Besides our history and culture nothing holds a nation of Native Americans together more than their own language. This is true in every Native American community across the country especially in California and in Yosemite Valley.
Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell, who was with the Mariposa Battalion led by Major James Savage, documented that Chief Tenaya and his band of Yosemite Ahwahneechees spoke a Paiute jargon. Bunnell wrote members of Tenaya's people spoke Paiute and Mono languages which are culturally related to each other. Both Bunnell and Sam Ward, another early settler in the area, wrote that Major James Savage could speak Miwok, but could not speak Paiute so Savage had to take an interpreter with him to translate to Chief Tenaya and his people. Bunnell described Chief Tenaya as the founder of the Paiute Colony of Ahwahnee. This happened in the spring of 1851. (see second photo in gallery)
A hundred and twenty years later, in the 1970s, Yosemite National Park started several projects to show how the first people of Yosemite lived before the whites entered Yosemite Valley. With the assistance of their new non-Native Indian ethnologist Craig D. Bates the Park contacted the American Indian Council of Mariposa, also known as the Southern Sierra Miwuks, to try to re-create an Indian Village behind the Yosemite Research Library. A Village that would show how the early Yosemite Native people lived. The Park wanted to start the Yosemite Native cultural program before 1851 when the Valley was discovered, but the Miwoks said they wanted to start the Indian history at 1870, some 20 years after the first discovery. Then the Park proceeded to re-create the Indian Village with the assistance of the non-profits Yosemite Fund and the Yosemite Association.
Knowing that the first discovery of Yosemite documented by Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell you would think that in this new Yosemite Indian Village and the Yosemite Visitor Center you would find signs in Paiute, right? If you believed the Park would have the right language of the original Indians of Yosemite Valley you would be wrong. Instead Yosemite National Park, with the assistance of the Fund and the Association, had signs made in both Southern Sierra Miwuk and Central Mewuk, the latter tribe has never been associated with the Yosemite Valley. Not only did the Park create several signs in the wrong language, they also created pamphlets in the Miwok language and placed them in the Indian Village.
It turns out the Miwoks were not the original Indians of Yosemite. In fact they were the scouts of the white militia and were afraid to enter Yosemite Valley. The Miwoks were afraid of the original inhabitants of Yosemite Valley, the Paiutes, and considered them their enemies.
This brings us to the question that no one at Yosemite National Park can answer; Where is our Paiute language in Yosemite National Park? Since it is documented that the original Native people of Yosemite were Paiutes.
We request that our Paiute language be placed in the Yosemite Indian Village with pamphlets in the original language of the Yosemite Valley Indian people, which was not Miwok, but Paiute.
Yosemite National Park should correct this injustice.
Put the Paiute language back in the Park. The language of the original Yosemite Valley Indian people.
Non Profit Tribes says ...
On Friday, Jan 22 at 11:05 AM
Why is the National Park Service working with a non profit tribe called the Southern Sierra Miwoks instead of the Federally Recognized Tribes which surround Yosemite National Park today? Why start the Indian history at they year 1870 instead of 1851?
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