized and coveted its fertile potential.

Like the displaced local Indians, these settlers’ domesticated plants and animals similarly supplanted native flora and fauna. But these new arrivals needed help to cultivate and harvest their crops and manage their livestock. Western Wappo and Dry Creek Pomo wanted to stay in their ancient homeland, but with their former ways of life no longer viable, they needed new means of support. So local Indians went to work for white ranchers. In their new role as migrant farm laborers, Native people utilized the botanical knowledge and practices they had mastered when tending indigenous plants.

For the next century, most Dry Creek Pomo and Western Wappo people “worked in the fruit,” at least part-time. In the early 1850s, they helped white farmers clear and fence their lands, and then they helped them plant, tend, and harvest their crops.

More than 2,000 Indians were recorded as living in Alexander and Dry Creek Valleys in the 1840s. By 1900, less than 150 of these Native people appeared in the census. Armed with such statistics, white philanthropic groups lobbied the federal government to provide shelter for the state’s “homeless Indians.”

Thus, Indian Agent John Terrell came to Sonoma County in 1915 to buy land for Alexander Valley’s “Geyserville band of Indians” (Western Wappo people). Terrell eventually secured 75 acres, which were placed into federal “trust” status for the original members of the Dry Creek Rancheria.

From the beginning, life was challenging at Dry Creek Rancheria. The land was rugged, with few buildable sites. There were no utilities, no phone or electricity lines, and no water except for a stream running through the ravine that bisected the rancheria.

By the late 1950s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs encouraged California Indian rancherias to terminate their trust status. Dry Creek Rancheria was one of the few that declined. In 1972, the Tribe formalized its governance with Articles of Association, which still serve as its constitution today.

Dry Creek Rancheria has existed as a sovereign tribal entity for nearly a century. The Tribe’s economic stability improved significantly with the opening of River Rock Casino in 2002. This allowed the Tribe to invest in its members, cultural revitalization programs, land acquisitions, and environmental restoration.

Today, the Tribe continues to shape its future with self-reliance and determination, honoring its rich history while creating new opportunities for generations to come.