There were no vineyards in Napa Valley, no luxurious wineries of later generations, and no great cellars filled with wooden barrels. Five hundred years ago, this was the land of the Indian tribes, just as it had been for the past thousand years, the past ten thousand years.
From ancient wilderness to the present day, countless Miwok People had lived and thrived in this long, narrow valley. They cleared the land along the river, built the tribes' longhouses, and passed their ways down generation after generation. And the only things that never changed were the clear summer sun, and the sweet-tasting Napa River that irrigated the fertile soil along its banks.
"Very good fertile land, lots of farmland!... It should have been developed for a long time, but the crops are growing only so-so. Maybe they lack fertilizer, or maybe the weeding hasn't been done carefully... Of course, the biggest problem should be that it isn't warm enough..."
Scholar Miki stood on the longship, following the river all the way toward the hinterland of the North Bay Tribe. He observed carefully. The farther in they went, the denser the farmland by the river gradually became. Corn, pumpkin, and beans all grew slowly together with the weeds. The surrounding thatched huts and grass huts also gradually increased, and then, after a certain stretch of riverbank, whole clusters of wooden houses suddenly appeared, along with piles of stacked firewood!
"The tribe's longhouses... wooden houses... stored firewood... this much?"
Scholar Miki's eyes widened, and his estimation of the North Bay Tribe rose again. In the north, where productivity was even lower, cutting down trees in the forest was no easy thing. Wooden longhouses could ward off the cold, but they required a great deal of labor. And that, in turn, required enough food