If you have been watching the series on PBS by Ken Burns called "The National Parks, Americas Best Idea" you will see Yosemite Valley featured several times. Yosemite was one of the first national parks created in the United States so everyone could share in its beauty, but have you ever wondered what happened to the original Indians of Yosemite?

Burns did mention in the first part of his film that the conflict between the gold miners and Yosemite Indians, the Ahwahneechees, was how Yosemite Valley was discovered. James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion stumbled upon Yosemite Valley when they were chasing Chief Tenaya and his band of Ahwahneechees, a tribe that was attacking gold miners as the miners were encroaching into their territory. The film only mentioned the point where Yosemite was first entered by the Mariposa Battalion.

But who were these Ahwahneechees and what happened to them after that? If you enter Yosemite National Park the crown jewel of the National Park system you will see signs and books displayed in their bookstore describing the original Native Americans as Southern Sierra Miwoks and that they never left Yosemite. Actually that is one of the biggest fabrications and injustices in the National Park system's history.

If you watched the Ken Burns' film you would have noticed that Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, who was part of the Mariposa Battalion, was with the expedition and described the beauty of Yosemite when the first European entered the Valley in his book "Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 Which Led to That Event". Bunnell was the only person to describe the Yosemite Indians in detail. The Yosemite National Park also uses Bunnell to describe the first time a white man had stepped into Yosemite Valley.

So how did Bunnell describe the Yosemite Valley Indians? Bunnell wrote that Chief Tenaya spoke a Paiute jargon. He also wrote that Chief Tenaya was from Mono Lake, which is Paiute country and that the Mono Indians were proud of Tenaya and his war exploits. In one of the most telling passages Bunnell wrote that Chief Tenaya was the founder of the Paiute colony of Ahwahnee. In fact not once did Bunnell, the only man to meet and write about Tenaya and his band of Yosemite Indians, write that Tenaya and the Ahwahneechees were Miwoks, not once.

So why does Yosemite National Park and the Park system have signs in the park and sell books in their store saying that the original Indians of Yosemite were Southern Sierra Miwoks when in the first encounter Bunnell wrote they were Paiutes and Monos? That is a very good question.

The Southern Sierra Miwuks were not just any tribe, they were also mentioned in Bunnell's book. No they were not mentioned as part of the original Ahwahneechees, they were in fact the scouts for the white militia, the Mariposa Battalion. The white militia heaped praise on the leader of the Miwuks for assisting them in capturing Chief Tenaya and the Ahwahneechees. One of their important chiefs, Chief Bautista, even told the whites that he and his people were afraid to enter the Yosemite Valley. The name of the Valley, "Yosemite", was coined by the Southern Sierra Miwuk chief Bautista, which in their language means "They are Killers". Which would mean they are not the same people, but their enemies. So the original Yosemite Indians were not Miwoks as the Park system falsely claims but were the war like Paiutes from the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada.

So what happened to the fate of the original Yosemite Indians that the Ken Burns' film did not mention?

After being captured twice by the white militia, the Mariposa Battalion, led by Miwok scouts, Chief Tenaya escaped. He led his band of Ahwahneechees across the snow capped Sierra Nevada to hide out with his cousins the Mono Lake Paiutes. There the war like Mono Lake Paiutes gave Tenaya and his band a piece of land to live amongst them. Tenaya stay was short lived as he missed his Yosemite home. One evening when the Mono Lake Paiutes were off during horse raids on Spanish rancherias in San Bernardino some of Chief Tenaya's men stole their hosts horses and they fled back into the mountains. Upon their return from their raids the Mono Lake Paiutes were so incensed at how they were treated and the theft of their horses that they tracked Tenaya and his band back into the mountains. There they found Chief Tenaya and his band resting, bellies full of the stolen horse meat. The Mono Paiutes shots arrows at them until they were decimated. A handful of men escaped. The young chief of the Mono Paiutes found old Tenaya and with a big rock crushed his skull thus ending Tenaya's life. The remaining members of Tenaya's band were gathered up and taken back to Mono Lake were they were once again absorbed back into the Paiute community. Thus the bloodline of the Ahwahneechees, the original Yosemite Indians, runs in the veins of the Mono Lake Paiutes today.

Bunnell writes that the year after Chief Tenaya's death and destruction of his band that the only Indians the whites saw around Yosemite were Paiutes gathering acorns in the Valley.

So the next time you enter Yosemite and see all those signs with the Miwoks as the original Indian people of Yosemite, remember that they are not the original Indians of Yosemite. That is a myth. That is one of the major falsehoods still perpetrated by Yosemite National Park and the Park system. They were the scouts for the white militia and workers for the gold miners. The real Ahwahneechees are now in the Paiute people, who were warriors and tried to fight off the influx of gold miners.

That is what happened to the original Native people of Yosemite Valley.