User:ChrispinPerez/Yosemite National Park

Article Draft

Ideas

Plan to predominately expand upon the history section, especially focusing on the information on the Indigenous groups in the area and giving them more voice and a more well-rounded history.

Add more about when and how many times the Native American groups were kicked off the land.

Add more about the history of John Muir and his influence on removing Indigenous people from the area.

Add the history of how the Indigenous groups were used as an attraction at the national park for a number of years.

Add more sources.

Expand upon the history of the war between the Indigenous groups as well as the settlers.

Add to the tourism section as well and how the impact of tourism affected the Indigenous groups.

Sections to Edit

Bunnell's battalion eventually captured Chief Tenaya on December 8th, 1850 by setting fire to the Ahwahneechee camp and then shot and killed twenty-three of the Ahwahneechee as they fled the fire. The remaining Ahwahneechee that got away retreated into the mountains. The chief and some others were later allowed to return to Yosemite Valley. In the spring of 1852 they attacked a group of eight gold miners, and then moved east to flee law enforcement. Near Mono Lake, they took refuge with the nearby Mono tribe of Paiute. They stole horses from their hosts and moved away, but the Mono Paiutes tracked down and killed many of the Ahwahneechee, including Chief Tenaya. The Mono Paiute took the survivors as captives back to Mono Lake and absorbed them into the Mono Lake Paiute tribe. In the late nineteenth century the population of all native inhabitants in Yosemite National Park was difficult to determine, estimates ranged from smaller numbers such as thirty individuals, to several hundred. The Ahwahneechee people and their descendents were even harder to identify.

Wawona was an Indian encampment in what is now the southwestern part of the park. The Nutchu Indians that lived at Wawona were captured and relocated to a reservation on the Fresno River by the Mariposa Battalion led by James D. Savage in March of 1851. Settler Galen Clark discovered the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia in Wawona in 1857. He had simple lodgings built, and roads to the area. In 1879, the Wawona Hotel was built to serve tourists visiting Mariposa Grove. As tourism increased, so did the number of trails and hotels developed by people intending to build on the trade.

Yosemite was central to the development of the national park idea. Galen Clark and others lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, ultimately leading to President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Yosemite Grant in 1864. John Muir led a successful movement to have Congress establish a larger national park by 1890, one which encompassed the valley and its surrounding mountains and forests, paving the way for the National Park System. Yosemite now draws about four million visitors each year, and most visitors spend the majority of their time in the seven square miles (18 km²) of Yosemite Valley. The park set a visitation record in 2016, surpassing five million visitors for the first time in its history. The park began requiring reservations to access the park during peak periods starting in 2020 as a response to the rise in visitors.

Natives to Yosemite traditionally and intentionally set small fires in the valley in the early 1860s and much earlier before that to clear the ground of brush as part as their farming practices, resulting in easier crop growth and faster cultivation. These fires that Yosemite Natives lit are comparable to contemporary practices like controlled burns which are done by the U.S. Forest Service and other environmental experts. Although it may not have been their primary concern for setting these fires, the Ahwahneechee and other Yosemite Natives helped preserve local biodiversity and ecosystem resilience by lighting these small fires. Native Americans used fire as an early wildlife management tool by burning brush to keep certain lands clear, resulting in more food for large animals and decreasing the chance of large forest fires which devastate forest ecosystems today. Some early uncontrolled forest fires were set by the militia Mariposa Battalion when they burned down the Ahwahneechee camp in an attempt to remove them from the land. The houses that they lit on fire eventually caught a large section of the forest on fire and the militia group ended up having to abandon their raid to save their own camp from the forest fire they started.

Reference Notes/Bibliography

-Yosemite park curators Martha J. Lee and Craig Bates noted that from 1870 and onwards, the population of Indigenous people in Yosemite National Park was extremely limited and their overall presence was unknown to the common tourist.

-In the late nineteenth century the population of native inhabitants in Yosemite National Park was difficult to determine, estimations ranged drastically from very few such as thirty, to several hundred.

-The Indigenous Peoples of the Yosemite region were supposed to voluntarily relocate on reservations where they would ideally turn into agriculturalists, while supervised by government Indian Agents. This vision from the U.S. government is where the policy and idea for creating Indian Reservations came from.

History

Main article: History of the Yosemite area

Ahwahneechee and the Mariposa Wars

Paiute ceremony (1872)

Lafayette Bunnell gave Yosemite Valley its name.

Yosemite Valley has been inhabited for nearly 4,000 years, although humans may have first visited the area as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. The Indigenous natives called themselves the Ahwahneechee, meaning "dwellers" in Ahwahnee. The Ahwahneechee tribe is one of the few tribes that lived in Yosemite Valley and its surrounding areas, but they are part of a larger Indigneous population in California, called the Southern Sierra Miwok. They are related to the Northern Paiute and Mono tribes. Other tribes like the Central Sierra Miwoks and the Yokuts, who both lived in the San Joaquin Valley and central California, visited Yosemite to trade and intermarry with the Ahwahneechee. This resulted in a blending of culture which helped preserve Indigenous people's presence in Yosemite after early American settlements and urban development threatened their survival. Vegetation and game in the region were similar to that present today; acorns were a staple to their diet, as well as other seeds and plants, salmon and deer.

A major event impacting the Naitve population of Yosemite and all of California in the mid-19th century was the California Gold Rush, which drew more than 90,000 European Americans to the area in less than two years, causing competition for resources between gold miners and the local Natives. Before large amounts of European settlers arrived in California, about 70 years before the Gold Rush, the Indigenous population was estimated to be 300,000, once the Gold Rush started it dropped down to 150,00, and just ten years later, only about 50,000 remained. The reason for such a decline in the Native American population results from numerous reasons including disease, birth rate decreases, starvation, and the conflicts from the American Indian Wars. The conflict in Yosemite is known as the Mariposa War, it started in December 1850 when California funded a state militia to drive Native people from contested terrirotory, also known as Indigenous traditonal and sacred homelands; the goal was to suppress Native American resistance to American expansion.

In retaliation to the extermination and domestication of their people, and loss of their lands and resources, Yosemite Indian tribes often stole from settlers and miners, sometimes killing them, both actions seen as tribute for the great losses they experienced. The War and formation of the Mariposa Battalion was partially the result of a single incident involving James Savage, a trader in Fresno, California whose trading post was attacked. After the incident, Savage rallied other miners and gained the support of local officials to pursue revenge and a full out war against the Natives, that is how he was appointed United States Army Major and leader of the Mariposa Battalion in the beginning of 1851. He and his predecessor, Captain John Boling, were responsible for pursuing the Ahwahneechee people that were being led by Chief Tenaya and driving them as far west as possible. In March of 1851 under the command of Savage, the Mariposa Battalion captured about 70 Ahwahneechee and planned to take them to a reservation in Fresno, but they all managed to escape. Later in May, under the command of Boling, the battalion captured 35 Ahwahneechee including Chief Tenaya and marched them to the reservation but most were allowed to eventually leave and the rest escaped. Tenaya and others fled across the Sierra Nevada and settled with the Mono Lake Paiutes. Tenaya and some of his companions were ultimately killed in 1853 either over stealing horses or a gambling conflict and the survivors of Tenaya's group and other Ahwahneechee were absorbed into the Mono Lake Paiute tribe.

Accounts from this battalion were the first well-documented reports of ethnic Europeans entering Yosemite Valley. Attached to Savage's unit was Doctor Lafayette Bunnell, who later wrote about his awestruck impressions of the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite. Bunnell is credited with naming Yosemite Valley, based on his interviews with Chief Tenaya. Bunnell wrote that Chief Tenaya was the founder of the Ahwahnee colony. Bunnell falsely believed that the word "Yosemite" meant "full-grown grizzly bear." In fact, "Yosemite" was derived from the Miwok term for the Ahwaneechee people: yohhe'meti, meaning "they are killers".

Indigenous Peoples presence post war and present day

After the Mariposa War a number of Native Americans continued to live in the Yosemite area, despite their overall population being severely decreased in the present day park's boundary.

A number of Indians supported the growing tourism industry by working as laborers or maids. Later, Indians became part of the tourism industry itself by selling baskets or performing for tourists. In 1969, the National Park Service evicted the remaining Native people from their residences and destroyed their village as part of a fire-fighting exercise. A reconstructed "Indian Village of Ahwahnee" has been erected behind the Yosemite Museum, located next to the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center. In the late nineteenth century the population of all native inhabitants in Yosemite National Park was difficult to determine, estimations ranged drastically from smaller numbers such as thirty individuals, to several hundred, the Ahwahneechee people and their descendents were even harder to identify.

Currently there is an Indian Museum in

References ===== References =

https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/the_ahwahneechees/chapter_1.html

https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/their-lifeways.htm

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/how-john-muir-s-brand-of-conservation-led-to-the-decline-of-yosemite/