Mount Diablo

Mount Diablo was sacred to approximately 25 tribal groups who lived in the surrounding region, speaking Ohlone, Bay Miwok, and Northern Valley Yokuts languages. The Volvon, a Bay Miwok tribe, held the peak area. Spanish colonization forced Indigenous peoples into missions by 1806. The mountain's name derives from a 1806 colonial encounter, not from Indigenous belief. Mount Diablo State Park was established in 1931.

Multiple creation stories center on Mount Diablo. The Ohlone account describes a primordial flood that destroyed a previous world, covering everything except Mount Diablo and Mount Tamalpais. On these twin peaks stood Coyote, Hummingbird, and Eagle. From these islands in the flood, Coyote and Eagle-man created the Native American people and the world.

The Bay Miwok tradition holds that 'this world began at Mount Diablo, following a great flood.' At the summit, three deities planned creation: Molluk (Condor), Wekwek (Falcon), and Olette (Coyote). In a related story, Molluk lived on Mount Diablo, where his grandson Wekwek was born. Wekwek flew east to obtain elderberry from the Star Women, then returned to plant elderberry trees with Coyote—providing music, food, and medicine for the people they would create. They traveled to places where they wanted villages, stuck feathers in the ground, and the feathers came to life as people. Coyote then transformed into a coyote, and Wekwek into a falcon.

The Spanish name 'Diablo' derives from an 1806 encounter in which Indigenous people escaped Spanish soldiers in circumstances the soldiers attributed to the Devil. The name originally applied to a thicket near the mountain, then was transferred to the peak itself through Anglo settlers' misunderstanding of the Spanish word 'monte' (which can mean 'thicket' as well as 'mountain'). No Indigenous name for the mountain translates as evil spirit or devil.