The Rich Homeland

The Konhomtara Pomo lived in a area of about 150 square miles around the Laguna de Santa Rosa, a spot with a variety of habitats. Wetlands and riparian areas gradually give way to oaks and other trees as the land rises toward the coastal ridge.

"For the Konhomtara, this wasn't just a landscape, but a succession of seasonal uses," says anthropologist Adrian Praetzellis as we follow the path that descends into the meadow and skirts Atascadero Creek. "It's this diversity that made the Laguna a rich resource for the Konhomtara," he adds, "and Ragle is like a mini-Laguna."

Luxuriant willows, their branches used for framing baskets, line the creek and nearby is poison oak, used for dye, Acorns were the major autumn staple, but just as important was pinole, a mix of 15 or 20 kinds of grass seeds collected in spring and summer. The seeds were singed, ground, blended together and then cooked with honey or baked into cakes.

Hiking further along, Praetzellis spots more plants the Konhomtara used. One is bigelow, a mild native tobacco with pale pink flowers and foliage like a hardy dandelion. In the middle of the muddy path, miraculously untrampled, a soaproot flourishes, its long green blades drooping in the mud. The Konhomtara dug out the bulb and mashed it up for soap, says Praetzellis; sapotoxin in the root was one of several substances they used for fish poison.

"A lot of this area was used for agriculture [by white settlers], probably hay," comments Praetzellis, "and that wipes out a lot of species." Distinctly non-native thistles rustle in the field where native grasses once grew, and the skyline is etched by European and Australian trees the Konhomtara wouldn't recognize.

"We're looking at a 20th century landscape," with grapes on one slope, eucaluptus on another, and remnants of an orchard up the hill, says Praetzellis. "Those poplars" -- he points to a row of wispy trees off to the north -- "are even later, part of a post-war landscape."

The meadow itself is less marshy than it was in previous centuries because the Russian River and its tributaries drain faster, so that wetlands are less extensive here and in the Laguna than they were in previous eras.

Lowland Ragle is in a bowl whose sides reflect changes that are still going on. Old apple orchards, new vineyards, and distant mansions inhabit the ridges; a ranch on a nearby slope is a graveyard of dysfunctional cars and trucks.

With several habitats in a relatively small area, the Konhomtara enjoyed a comfortable living. In winter, they stayed in hillside villages around Sebastopol, taking advantage of the oaks, marshlands and the thousands of birds that travel the Pacific Flyway -- a flight corridor for birds migrating south for the winter. In warmer weather, family groups would spread out to collect the fruits of spring and summer, and they'd travel to the coast to trade with other groups for shellfish and salt.

Antelope, deer, and Roosevelt elk were common game animals; so were smaller critters like mink, rabbits and river otters. Flickers and woodpeckers provided feathers for traditional decoration. Ducks and their eggs were good to eat, while the long, delicate bones of geese were perfect for whistles, says Praetzellis.

Although archaeologists have studied some Konhomtara sites in the Laguna de Santa Rosa just east of here, researchers don't know precisely where the middens were at Ragle, and they have no plans to dust off their shovels and find out.

"It used to be that archaeologists went out and snagged things for museums -- the Indiana Jones syndrome," says Praetzellis. "Now they only excavate if there's a threat to a site."

Even if they don't go digging, anthropologists and ethno-botanists have a pretty clear idea of what plants and animals the locals used here, based on studies of similar groups in Mendocino County, for instance. Pomo lived in Lake and Mendocino Counties and along the North Coast, but the different groups didn't consider themselves related.

"Pomo is a meaningless concept except to linguists," says Praetzellis. "It's a family of seven mutually-unintelligible languages -- not dialects as we usually think of them. Anthropologists just like to classify things."

One thing the Pomo did have in common, however, was a careful observance of one another's territories.

"The 60's idea that all these resources were there and everybody shared them wasn't the case," says Praetzellis. "Families held rights to certain resources: my family has the rights to the acorns from this grove here but not that grove over there, and your family has the rights to fish that stretch of creek." Over the centuries, they worked out sophisticated arrangements for peaceably sharing the landscape.

"It wasn't just a free-for-all," says Praetzellis. "The land has its own resources if you know when to collect them, and if it's your family that's entitled to collect it."