15/10/2019
Yosemite National Park is home to seven tribes, the American Indian Council of Mariposa aka Southern Sierra Miwuk, Mono Lake Kutzadika, North Fork Mono Indians, Tuolumne Band of Me-wuk Indians, Bridgeport Indian Colony, Bishop Paiute, and Chukchansi Yokuts.
The ancestors of these tribes have lived in the Yosemite region for at least 8,000 years. They took care of Yosemite by burning the meadows, tending to plants in the forest, and using Yosemite as a marketplace, leaving it much more open than it is today.
To-tu-ya, also known as Maria Lebrado, was Captain Tenaya’s granddaughter and the last survivor of the 1851 encounter with the Mariposa Battalion. She had left the valley in 1851 when they were forcibly taken to the Fresno River Reservation. Seventy-eight years passed before she returned to Yosemite Valley in June 1921. She noted that the Valley was more wooded and brushy and said in the interview, “we had set fire to keep the meadows open and the trees at bay.” She let out her grandfather’s call and it echoed off the granite walls. He used it to summon their people. She was the last one to hear it and this was the last time it was heard in Yosemite Valley. Her descendants and the descendants of the tribes come and visit Yosemite throughout the changing seasons. Yosemite is sacred and everything is connected: the granite rocks are connected to the meadows, the meadows are connected to the animals, the animals are connected to the plants… we are connected to all of it.
What does Yosemite mean to you?
