Patwin

The Patwin, or Southern Wintu, were the southern branch of the Wintun peoples, speaking a Penutian Wintuan language along the lower Sacramento and western plains. Their village of Korusi gave Colusa its name, while yo-loy, a place abounding in rushes, survives in Yolo. The Suisun band held marshes near Suisun Bay. The Patwin may have numbered between two and five thousand in the eighteenth century.

In 1810 Gabriel Moraga's soldiers killed a hundred and twenty-five Suisun fighters, and by 1816 over three hundred Suisun had been baptized into Mission San Francisco de Asis. In 1817 chief Malica's cornered villagers burned their huts and died in the flames rather than surrender.

Survivors led by Sem-Yeto, baptized Chief Solano, helped found the Sonoma mission in 1823 and allied with Mariano Vallejo in 1834; smallpox cut down the native population around Sonoma in 1837.