Land use

The native people who lived here in this valley and in the surrounding hillsides and low-lying mountains used the land for their needs – water, food and shelter – and over time discovered uses for plants besides as food. They knew which plants could heal or harm them and knew how to fashion tools from what nature provided to make life better. They used the land and its bounty, but did little to change it or destroy it.

That came later when the white tribes, aptly named conquistadors from Spain and their descendants up from Mexico from the south, and then the descendants of European settlers from the east began the occupation of what came to be known as the North Bay. The white tribes came with ideas of changing the land and using it to prepare for more of their kind who would need water, food and shelter.

These pioneers or intruders, depending on your viewpoint, also saw the land as a way to get rich and by so doing acquire more of it. They envisioned many uses for the land far beyond the indigenous occupants, the land we call Sonoma Valley.

The native peoples who inhabited these North Bay lands, creeks and streams, and saltwater marshes to the south lived in harmony with this place for thousands of years and saw no need to exploit it beyond what it already provided using some knowledge and ingenuity. They respected the land for what it gave them and its wildlife and even used it for simple commerce – trading. They had no need or reason to drastically alter what nature had already provided.

This all changed in a figurative eye-blink when the white tribes took the North Bay lands. Besides seeing the land as a commodity, either as homesteads, farms or businesses, it was also envisioned as towns, cities and counties that would slowly fill with more and more people, white people. With that, for some, came dreams of wealth. More people meant more commerce, and supplying these needs meant greater wealth.

The land itself became a commodity to be bought and sold. It no longer had intrinsic value simply for its existence alone to maintain life, human and otherwise. Now it could be farmed to feed the many who would come, its trees could be cut down to build houses and towns, and it could even be used to grow grapes to be turned into wine so these new people who replaced the millennia-old Indian generations could get loaded; an ancient white tribes tradition.

It was no longer necessary or even desirable to live in balance and harmony with the natural world from the perspective of those who saw the land, this valley we now inhabit, as a thing outside us, a commodity.

Now we only think in terms of buying and selling, using and acquiring, and filling everywhere with more of our kind in the deluded belief that is what we’re supposed to do and that it will bring us perpetual happiness and satisfaction.

Do you think that end has been reached?