Yosemite is well known for being one of the most wondrous places in the world with its beautiful vistas and gorgeous scenery. You will hear hundreds of different languages spoken daily when you visit Yosemite Valley as millions of tourists from all over the world wander the Park.

But many years before settlers entered Yosemite in 1851 what was the language spoken by the Native people of Yosemite Valley? What was the native language of Chief Tenaya and his original band of Yosemite Indians? Let's look at the first account by the doctor who had first contact and see.

In CHAPTER IV from "Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851, which led to that event", by Dr. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell:

"Major Savage was our best authority. He could speak the dialects of most of the mountain tribes
in this part of California, but he confessed that he could not readily understand Ten-ie-ya, or the Indian guide, as they appeared to speak a Paiute jargon."

Bunnell was one of the first non-Indians to enter Yosemite along with James Savage, the leader of the Mariposa Battalion.

In Carvel Collins' book "Sam Ward in the Gold Rush" he wrote that James Savage spoke Miwok, and even the royal Miwok language. Savage was even married to several young Miwok girls.

So that would mean that the original Ahwahneechees spoke Paiute, right? Well not if you read the signs at Yosemite National Park (See Photo 1 in Gallery). If you visit the fabricated Indian Village behind the Indian Museum in Yosemite Park you would see signs about the original Yosemite Native people in the Southern Sierra Miwuk and Central Mewuk language but not in Paiute. The village by the way which is patterned after Eadweard Muybridge photos of a Paiute village along the Merced River.

Someone has said that Miwoks were the Ahwahneechees because they have the 'chee' at the end of their name, yet the nearby tribe, the Monos, are the cousins of Mono Paiutes and are called Monachees and are not Miwoks. Shoshones are also next to Mono Paiutes and their last name ends with 'ee' and are also related to Paiutes.

Most visitors to Yosemite just see the signs placed in the Park and assume the early Native Americans were Miwoks, but in fact the Miwoks were the scouts for the Mariposa Battalion and workers for James Savage. Their chiefs were Bautista, Cypriano and Cow'chitty who worked for the early white settlers and military.

Are the Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiutes the only ones who believe that the early language spoken by the Yosemite Indians was Paiute? Well apparently not. In 1982 Yosemite National Park's Craig D. Bates wrote an article in American Indian Basketry No. 8 (See Photo 2 in Gallery), and this was in his footnotes:

"This Mono Lake Paiute dialect spoken in Yosemite was slightly different from that usually in use at Mono Lake, according to Jay Johnson, grandson of Louisa Tom. It was referred to as "Yosemite Language" and is still remembered by the adult members of a Paiute family in Bishop."

So according to the most prominent elder and spiritual leader of the Southern Sierra Miwuks, Jay Johnson, said that the "Yosemite Language" was a dialect of the Mono Lake Paiute and that the only members who still speak it live in Bishop California, which is in Inyo County and not in Mariposa. Interestingly Jay Johnson has family living in Bishop. The people who live in Bishop are Paiutes and Shoshones and not Miwoks. Jay Johnson forgot that other Paiute families lived in Yosemite that he was not related too.

So the evidence is clear according to the first contact between whites and Yosemite Natives and the testimony of the spiritual leader and elder of the Southern Sierra Miwuks, the original language of Yosemite, was Mono Lake Paiute.