Sometimes the most revealing thing about looking through a different lens isn’t what changes, but what was there all along.

I’ve lived and worked in wine country for more than 20 years, and I still love learning things about this place that change the way I see it. And on California Native American Day which is on the fourth Friday in September, I dug deeper into the people who’ve created the Napa Valley that I love.

We tend to tell Napa Valley’s history through wine. And wine is a wonderful way to connect with the land and its people. But there’s more than wine to the story of this magical place. 

The People 

Humans have lived in this valley for at least 10,000 years. The history of Napa Valley’s First People is complex, encompassing different tribes and territories over thousands of years, including the Wappo and Southern Patwin. Napa Valley wasn’t an untouched wilderness waiting for someone to arrive and make something of it. It was already a place people knew intimately, cared for and called home.

And there are traces everywhere. For example, if you’re lucky, you might see an arrowhead fashioned from obsidian on a vineyard walk. After learning more about Napa’s First People, I am convinced that a smooth, oblong rock that I found by the Napa River was used as a pestle for grinding acorns. 

Soscol Avenue in Napa, which you may have driven, was named for the Native American Patwin village site located along the banks of Suscol Creek. The name means “wet and green,” a reference to the marshy area in southern Napa. In fact “many places in Napa County derive their names from Native American words.”  The word “Napa” itself derived from the Patwin word napo, meaning home.

The arrival of Europeans changed life here profoundly. Disease, displacement, forced relocation and the loss of ancestral lands devastated Native communities. But I won’t leave their story there, because that makes it sound as though Indigenous people are gone. They aren’t. Native people survived, descendants remain connected to this land, and the work of organizations like Suscol continues today.

There’s much history and many people who have shaped Napa Valley. When I was on my first Platypus Napa Valley wine tour, my guide Dave pointed out some of the beautiful stone walls created by the original Chinese builders of 19th century Napa Valley.

Before vineyards dominated the landscape, Napa Valley was a diverse agricultural place, with cattle ranches, wheat fields, orchards and hop farms, while quicksilver mines operated in the mountains. The Chinese were the backbone of early Napa Valley, working farms and mines, building roads, bridges and stone walls, laying railroad tracks (which The Wine Train uses today), and digging wine caves like Schramsberg’s and Beringer’s. 

And they weren’t simply a labor force. They were part of the community. Napa, St. Helena and Calistoga all had Chinatowns.

There’s a harder part of that history, too. Napa Valley depended heavily on Chinese labor while Chinese residents simultaneously faced discrimination, organized campaigns to drive them away and laws designed to exclude them. By the early 1900s, most of the Chinese community had left the valley. Buildings disappeared, Chinatowns disappeared and, over time, much of their contribution disappeared from the stories told about Napa Valley as well.

One culturally significant story here that we drive past everyday is still being written. Over generations Mexican and Mexican Americans have played a bedrock-role in shaping Napa Valley. From vineyard workers, viticulturalists, winemakers, winery owners and community leaders, their knowledge and skills are part of Napa Valley’s. 

There are many more stories than I could tell here. Including that of Italian, German and other European immigrants who established farms, businesses and wineries. Other communities contributed to Napa’s growth in ways that deserve their own telling. But I can’t adequately tell thousands of years of human history in a blog.

Many cultures, skills and passion are visible and present in this valley. And if you’d like to learn more, you can attend community outreach activities at Suskol Intertribal Council, visit the Sharpsteen Museum, or the Napa County Historical Society.

Wine may be what made Napa Valley famous. But the people, stories, and this beautiful land are the constitution of Napa Valley. I invite you to visit see the complexity, diversity and beauty when you find yourself here, or are enjoying a glass of Napa Valley wine. And if you’re on a Platypus Wine Tour, your guide is sure to share some of their own favorite stories with you.