Picture Petaluma pre-European contact, with valley vistas, native grasses swaying, woodlands chock-full of wildlife, replete with waterfowl generously teeming throughout wetlands and waterways. Tall tule reeds grew abundantly, providing Petaluma’s Native American residents, the Coast Miwok, an abundant resource which they fashioned into tule boats, homes and more. The landscape upon which the town of Petaluma sits today is the homeland of Coast Miwok who followed rich cultural beliefs and held an intimate understanding of the land, seasons, flora and fauna. Within each Miwok community, there was a hoipu and a hoipu-kulele, or men and women respectively, who led the villages that prospered with very little if any violence throughout the thousands of years here.