History
The Ahwahnechee lived in Yosemite Valley for centuries. European-American contact began after 1833. In 1851, during the Mariposa War, California State Militia troops of the Mariposa Battalion burned Ahwahnechee villages and took their food stores. In 1852, a Mariposa expedition of US Federal troops heard a report that Ahwahnechee Indians killed two European-American miners at Bridalveil Meadows. The troops executed five Ahwahnechee men.
Chief Tenaya (d. 1853) was a leader in Yosemite Valley. His father was Ahwahnechee. He led his band away from Yosemite to settle with Paiutes in eastern California. Tenaya has descendants living today.
The official canon says that the Ahwahnechee of Yosemite "became extinct" as a people in the 19th century; however, the US Federal government has evicted Yosemite Native people from the park in 1851, 1906, 1929, and 1969.
Jay Johnson, an Ahwahnechee leader in the Mariposa Indian Council, hopes to get federal reocognition for Yosemite Indians.
Read more about this topic: Ahwahnechee People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)