The Yosemite Valley Native Americans

14 min readJun 2, 2019

Nathan Deng (SMHS ‘20)

In my Honors US History class, I learned much about the history of the Native American when it comes to the time period 1865–1898. In this regard I specifically learned that:

“Migrant populations increased in number and as a result of that increase in the migrant population, the American bison population was decimated, and competition for land and resources in the West among white settlers, American Indians, and Mexican Americans led to an increase in violent conflict.”
“The U.S. government violated treaties with American Indians and responded to resistance with military force, eventually confining American Indians to reservations and denying tribal sovereignty.”
“Many American Indians preserved their cultures and tribal identities despite government policies promoting assimilation, and they attempted to develop self-sustaining economic practices.”
After 1890, “preservationists and conservationists both supported the establishment of national parks while advocating different government responses to the overuse of natural resources.”

After I had learned what appears above, my teacher encouraged me to write a 1000–2000 word Exploration Into America’s Past. In this regard, I produced the Exploration into America’s Past that appears below. It’s entiteld The Yosemite Valley Native Americans.

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The controversial history of the dispossession and mistreatment of the Native Americans who inhabited the Yosemite Valley sheds light upon the ongoing issues today about Native American land rights within the protected areas of the United States, including Yosemite National Park, which, despite its supposed state as a pristine landscape devoid of human alteration, would perhaps be more accurately, yet paradoxically, described as an “artificial wilderness.”

The history of the United States has been scarred by numerous controversial topics, including the institution of slavery, the deaths from a number of wars, and the decimation and mistreatment of the Native Americans. Nevertheless, as the “land of opportunity,” the United States does has its praiseworthy contributions, such as its embrace of democratic ideals and government and its establishment of more rights for women, African-Americans, and other minorities and groups of people. But perhaps the most outstanding gift of the United States to its citizens is its national parks. Since its establishment of Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, in 1872, the United States government, as of February 2019, has created a total of 61 protected areas called “national parks,” all managed by the National Park Service, “for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations” (“About” 1). However, even the history of the national parks of the United States remains a controversial one, and after the celebration of the one-hundredth of the anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016, it is perhaps time to examine the American national parks’ long past of the dispossession and oppression of the Native Americans. This article will discuss this controversial past through the lens of the Native Americans who inhabited the Yosemite Valley before and after the creation of Yosemite National Park.

Prior to the Arrival of Columbus
The history of the Native Americans of Yosemite Valley began thousands of years ago after glaciers of the last Ice Age receded and left behind a rugged landscape of granite mountains, deep river valleys, and dark-green coniferous forests interspersed between meadows and lakes (“People” 1). This landscape, situated east of the Central Valley and west of the Great Basin, comprised the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range located in what is now the states of California and Nevada in the western United States. Drained by the Merced River, the Yosemite Valley was one of the larger river valleys in the Sierra Nevada, and its variety of plants and animals created an environment that allowed Native American societies to inhabit the valley and survive on a lifestyle of hunting and gathering.

Prior to the Progressive Era
After the arrival of the first Europeans to the North American continent and the beginning of the Columbian Exchange, diseases from the Old World and abuse by the Europeans decimated many Native Americans societies and cultures. During the early years of the United States, American westward expansion and the ideals of Manifest Destiny, with the signing of the Indian Removal Act into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, resulted in the forced relocation of the Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to designated reservations west of the Mississippi River (Danzer, et al. 124–25). Despite the establishment of reservations, westward expansion continued past the Mississippi River, resulting in violent clashes with Native Americans inhabiting land desired by the settlers and the inevitable invalidation of treaties that were supposed to guarantee the Native Americans permanent areas to live as they pleased. However, even after the acquisition of territory after the Mexican-American War and the settlement of the Pacific Coast, much of the land in the western United States remained unexplored. Thus, for a period of about 250 years after European arrival to the New World, the Native American societies and cultures who inhabited the Yosemite Valley at the time, such as the Southern Sierra Miwok and the North Paiute and Mono peoples, retained their traditional ways of lives of hunting and gathering (Oatman-Stanford 1).

At the Time of the California Gold Rush
The Native Americans of the Yosemite Valley remained uncontacted by American settlers until the discovery of gold in California in 1848, which resulted in the beginning of the California Gold Rush and the sudden influx of domestic and international gold seekers into the area, causing the non-indigenous population of California to swell from less 1,000 before 1848 to about 100,000 by the end of 1849 (History.com Editors 1). Violent clashes between the gold seekers and the Native Americans ensued as the gold seekers attempted drive the Natives off their homelands in order to have the lands developed and mined for gold. With state funding, a militia group known as the Mariposa Battalion was established in February of 1851 to retaliate against the Native Americans. Thus began the approximately seventh-month Mariposa War, during which the Mariposa Battalion invaded the Yosemite Valley, then primarily inhabited by the Ahwahneechee, a Southern Sierra Miwok people. After entering the valley, the battalion burned an Ahwahneechee village to the ground and destroyed all the food caches of its inhabitants, leaving them impoverished and vulnerable to starvation and winter snowstorms. By the time the Mariposa Battalion was disbanded in June of 1851, it had murdered 73 Native Americans (Duane 1).

Although the Ahwahneechee people had resettled the Yosemite Valley within a year after the end of the Mariposa War, their future was bleak. During the beginning of the American conservation movement, President Abraham Lincoln designated the Yosemite Valley, along with the nearby Mariposa Grove, as a California state protected area in 1864, therefore signaling the beginning of tourism in the valley and the further reduction of Native American control over their ancestral lands in Yosemite. When preservationist John Muir visited Yosemite in the 1870s, he was awestruck by the diverse landscape abounding with old-growth coniferous forests, mountain rivers and streams, waterfalls, spectacular granite cliffs. However, Muir despised the presence of the Native Americans in the valley. In his book My First Summer in the Sierra, he remarks, “A strangely dirty and irregular life these dark-eyed, dark-haired, half-happy savages lead in this clean wilderness” (Muir 45).

Muir’s racist opinion of the Native Americans in Yosemite presented a blatant misunderstanding of the true condition of the Yosemite Valley as a so-called “wilderness.” What Muir viewed as landscape that should be completely barred from human extraction into order to preserve its “pristine” appearance had actually been shaped by centuries of Native American inhabitation, which accompanied land management practices that had kept the ecosystem in healthy condition, such as horticulture and periodic controlled burns of the vegetation (Oatman-Stanford 1). Nonetheless, after the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1890 and the inclusion of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove into park boundaries in 1906, tourism in Yosemite boomed, and most park officials embraced Muir’s view of national parks as landscapes that should be free of human extraction and subsistence. Annual recreational visitation to the park surged to 13,182 in 1910, as compared to just 147 visits to the Yosemite Valley in the year following its establishment as a state protected area in 1864 (“National” 1; Spence 1).

With the Creation of Yosemite National Park
After it was founded in 1916, the National Park Service took responsibility of the management of Yosemite National Park and began to restrict Native American use of their ancestral lands for traditional and cultural purposes. Stripped of their independence and self-sustaining control over their lands, the Ahwahneechee people who remained in the valley were forced to made a living by seeking employment in the park’s tourism industry. They worked in hotels, sold food and hand-woven baskets to visitors, and participated in park events known as Field Days in which they dressed in the stereotypical Native American costumes representative of the Plains Indian culture and participated in horse races and costume contests (Spence 1). The visitors to the park also participated in these events of cultural appropriation, and they would complain to park officials because many of the Ahwahneechee people who inhabited Yosemite did not meet their expectations of the stereotypical appearances of Native Americans.

Because of the contribution of the Native Americans to the local economy of Yosemite, they were not immediately expelled from the park, but they were gradually and more greatly oppressed and mistreated, which ultimately resulted in their removed from the park over the course of a few decades. Beginning in the late 1920s, in an attempt to further assimilate the Native Americans of Yosemite into the society of white workers in the park, park officials forcibly relocated sixty-six Ahwahneechee people from their village in Indian Canyon to a resettlement community of fifteen cabins known as “Indian Village.” With the relocation complete by 1935, the National Park Service further oppressed the Native Americans of Yosemite by forcing them to pay rent and outlawing many traditional tribal activities, such as hunting, berry harvesting, and controlled burns of the forest. Any of the Natives who ignored park regulations by continuing traditional practices were subject to hefty fines, prison sentences, and banishment from the park (Oatman-Stanford 1). What the National Park Service saw as methods to preserve the park in “pristine” condition actually resulted in long-term damage to the ecosystem of the park. Without periodic controlled burns of vegetation, the forest of the park encroached onto meadows and grasslands, and the undergrowth of the forest spread out of control, reducing biodiversity and increasing the risk of high-intensity wildfires that could blacken entire landscapes and cause severe damage to park infrastructure.

By the early 1950s, the Yosemite National Park had a booming tourism industry and faced ever-increasing annual recreational visitation numbers, which surpassed one million in 1954 (“National” 1). In an attempt to hasten Native American assimilation or removal from the park, the National Park Service instituted a park policy in 1953 that allowed only year-round employees and their families to remain as permanent inhabitants of Yosemite. As expected, there was a gradual exodus of the remaining Ahwahneechee people from the park. Every time an Ahwahneechee family vacated a cabin in Indian Village, the National Park Service would immediately have the structure razed to the ground so that the Native Americans could not return after leaving Yosemite. In 1969, the last Ahwahneechee family left Yosemite, and last cabin in Indian village was destroyed, thus signaling the completion of the removal of Native Americans from Yosemite (Oatman-Stanford 1).

Despite their complete removal from the park, the Native Americans of Yosemite began to advocate for federal recognition of tribal land in Yosemite in hopes that they would be able to use their ancestral lands again for traditional activities, such as hunting and gathering. After lengthy discussion between the American Indian Council of Mariposa County (AICMC) and the National Park Service, the 1980 Master Plan for Yosemite National Park was approved to mandate the construction of a new indigenous cultural center in the Yosemite Valley, and in 1987, the National Park Service adopted the first Native American Relationships Management Policy, which outlined the importance of the role of Native Americans in park management (Oatman-Stanford 1).

Since 2000
Forty years after the removal of the last Native American family from Yosemite, challenges remain for the recognition of Native American rights to their ancestral lands within park boundaries. Despite the fact that Yosemite National Park is working the AICMC to update park exhibits to better explain Native American history and to allow the Miwok people to use park lands for plant gathering and construction of traditional roundhouses, most of the museum exhibits in Yosemite still retain an emphasis on white history instead of Native American history (Bullinger 1). Meanwhile, annual recreational visitation numbers to the park have reached record levels within the last ten years, with an all-time high of 5,028,868 in 2016 during the celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the National Park Service (“National” 1). Such high numbers of tourists have led to significant overcrowding and pollution issues in the park that have disrupted the ecological integrity of Native American ancestral lands, such as litter from careless tourists, the unlawful feeding of wildlife, and increased greenhouse gas emissions from busy traffic within the park that often crawl to a standstill during peak season. Moreover, even with increased input from the Native Americans into the management of Yosemite, their efforts have been dealt a major blow in November of 2018 after the Trump administration refused to grant federal recognition to the Southern Sierra Miwok people (Agoyo 1).

Outside of Yosemite, challenges concerning Native American rights in national parks throughout the United States continue. In Mesa Verde National Park, a park created from ceded Native American reservation land, visitor exhibits show little recognition of the Ute people, who inhabited the land for centuries before the creation of the park. In Glacier National Park, the Blackfeet people have yet to gain full compensation from a broken treaty that resulted in the ceding of reservation land to the federal government to create the park, which resulted in the loss of the Blackfeet people’s right to hunt and fish within the former reservation land. Even today, the one of the only exclusive rights that the Blackfeet have to their ancestral lands within park boundaries is to enter and camp for free in the park. On the other hand, the passage of the Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 has become part of a success story for the Native Alaskans, who have been allowed to continue their traditional subsistence practices within the federal protected areas that were designated as a result of the act (Kantor 54–62).

Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and environmentalist Wallace Stegner once said in 1983 that “national parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Unfortunately, with its history ethnic cleansing, oppression, and dispossession of the Native Americans, the national parks of the United States have arguably failed to match Stegner’s description of them. Nevertheless, there is still hope. With complete federal recognition of the Native Americans to their ancestral lands and the consultation of Native Americans in the management of America’s national parks, the United States could reconcile with the indigenous peoples whom the government has mistreated for so long, and the nation could finally live up to Stegner’s vision for the national parks. Most of all, with the suggested course of action, the United States could finally restore not just Yosemite National Park, but all American national parks, to their former glory as the landscapes that they have always meant to be: pristine wilderness areas, which, contrary to popular belief, are actually best preserved when inhabited and managed by humans in the right way, the Native American way.

THINK

The Yosemite Valley is located in the:

Sierra Nevada
Rocky Mountains
Transverse Ranges
Coast Ranges

Gold was discovered in California in the:

1820s
1840s
1860s
1880s

What was the name of the settlement community to which the National Park Service began relocating the Ahwahneechee people who lived in the Yosemite Valley in the late 1920s?

Miwok Village
Ahwahneechee Village
Muir Village
Indian Village

Which of the following Native American practices in the Yosemite Valley was most responsible for the prevention of high-intensity wildfires in the valley?

Deer hunting
Controlled burns of the forest
Removal of invasive species
Selective logging

In 1987, the National Park Service adopted the first _____, which outlined the importance of the role of Native Americans in park management.

Federal Land Management Policy
Native American Ancestral Land Policy
Native American Relationships Management Policy
National Parks Management Policy

True/False: John Muir despised the presence of the Native Americans in Yosemite Valley.

True/False: President Abraham Lincoln designated Yosemite Valley, along with the nearby Mono Lake, as a federal protected area in 1864.

True/False: During the first half of the Twentieth Century, the National Park Service restricted traditional Native American practices in Yosemite Valley, such as hunting and berry harvesting.

True/False: The passage of the Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 created new federal protected areas in Alaska but significantly restricted traditional Native Alaskan subsistence practices within those areas.

True/False: Wallace Stegner described national parks as “the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”

WRITING AND DISCUSSION

Explain the consequences of the Mariposa War on the situation of the Ahwahneechee people who lived in the Yosemite Valley.
What was John Muir’s opinion about the relationship between the Yosemite Valley and the Native Americans who lived there?
What were the similarities and differences between the management practices of the National Park Service and the Ahwahneechee in Yosemite National Park.
Why would it be inaccurate to describe Yosemite National Park as a “pristine” wilderness?
Describe the ongoing issues today about the right of the Native Americans to ancestral lands within national park boundaries.

APUSH KEY CONCEPTS

APUSH Key Concept 6.2-IIC: As migrant populations increased in number and the American bison population was decimated, competition for land and resources in the West among white settlers, American Indians, and Mexican Americans led to an increase in violent conflict.

APUSH Key Concept 6.2-IID: The U.S. government violated treaties with American Indians and responded to resistance with military force, eventually confining American Indians to reservations and denying tribal sovereignty.

APUSH Key Concept 6.2-IIE: Many American Indians preserved their cultures and tribal identities despite government policies promoting assimilation, and they attempted to develop self-sustaining economic practices.

APUSH Key Concept 7.1-IIC: Preservationists and conservationists both supported the establishment of national parks while advocating different government responses to the overuse of natural resources.

SOURCES

“About Us.” National Park Service, Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/aboutus/index.htm.

Agoyo, Acee. “Trump administration issues first federal recognition decision.” Indianz.Com, Ho-Chunk Inc., 2 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/opinion/sunday/goodbye-yosemite-hello-what.html.

Bullinger, Jake. “Yosemite Finally Reckons with Its Discriminatory Past.” Outside Online, Mariah Media, 23 Aug. 2018, www.outsideonline.com/2337681/yosemite-national-park-native-american-village-miwuk

History.com Editors. “California Gold Rush.” History, A&E Networks, 6 Apr. 2010, www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/gold-rush-of-1849.

Danzer, Gerald A., et al. The Americas: Reconstruction to the 21st Century. Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company, 2012.

Duane, Daniel. “Goodbye, Yosemite. Hello, What?” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 2 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/opinion/sunday/goodbye-yosemite-hello-what.html.

Kantor, Isaac. “Ethnic Cleansing and America ‘s Creation of National Parks.” Public Land and Resources Law Review, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 42–64.

Muir, John. My First Summer in the Sierra. Riverside Press, 1911.

“National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics.” National Park Service, Department of the Interior, irma.nps.gov/Stats/.

Oatman-Stanford, Hunter. “From Yosemite to Bears Ears, Erasing Native Americans From U.S. National Parks.” Collectors Weekly, Barnebys.com, 26 Jan. 2018, www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/erasing-native-americans-from-national-parks/.

Our Changing Climate. “National Parks: A Violent Wilderness.” Youtube, 7 Apr. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3vh8g9PSZo&t=282s.

“People — Yosemite National Park.” National Park Service, Department of the Interior, www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/people.htm.

Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. Oxford University Press, 1999.

ACADEMIC HONESTY STATEMENT

I declare that this work is my own work and that I have correctly acknowledged the work of others. This work is in accordance with SMHS Academic Honesty Policy and its guidance on good academic conduct and how to avoid plagiarism and other assessment irregularities.

Nathan Deng