from A HISTORY OF ROHNERT PARK By John H. DeClercq City Historian The people who live in the City of Rohnert Park today are very different from the first land owners in this part of the Santa Rosa Valley. The original residents, a small tribe of Indians, lived in a village called Kotate, which was located to the north of today's City. They called the nearby rolling hills Lomas de kotate, and called the peak Mt. Kotate. Their leader was Chief Kotate. Little else is known about the tribe, the chief, or about the meaning of the word "Kotate." These people belonged to the "nation" of Coast Miwok Indians, and were related to the Miwoks of central California and the mid-Sierras as far east as the Yosemite valley. Their culture and life style was molded by their environment: rolling hills, streams, lakes, woods, and plentiful fish, game, and vegetation - ingredients for a generally easy life. These people are best known for the fine quality and variety of the multi-purpose baskets that they weaved. The Coast Miwoks inhabited about 885 square miles of Marin and southern Sonoma Counties. At the turn of the 19th Century, there were approximately 3,000 persons in about 40 villages. Each village consisted of 75 to 100 persons. The people of one such Miwok village near Tomales greeted Sir Francis Drake when he landed in 1579. The valley land was rich and inviting for farming and grazing. It was only a matter of time before Spanish and Mexican settlers would try to settle the area. And when the Russians came to Fort Ross in 1812, the Spanish realized that they had to act quickly to protect their settlements around the bay. They considered the unoccupied and unclaimed Santa Rosa Valley to be an unsecured frontier border that needed to be defended. The founding of the northbay missions, Mission San Rafael in 1817 and Mission Sonoma in 1823, was a move to claim the farm and grazing lands and to keep the Russians out of the valley. It also meant the end of the Coast Miwok Indians. They were captured, brought into the Missions to live, and were made to work the Missions lands. The Europeans brought many strange diseases and viruses to the valley. The Miwoks had no resistance to the new illnesses and many died.