1850, a year before the Mariposa Battalion, led by James Savage, entered Yosemite to capture and clear out Chief Tenaya and his band of Ahwahnee Indians, the first white man entered Hetch Hetchy Valley.

The first know Europeans documented to enter Hetch Hetchy Valley were the Screech brothers, Nate, William and Joseph. In their foray into the valley they met a Paiute chief and his band foraging for acorns. The Screech brothers noted that when the Natives staying in Hetch Hetchy left they went east towards the Sierra Nevada.

Who would have realized that over one hundred and fifty years later Hetch Hetchy would be embroiled in a one of the biggest environmental controversies in the United States?

In 1913 Congress passed the Raker Act to build a dam and flood the beautiful valley of Hetch Hetchy, which used to be a Paiute area. The creation of the O'Shaughnessy dam in 1923 created a reservoir and is one of the main sources of water for San Francisco. In 1901 John Muir, the noted naturalist and environmentalist, led the Sierra Club and other conservationalists in an effort to protect the valley from being flooded. John Muir wrote after the dam was built "Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.” John Muir’s declaration still resonates today in the hearts of many conservationalists. Hetch Hetchy was described as a smaller Yosemite Valley, with waterfalls and beautiful meadows.

But there was a history that is seldom written about or is written about incorrectly. In some modern books about Hetch Hetchy Valley they describe the valley as a home for the Miwok people and that “they remember always being there”. But that is not so.

In Pate Valley, located in the Hetch Hetchy area, are very old Great Basin pictographs. Pictographs are ancient Native American rock writings. Archeologists and anthropologists have written that rock writings in the area were Great Basin style. Many will agree that was because of a presence of Great Basin Indians. Great Basin is another term for Paiute and Shoshone. In early pioneer writings there are stories of Paiutes living in the western side of the Sierra Nevada.

The oldest California Indian basket in the Central Sierra Nevada was a Paiute burden basket found in a cave in the area of Hetch Hetchy Valley. Some say the basket that was found was traded to the Miwok, which was highly unlikely and here is why, before the white man had entered the area Paiutes and Miwoks had long running battles over natural resources. (see photo 3 of basket)

In the 1860s the state of California hired a surveyor named Charles F. Hoffmann. Hoffmann was a German immigrant who was hired to survey the California Sierra Nevada. He was an explorer and one of the first persons to survey the Hetch Hetchy area. One of the highest peaks in Yosemite National Park is named after Hoffmann.

When C. F. Hoffmann ventured into Hetch Hetchy and spoke to the Screech brothers and other mountaineers who were the first non-Indians to set up homesteading in the valley. They told them that there was a battle between the Big Creek Indians, who were from lower Tuolumne and the Paiutes over ownership of Hetch Hetchy. They said that the Paiutes were victorious in retaining ownership of the Valley and the Paiutes would be seen gathering acorns. Hoffmann documented that in his “Notes on Hetch-Hetchy Valley,” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, published in 1867.

Other authors documented the same stories of the Paiute battle with the Indians of Big Creek over Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Charles Loring Brace wrote in The New West: or, California in 1867-1868, printed in 1869; "It has been seldom visited, the Pah Utahs (Paiutes), and the Big Creek tribes, disputing and fighting over its possession." and "It had been noticed for some time that the Indians possessed a place of hiding which was unknown to the whites." Benjamin Parke Avery, wrote in his ‘Californian Pictures in Prose and Verse’; "The Hetch-Hetchy Valley, or “the Little Yosemite,” for instance, was, up to a very recent date, disputed ground between the Pah-Utahs (Paiutes), from the eastern slope, and the Big Creek Indians, from the western slope, who had several fights, in which the Pah-Utahs (commonly called Piutes) were victorious.". Avery’s book was published in 1878.

Hetch Hetchy was a hiding place for the Paiutes also. In the 1870s there was an earth quake at Lone Pine and hundreds of Paiutes rushed to their safe hiding place of Hetch Hetchy in the upper Tuolumne.

Early California settler and author Charles Augustus Stoddard wrote in "California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 ", Beyond the Rockies; a spring journey in California, Chapter XXII, Hetch-Hetchy Valley: “Hetch-Hetchy Valley became known to white men in 1867. Long before, it was a hiding-place for Indians, and it is still visited from year to year by Pah Utes [Paiutes] for the purpose of gathering acorns from majestic trees, under some of which we found shelter from the sun.” and “In the summer of 1873, the remarkable cañon of the Tuolumne River east and a little north of Hetch-Hetchy was explored to Soda Springs, a distance of about twenty-two miles."

Other authors also wrote that Hetch Hetchy was a sanctuary for the Paiute people. Lady Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming wrote in her 1888 book "Granite Crags of California" in the chapter “THE TUOLUMNE CANYON”, page 269 “The travelers did not seek a nearer acquaintance with the Lyell and Merced groups, though somewhat tempted by hearing that region is accounted one of the wildest and grandest in the Sierras; but their chief anxiety was to visit a beautiful valley of the same character as this, called the Hetch-Hetchy Valley. It has only recently been discovered, having been one of the sanctuaries of the Pah-ute [Paiute] Indians, who reckon on always finding there an abundant acorn-harvest.”

Even the man who wrote everything we know about the early Yosemite Indian people and first contact, Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell wrote his book, “The Discovery of the Yosemite” this on page 231; “They had been anxious to embroil us in trouble by drawing us into the canyons of the Tuolumne, where were some Pai-utes [Paiutes] wintering in a valley like Ah-wah-ne [Ahwahnee].” The description of the canyon is the same that John Muir described Hetch Hetchy, as a place that resembled Yosemite Valley’s Ahwahnee, which was Chief Tenaya’s Paiute Indian Colony.

Later on after the discovery of Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite Valley non-Indian gold miners would be attacked and killed by hostile Paiutes who were very territorial as the miners went further up into the Sierra Nevada in search of gold. After the gold was depleted, water became the new gold. Early water works employees that went in the upper Tuolumne River were often attacked and one of the early dam tenders was reportedly murdered by Paiutes. An early settler by the name of John Jolly described this in his journal in “A History of Tuolumne County, California” Published by B.F. Alley, 1882, page 352.

John Jolly chronicled the early history of Tuolumne County. He authored “The Gold Spring Diary; The Journal of John Jolly”. His diary was transcribed and was in the first edition of the Tuolumne Historical Society. This is from the notes on the book. Here are the notes about the earliest known encounters between early white gold rush miners and the Indians of the Sierra Nevada. From Jolly’s writings:

“Indians were more of a problem than has been generally recognized in the history of Tuolumne County. It was not safe for unarmed men to traveling isolated areas of the mountains for well over a decade following the discovery of gold. Only a year previously, Indians killed a teamster employed in hauling ice, near Long Barn. Just two months previous to this entry, John David had been found murdered on the Emigrant Trail east of Lyons’ Dam, and the coroner’s jury found that the act had been committed by Indians.”
“About June 28, 1861, Jacob R. Giddes, a dam tender for the Tuolumne County Water Company, was allegedly killed by Indians while at work near present day Pinecrest.”
“In an entry of February 11, 1858, Jolly notes: “Lent my double gun to Frank Birk to take in the mountains with a lot of the boys who are going to clear out the Indians above Donnal’s Flat who it is reported have killed and wounded some of our men on the ditch.” In fairness to the local Indians, most of these attacks were probably the work of Paiute Indians from the Mono County area.”

The white settler’s “local Indians” were the Indians they had previously brought up to work for them from the valley floor who were extremely docile. The problem for the whites was unlike their Indian employees, the Paiutes were not docile, but war like, which meant they had to be pushed out for whites to move in. So the whites organized vigilante groups like James Savage did to clear out Yosemite with the Mariposa Battalion and pushed the Paiutes out of their Hetch Hetchy. Even then the Paiutes would still return like they did in Yosemite and pick acorns and collect other natural resources. It was engrained in the Paiute psyche.

John Muir wrote that he saw a line of Paiutes coming in on the Mono trails to pick acorns covered in red clay. In our culture the red clay was applied for protection so the Paiutes believed that if they painted themselves in the red clay they would be unharmed.

When John Muir wanted to document that Indians still used Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1901 he took a trip to Mono Lake following the old Paiutes trails took to observe them preparing acorns. There is a photo of John Muir with an elderly Paiute woman as she prepared acorn meal. There was a small boy in the photo also (see photo 2).

Muir was accompanied by C. Hart Merriam who took the photo of John Muir. He also took photos of Paiute Captain Jim, his daughter Nellie Jim-Charlie and the camp of Captain Joe, another Paiute leader, after they had just returned from gathering acorns in Hetch Hetchy Valley. The reason that Muir and Merriam did not take any photos of Miwoks gathering or harvesting acorns is because that group had already taken up living in white towns and not eating traditional foods. There are very few records of Miwoks collecting and eating acorns by 1900, only Paiutes. (see photo 3) After the photos of the Indians were taken the construction of the dam began and Hetch Hetchy Valley was flooded. A place we Paiutes used to trek and gather our food. The area is dotted with places like Piute Mountain and Piute Creek named after our people. Today many white archeologists and anthropologists don’t see the connection or know of the Paiute presence in Hetch Hetchy. They should learn the real history of the Valley before they write books about Hetch Hetchy especially the connection of the owners of the Valley. Even though Yosemite National Park does not like to mention it.

In the 1970s my uncle said he was driving my great aunt from Carson City Nevada to Mono Lake California to visit and she pointed to the mountains beyond Twin Lakes and said “See back there? When we were children we used to go back in there and camp. We used to collect acorns, wild onions and wild leeks along a canyon.” He told me he looked up and she was pointing towards Hetch Hetchy and he knew where she meant, he knew she meant Hetch Hetchy Valley, our old home now under water.