A couple of years ago we saw an article where the Chairman of the Southern Sierra Miwuk mentioned that his ancestor Mary Wilson was a chief of the Yosemite Miwok people in the early days of Yosemite National Park.

If you visit Yosemite National Park's Indian Village located behind the Indian Museum in the Park you will see a sign called "Chief's House" (See Gallery Photo 2) with both Southern Sierra Miwuk and Central Mewuk. All signs have the Miwok language, but not one sign in the Village has the language of the original Yosemite Indians which was Paiute and Mono.

The sign goes on to say that Mary Wilson was a Miwok leader living in the Chief's house in Yosemite. Implying that Mary Wilson was a "Chief" of the Yosemite Indian people.

In his book Tradition and Innovation, co-authored by Martha Lee, Craig D. Bates, Yosemite National Park's official Indian ethnologist for 30 years, wrote that Mary Wilson was the daughter of a Miwok "chief" named Captain Jim. Bates kept referring to Mary Wilson as a Southern Sierra Miwok who conducted traditional Miwok functions in Yosemite National Park. Bates writes about Mary Wilson "A Captain throughout her life, she conducted funeral services and other traditional Miwok functions. Mary Wilson died on May 10, 1930 in Yosemite Valley; she was buried in Madera."

Reading the signs and books by Craig D. Bates you would believe that Mary Wilson was from the royal line of the Yosemite Miwok chiefs who carried on the traditions of the Southern Sierra Miwuk as a Captain. That is until you look closer. Mary Wilson was neither a Southern Sierra Miwuk nor a real Captain. She was not even from Yosemite.

Mary Wilson was the wife of Frank "Hooky" Wilson the chief of the Merced Falls Reservation located in Madera County. "Hooky" Wilson died early on. In the book The Ahwahneechees by John W. Bingaman Frank "Hooky" Wilson is said to be from the "Chumhunchee" tribe which is not Yosemite. In the book The Wilson's and their children came from Madera to work for the Park.

Bates wrote that Mary Wilson was a Miwok Chief's daughter because her father was some Miwok named Captain Jim. Mary Wilson's father was not a "Miwok" named Captain Jim. Mary's father was a white man named Johnson. She was not a full blooded Indian. On her and her children's governmental paperwork and 1929 California Indian Applications Mary Wilson is half white and her father is not Miwok nor Indian.

On Mary Wilson's granddaughter's Ethel Frances Wilson-Lopez's 1929 California Indian Application, no. 11131, she documented her grandparents were Chukchansi Yokuts from Madera County. That is why Mary Wilson was buried in Madera. Even the book The Ahwahneechees shows that Frank Hooky Wilson and Mary Wilson and their children were from Madera County. Yosemite is located in eastern Mariposa County. It is known that the early Yosemite Indians were from both eastern Mariposa and Mono Counties. They did not come from Madera County, thus Mary is not an original Yosemite Indian, also Chukchansi's are not Miwoks. They are a separate tribe.

In early Yosemite National Park records the superintendent of the Park named Charles Thompson documented that Mary Wilson had no moral right to live in the Park. He wrote the only reason she was allowed to live in the Park was because her daughter Phoebe Lovine was an excellent Park worker (Gallery Photo 3). Phoebe Lovine worked in the Park as a laundress. This means Mary Wilson was not a Yosemite Indian and even the early Park superintendent knew it.

What Miwok "functions" did Mary Wilson perform? There is not a record of her creating baskets or passing along Miwok culture. Mary and her family did dress up and entertain the white tourists during Yosemite Indian Field Days for pay, but there is no proof of Mary ever doing any Miwok "functions".

Also in early Miwok culture no woman could be chief of their tribe. In fact in early times no woman could be chief of the Paiute or Yokuts tribes. Bates took that "Captain" title from John Bingaman's book and implied Mary was a chief, but interestingly Bates left out the other facts about the family. We believe there were many reasons Bates was selective in his writings.

We believe that Yosemite National Park Service employee and the Park's official Yosemite Indian ethnologist Craig D. Bates, who is not Native American, had to have known that what he implied in his writings were incorrect. The Park uses Bates' writings to create Indian history in Yosemite National Park. We believe he purposely tried to re-create a Miwok history in Yosemite National Park and bypassed or disregarded major indicators that revealed the ancestral evidence that there were no Yosemite Miwoks. In his writings Bates used his position at the Park to imply or leave out important evidence that the early Indian workers of the Park were not Yosemite Miwoks at all. At the time of the majority of his writings Craig D. Bates was married to a Mewuk woman. Bates had to have known about the early Paiute presence in Yosemite as the original Indians, but we believe instead, using his position at Yosemite National Park, Bates tried to erase the importance of Paiutes in the Park and inflate the Miwoks in Yosemite using Yokuts and Paiutes.

So don't always believe what is written about in Yosemite National Park on their signs or in their booklets.