A couple of years ago after several new interpretive signs were put up in Yosemite National Park some Paiutes who had direct ancestry to the Yosemite area questioned Yosemite National Park why the story of Chief Tenaya and the original Yosemite Indians was not displayed. The interpretive signs were created with the assistance of Yosemite Association and the Yosemite Fund.

Yosemite National Park’s Indian Liaison, who is white, explained the Park starts their Indian historical program around the turn of the 1900s and not at first discovery. That was quite a surprise to Paiutes because the history of Yosemite starts before white people entered the Valley. The history of the California Native American Indian people starts thousands of years before whites entered the state. Why would the Park Service start around the beginning of the 19th century instead of at first encounter?

So we requested documents from the Park to see why this was the case and we were surprised. In a report from Yosemite National Park Service, written by K. P. Wells and Yosemite’s white Indian ethnologist Craig D. Bates called “Ethno history and Material Culture of Southern Sierra Miwok: 1852-1880” included the answer why the Park started the Indian history at the turn of the century.

In the Acknowledgement the report said “"The National Park Service, in conjunction with the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, Inc., decided during meetings conducted in the summer of 1981 to change the focus of the Indian Cultural Interpretation Program at Yosemite National Park. From 1976 through 1981, THE INDIAN CULTURAL PROGRAM ATTEMPTED TO INTERPRET THE ETHNOHISTORY OF THE YOSEMITE MIWOK PRIOR TO 1851, OR BEFORE CONTACT WITH NON-INDIANS. IT WAS DECIDED AT THESE MEETINGS THAT THE INTERPRETIVE TIME PERIOD WOULD CHANGE TO 1870-1880, OF AFTER CONTACT. In order to accurately interpret the time period the first priority of the 1982 summer program was to be a research project, the findings of which were to be used as the ethno-historic background to interpret 1870-1880 Yosemite Indian Culture."

This was a shock to us. Reading the report’s Acknowledgement page in the early 1980s Yosemite National Park Service wanted to “interpret” the ethno-history of Yosemite National Park. So the Park contacted the non-profit American Indian Council of Mariposa, also called The Southern Sierra Miwuks, who are going for federal recognition, and were also current and former employees of the Park, to assist them create a Yosemite Indian Interpretive cultural program. The Park was unaware that many of those in the non-profit were not original Yosemite Native people. Some were descendents of the enemies of the original Yosemite Indians who lived in the Valley. A few in the leadership of this non-profit were from the Indian scouts of the military that helped clear out the Indian people of Yosemite. In actuality the original Indians of Yosemite were not Miwoks, but Paiutes.

The Park proposed that the Yosemite Indian Cultural Interpretation Program start prior to 1851, before contact with the whites. That would make sense, right? Since there were Native indigenous people living in Yosemite before 1851. But after the meeting with the Southern Sierra Miwuks, whom the Park believes were the original Indians of Yosemite, the Park agreed with them to start the Indian history of Yosemite at 1870 – 1880 instead of prior to contact. That certainly didn’t make any sense to the Paiutes because that would leave out the pre-contact of Yosemite. That would leave out first contact with the whites which was the Spring of 1851, and the decades after the ‘discovery’ of Yosemite. How do they explain the ancient “Great Basin” rock art located in Yosemite? Great Basin in that area means Paiute.

To some Paiutes they believed that some people didn’t want Yosemite National Park to start prior to contact and first contact, because the true history of the Indian people of Yosemite would come out.

Here is why some allege the non-profit might have not wanted the Park to start at the beginning:

Yosemite Valley was also called Ahwahnee. Ahwahnee or Owahnee is place in Paiute history and legend. The place was even documented in a couple of books by W. A. Chalfant and Julian Steward. It was actually an area. Ahwahnee was destroyed and the people scattered. That is where some believe that the Monos and Paiutes in the area split because they went in different directions. A handful of the Ahwahnees, lead by their former chief, took a group of survivors to the shores of Mono Lake. There the Ahwahnees were taken in by their cousins the Mono Lake Paiutes. The chief of the Ahwahnees married a Mono Lake Paiute woman and they conceived a son. That son was Tenaya. Tenaya grew up amongst the Mono Lake Paiute people. He learned the ways of his mother’s band until he was of age. Tenaya then married a Mono Lake Paiute woman and had children at Mono Lake. As an adult a medicine man advised Tenaya that it was safe to return back into the Sierra Nevada and reclaim the territory that was once his birthright. Tenaya took about 200 to 300 Indians from Mono Lake and went back into Yosemite Valley. There Chief Tenaya established, what is documented as, the Paiute Colony of Ahwahnee. This happened years before the whites ventured into the California Mountains in search of gold.

Years later gold was discovered and non-Indians flooded the Sierra Nevada in search of the precious metal. Several enterprising men, like Charles Weber, the founder of the city of Stockton, made agreements with San Joaquin Valley floor Indians to go dig gold for them in exchange for provisions. That is how some men became rich. One man took it a little step further. His name was James Savage. Savage made alliances with chiefs, married several of the women, and learned their languages. He created a trading post at the entrance of Yosemite Valley, which had not been discovered yet, and in December of 1850 Indians attacked and burned down his trading post. They also kept killing whites who ventured high up in the Sierra Nevada. The whites decided to remedy that situation and had Savage call in his Indian allies. Savage had his allies Chief Bautista and Cypriano call in all chiefs in the area, but Bautista said two groups would not come in. They were the Chowchilla Yokuts and the “Yosemites”. Yosemite in the Miwok language means “They Are Killers” and that is where the name for the Valley comes from. The Miwok chiefs said their people were afraid to enter Yosemite Valley.

The whites created a militia called the Mariposa Battalion to collect and clear out the ‘troublesome’ Indians in the High Sierra. The first Indian camp the militia stumbled on happened to be the camp of Cow’ chitty, who was a sub-chief. He recognized his old friend James Savage and cheerfully volunteered to help capture his enemies, the Yosemite Indians. On route to capture the Yosemites, Chief Tenaya came in voluntarily to give his people a chance to escape across the mountains to their cousins the Mono Lake Paiutes. The Mariposa Battalion followed and captured some of his band. They were taken to the reservation where Tenaya was miserable. His former enemies from the Western tribes taunted him, where they once feared him. Tenaya and his people escaped and fled back into the mountains.

More gold miners were attacked so the Mariposa Battalion again went to capture Tenaya and his band. This time they were led by Cow’ chitty, whose name is now prominently shown in an interpretive sign in the “Yosemite Miwok Village” in Yosemite. Cow’chitty and the Indian scouts found Tenaya’s rancheria and the whites said without their help they would have never seen any Indians. The Indian scouts even blocked the escape passage of Tenaya and his people. In the scuffle one of Tenaya’s sons was shot in the back and Tenaya, holding back his grief in front of the white men, angrily cursed the whites and their Indian scouts. His speech is very famous.

The scouts helped capture more of Tenaya’s people and then Tenaya was again taken back to the reservation. He scolded the western tribes at the reservation who were now wearing bright red scarves, shirts and ‘pantaloons’ that the whites had given them. Tenaya and his people left in disgust and this time went to live with his cousins over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Paiutes of Mono Lake.

The Mono Lake Paiutes took Tenaya in, who it was written they considered one of their own. They gave him and his band an allotment at Mono Lake to live and welcomed him back. In 1853, two years after the whites ‘discovered’ Yosemite Tenaya grew restless. While the Mono Lake Paiutes were off raiding Spanish rancherias in the south Tenaya and his band decided to leave and return back to Yosemite Valley. Some of Tenaya’s men stole the horse of the Mono Lake Paiutes as they returned to the Valley. When the Mono Lake Paiutes returned they were incensed that their hospitality had been repaid with theft. The Paiutes tracked Tenaya and his band back into Yosemite Valley. As Tenaya and his men lay, bellies full of stolen horse meat, the Paiutes pounced on the Ahwahneechees. The young chief of the Mono Lake Paiutes picked up a rock and crushed Tenaya’s skull and the Ahwahnees were almost all wiped out. The Paiutes didn’t kill the elderly and about eight men escaped. The remaining surviving women and children of Tenaya’s band were taken back to Mono Lake and absorbed into the Paiute population. The only Indians the whites saw the next year in 1854 were Paiutes returning to tend the black oak acorn crop in Yosemite Valley.

Interestingly, a year before Tenaya’s death in 1853, James Savage, the man who caused so much grief for the Ahwahneechees and the death of Tenaya’s son was murdered. James Savage was killed by another white man in 1852 named Harvey. Savage had struck the man and he pulled a gun a shot James Savage to death. The word of his death spread quickly and Savage’s Indian workers ran to his body and wailed over his corpse crying “Our white father is dead”. That is documented. There is no doubt that was not any of Chief Tenaya’s people, because they hated James Savage.

Later the white military and settlers moved into Yosemite along with some of their Indian workers, who now claim to be the original Native people of Yosemite.

There is so much more to the Indian history of Yosemite, but this is the main part of pre-1870 history that Park does not inform the general public. Instead how could Yosemite National Park Service let a non-profit that wants to become federally recognized, dictate when the history of the Indian people of Yosemite should start? If the Park did start at the beginning they would have discovered the real true Indian history of Yosemite, and it was not Miwok.

That is why you won’t find any mention of Chief Tenaya on signs, books, and pamphlets in Yosemite National Park because it appears the Park let a non-profit tell them to start the Indian history at 1870-1880, and that is not the beginning of Yosemite’s Indian history.