Dioclesian Lewis (1823-1886), commonly known as Dr. Dio Lewis, was a well known early temperance leader and follower of homeopathy. Dio Lewis was an orator and advocated physical exercise and an active life for men and women. He also believed that alcohol was bad for the body and was a pioneer of physical education for all.

Dio Lewis had written numerous publications which detailed gymnastic exercises, and apparently Lewis enjoyed camping and the outdoors. In 1881, Lewis published a book called "Gypsies or why we went Gypsying in the Sierras". In his book he wrote about camping and traveling in the outdoors. What caught our attention as Paiutes was Dr. Dio Lewis' stories of his camping adventures in and around Yosemite and the encounters he had with the Native American population in the area.

In his book Lewis calls the Indians of the area Diggers, but at the that time many California tribes were called "Diggers" including Paiutes. The reason we know Lewis was discussing Paiutes was the reference to Mono Lake. Mono Lake is a Paiute area. Dr. Dio Lewis wrote several accounts in his book and here they are;

Chapter VIII – Digger Indians.

Pages - 128-132

"Sitting before our tents one day a group of Indians went by returning from the hunt. An old Indian carried a shot-gun so shockingly bad that Joe was sure that the two squirrels which were the only trophies, must have been killed with the butt-end of the weapon.

There were two Indian women who wore the cast-off garments of civilization, but carried on their backs bows and quivers full of arrows. Their nair hunting in native undress. Several half-grown boys were with them, and when, an hour later, two ladies of our party went to look at them they found also a number of mangy curs. One of the ladies gave the account of their call as follows:

We found them, not camping but literally squatting by a small stream. The old Indian seemed best to understand our pantomime, so I pointed enquiringly to the smoking embers which were in the center of a slight depression, circular in outline, artificially made in the ground. With a friendly “ugh!” he took a stick and thrusting it into the ashes, drew out before, our astonished, not to say disgusted eyes, the squirrels which we had lately seen dangling over his shoulders. The hair was still there, though now crisped. Plainly the only labor spent on them had been to drop them into the ashes and to pry them out. The old Indian now tore them limb from limb and passed the pieces to the women, who devoured them with evident relish. The party had two courses for dinner that day. One of the women had stopped at the store, on the way from the hunt, and bought flour which now appeared in the form of a pasty gruel, served in a straw bowl woven so closely that I think it would have held water. I was surprised at the firm and exquisite workmanship, and especially at the design which was interwoven in darker color around the body of the bowl, and varied but little from the Greek chain.

The native untidiness and ugliness of the “Diggers,” would have seemed sufficient for all practical purposes, but this party added to both by being in mourning. It seemed that nearly a year before an enemy of the Old Indian, aiming to kill him, had shot an Indian woman instead, a sister of these two women, one of whom was the Indian’s wife. Their outward mark of grief was a broad stripe down each cheek of some black, sticky compound [pine pitch and ashes]. I do not think it much mattered to them whether the substance was or was not waterproof. Time was gradually wearing it away and it was only a mitigated mourning which we saw. While not the less trying to witness for that, we saw the advantage of this natural dropping away of the outward symbol as the inward grief was assuaged.

I noticed that the big Indian woman who was not the wife had had her ears pierced. Pointing to the ear-rings which a friend with me wore, I motioned to the Indian to ask if the Indian woman was to wear such. His delighted nods proved that there we had found a bond of sympathy. As a China-man would have expressed it – “All-e-same white woman-all-e-same Indian women.”

We met the same group farther on toward the Yosemite, and in the valley we found their kindred and bought photographs of the very party we had met. I think we preferred the photographs, at least to take home, they were so clean.

The tents of the Indians in the valley interested us. They were built of poles and branches of trees which seemed to form pockets in which acorns were stored, and from which they rattled at any rough touch. We saw the Indian women pounding them into meal. Fishing is the irregular occupation of the men and boys, and they supply the hotels with fish.

These Indians are not residents of the valley, but come over the mountains from Mono Lake to gather their winter’s stock of acorns, like an army of squirrels.

The Indian women having gathered the acorns pound them into flour, and when their supply is ready, the load is piled on the backs of the ponies, or of the Indian women, the latter often carrying a hundred pounds each, and they take their way back again, over the mountains, to their home by the desolate Mono Lake."

This excerpt from Lewis's book has several items of interest to Paiutes because of its historical value.

1. The cooking of animals in a pit is a Paiute practice that many of our elders remember. There is even video tape footage of this practice.

2. The Paiute use of pine pitch and ash on their face to show they were in mourning for a dead relative.

3. That the same Paiutes Dio Lewis met were in early photographs of Yosemite Indians.

4. Lewis describes how Paiutes temporary homes called 'nobees' looked in Yosemite.

5. Lewis describes Paiutes storing and pounding acorns in Yosemite.

6. Lewis describes that the Paiute men working as fishermen for Yosemite hotels.

7. That after that the Indians return to the home at Mono Lake, which is a Paiute area.

8. Lewis describe a typical Paiute Indian basket design.

Also the majority of Indians did not live in Yosemite year around, but lived in the valley during the spring to summer months like Paiutes had done for eons. In the 1880 Yosemite general census only three men, all Paiutes, were the only Indian people recorded living year round in Yosemite Valley. They were Tom, Ruben and Charlie, all Paiute men.

This is just one reference in Dr. Dio Lewis' book about the Native people of Yosemite. The next reference, which I will print later, is when Lewis enters Yosemite Valley.