The Heart of the Sierras

loo DISPOSSESSING THE WILDERNESS conflict mas only narrowly avoided on several occasions.-4 In a more peaceful but no less hostile manner, the Blackfeet officially restrengthened their old policy of noncooperation and refused to allow the construction of a livestock fence along the eastern boundary of the park. While the!; acknowledged that such a fence would keep domestic animals out of fragile grasslands, council members worried THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS, more that it might indicate tacit approval of park authori~.~5Eventuall!; contin- I ued disagreements with the Blackfeet nrould force the National Park Service to 864-1916 rerisit issues it thought had been buried in the 1yjos.;6 At the height of efforts to extend the park's eastern boundan, Horace AU- bright described the western portion of the Blackfeet reservation as a place that Tlle power of scener!. to affect men is, in a large ?\-a?-, pro- "is by topography, iustaposition and character logically a part of Glacier National portionate to the degree of their civilization and the degree Park."-' In many respects, he made a prescient argument for ecosystem preserva- in \vhich their taste has been cultivated. Among a thousand tion and management. Of course, the unstated logic was that Indians must be ex- savages there will be a much smaller number ~+-ho!\-ill show cluded for the ecosystem to operate "naturally." Although the proposal to enlarge the least sign of being so affected than among a thousand per- the park at the further espense of the Blackfeet illustrates an audacity that has long characterized the park serrice's relationship with its Indian neighbors, it also sons taken from a civilized community. marks a certain maturation of the American wilderness ideal. Albright's easy logic Frederick Law Olmsted, 1865' and the tenuous legal arguments that negated Blackfeet rights in Glacier demonstrate how completely linked preservation and Indian removal had become. '1s the park service developed under Albright's forceful administration, the management of all parks became more regularized. Not surprisingly, Glacier pro- vided an important model for policies of Indian removal at other national parks. Perhaps nowhere illustrates this better than 'Ibsenlite, where park officials began to view several decades of native habitation as a problem in need of a solution. Because of a number of unique historical conditions, Yosemite presented a re- markable exception to the general belief that parks and native communities could .4s THE EXAMPLES OF YELLOWSTONE AND GLACIER clearl?demonstrate, not coexist. The original park was established eight pears before Yellowstone, yet Americans are able to cherish their national parks today largely because nati\-e natire peoples became an integral part of Yosemite's early development. Like the peoples either abandoned them involuntarily or were forcefully restricted to Blackfeet at Glacier, Yosemite Indians were also important symbols of the na- reservations. For well into the twentieth century, however, Yosemite VaUey re- tional park in the 1910s-but this reflected decades of regular contact with mained home to a permanent, relatively autonomous Indian village. \Vhether cut- tourists and long established residence within the valley. Nevertheless, Yosemite ting a trail on a government crew, working for a concessionaire, sehng crafts to was an exception that would eventually prove a rule. Long after the mountain- eager tourists, or providing informadon to a young anthropologist, the residents dwelling Shoshone had been Forced out of Eellowstone and just as the Blackfeet of the local natire cornmunit). made themselves an integral part of the national "problem" was becoming sometlung of a moot point, park service officials park-long after the dus~old days of land grabs and Indian wars. While native began to implement a program to create a \-ision of pristine wilderness in the residence in the valley stands in marked contrast to other early parks, it also pre- spectacular heart of the Sierra Nevada. sents an important comparison with the experiences of Indian peoples at Yellom- stone and Glacier. Such differences shed important light on Yosemite's unique lustory and reveal the processes by which this park was el-entuall!- made to fit the standards of the national park ideal. The ITbrld Rushes In The Yosemite Indians' ability to remain in a national park resulted in large part from a long history of efforts to both resist and adapt to the American conquest 102 DlSPOCSESSlNG THE \\'ILDERNESS THE HE4RT OFTHE SIFRRAS, 1864-1916 lo3 of their homeland. 'The first sustained contact behveen the Yosemite and whites tors, tourist facilities quickly expanded as early conceqsionaires bult new hotels, took place in the midst of the Gold Rush; as thousands of Forty-niners invaded planted orchards and vegetable gardens, plowed and tenced hay fields; blazed the central Sierra Nevada. In their feverish quest for some trace of the Mother trails, and constructed roads.8 Behveen 1874, when \osemite received 2,711 Lode, miners brought epidemic diseases to natix-e commurlities and destroyed tourists, and I 875, the Big Oak Flat Road, the CoulterviUe Road, and the Va~vona carefully tended ecosystems. Aloreover, the growth of mining camps and settle- Road opened to wagon traffic for the first time, bringing loads of supplies and ments also spawned a series of violent conflicts between whites and displaced coaches full i)f tourists to the valley on a regular basis." peoples. Not surprisingly, the "discovery" of Yosemite Valley in 1851 occurred Despite the dramatic increases in visitation, lndians in Yosemite \'alley re- during a mhtary campaign to subdue the peoples of the central Sierra Nevada mained on fairly good terms with their ne\v neighbors. For the most part, they and relocate them to the San Joaquin \hlley. Efforts to remove the Yosemite 111- found in the gron-ing tourist industry a means by which they could both earn a dians from the region ultimately failed, however; and they reestabhshed them- livelihood within their rapidly changing n-orld and remain in their ancestral home. selves in the valley after hvo years of sporadic encounters with ~runersand state X number oi small communities in the Sierra foothills made similar adjustment5 militia battalions.2 to the changes ~vroughtb!- groaing white settlements, but these ri7tichr,.in~pener- By necessity. the Yosemite developed an accomrnodating relationship with ally persisted onl!- as very small clusters of a few famhes and related itldividuals. nearby mirlingcamps in the mid-I 850s. Despite occasional flare-ups, Chief Tenay The native population of \'osemite actuallb- grew as tourism increased, hone\-er, endeavored to fulfill an I 852 promise to government officials that his people would and a number of dislocated groups returned to the area to seek employment dur- avoid conflict mlth neighboringmhite communities. His efforts proved largely suc~ ing the sprin~and summer tourist season."' cessful, and a number of Indians eve11 started to xvork for individual argonauts or Holy one defines a Yosemite Indian has long proven difficult for anthropolo- panned gold for themselves.3 Yosemite Xialley lay outside the purview of most gists and park officials, but the people most closely associated with Yosemite Val- mining interests, however, and the lndian community there managed to preserve a ley in the midnineteenth century were the Ahwahneechee. Part of a larger cultural degree of distance and autonom!- from neighboring nhite society that few native and linguistic group called the Sierra bfi~vok,the Ahxvahneechee had lived in the groups in the gold country could ever hope for. Consequently, Yosemite became Yosemite area for at least six hundred years. Whether the); had replaced earlier in- something of a cultural island and remained, as it had been for centuries, an im- habitants about I loo to 1400 c.E., as archaeological and linguistic evidence sug- portant place for hunting, harvesting various food and medicinal plants, and hold- gests, or descended from people who settled in the valley some three thousand ing religious celebrations. years previousl~;the Ahwahneechee viewed their home as the place where Coyote Only a small number of indtviduals remained in the valley year-round at th~s had especially dtrected them to live after the creation of the world. As a number time, but hundreds left their winter camps in the lower country to the XI-estand of late-nineteenth-century Xhxvahneechee related their history to outsiders, they returned to Yosemite each spring. In I 857, for instance, an early hotelier observed described Yosemite as a special place the Creator had filled with all they would that an especially "large band of Indians" had come to the valley "on account of need, including trout, sweet clol-er, potent medicina! plants, roots, acorns, pine a bounteous acorn crop the precedng fall."4 A few weeks later, a Belgian gold nuts, fruits, and berries in abundance, as well as deer and other animals, "which miner familiar with the Yosemite region probabll- observed the same group of gal-e meat for food and skins for clothing and beds."ll about one hundred when he noted that a large encampment he had encountered Although they had once trusted to the remoteness of the valley to protect three years earlier had moved further up the hlerced River into the valley5 them from invading Americans, the Ah~vahneecheewere never an isolated peo- Yosemite Indians still lit purposef~ilfires in the valley in the early I 86os, and one ple. The!- frequently traded and intermarried with other &fin-ok and ~61thhlono- traveler observed that they had started so many for the purpose of "clearing the Paiute from the eastern side of the Sierra Nel~ada,a fact that may explain the ground. the more readily to obtain their winter supply of acorns and wild sweet present name of their home.

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