For this assignment I was lucky enough to find a book written by the chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Greg Sarris. Originally written for the tribal newsletter, the book includes several Coast Miwok creation stories. All of the stories take place on Sonoma Mountain which sits directly east of Cotati; in some stories, such as “Pretty Woman and the Necklace” and “Pretty Woman Latches Her Necklace,” people from the mountain visit villages in Cotati.

The stories are told by Answer Woman, who cannot remember questions, to her sister, Question Woman, who cannot remember answers. Question Woman asks her sister about fog and rain and jealousy and greed and Answer Woman tells her the stories of the mountain, when Coyote, Frog Woman, Crow, Toad, etc were not yet in their animal form. Before there were people on the mountain, the animals and features (such as water, fog, wind, etc) learned from mistakes they made. For example, in the story “Water Bug Walks Away With Copeland Creek,” Water Bug steals the water from the creek and hides it in a cave because Creek won’t tell him the secret to why everyone loves him. As the people on the mountain suffer the loss of the water Creek provides, everyone learns how important it is and Water Bug eventually literally spills the last drop of water with Creek’s song and water returns to the mountain. What these stories emphasize is the interconnection of all life on the mountain: if one thing is out of balance, or if one person demands too much, everyone suffers. To successfully engage in a foraging economy a deep understanding of the available resources and the cultural knowledge of how to use them is essential; these stories are part of an oral tradition that would pass warnings and knowledge across generations.

It is important to remember that these stories can’t be treated as artifacts from an ethnographic present. Sarris wrote them in English; he uses contemporary names for places such as Copeland Creek (which, coincidentally, runs right through Sonoma State) and Santa Rosa. These are re-tellings, but so are all stories in oral tradition. If storytelling is an important aspect of the adaptive strategy for foragers the stories change as the needs of the storytellers change.

In the last story in the book Coyote created people. He was selfish, thinking only of himself, and made copies of all of his friends so that they could spend more time with him and keep him company. Unfortunately, he left the door to his house open so when these copies left his house their prototypes turned into animals and the copies went down the mountain to live in the Cotati plains. Coyote’s copy stayed on the mountain and created a village there.