Genocide at Yosemite

Buffalo Soldiers at Yosemite National Park, NPS

The story of genocide at Yosemite National Park

When
the conservation community talks about the first major federal actions
to preserve land in the United States, we often cite the Yosemite Grant:
Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 decision to cede Yosemite Valley and Mariposa
Grove to the state of California for use as a public park. Lincoln’s
decision set the precedent of the U.S. government setting aside land for
the purpose of preservation that led to the establishment of the first
national park, Yellowstone.



What is often overlooked when celebrating
this event is the violent, forced dispossession in Yosemite Valley
carried out by a California state militia force known as the Mariposa
Battalion fewer than two decades earlier. In 1851, the unit attacked the
villages of the Indigenous Ahwahneechee people living in the valley,
burning their homes and food supplies to force them off the land. After
the attack, the U.S. allowed a few surviving Ahwahneechee to stay on
the land, but only if they agreed to serve as a “cultural attraction”
and weave baskets for visiting tourists.

Yosemite National Park’s name is actually derived from an
Ahwahneechee word shouted by villagers as militia forces attacked and
drove them off the land.

Ironically, the word that eventually became the name of the national
park is derived from an Ahwahneechee word shouted by the villagers
during the Battalion’s attack. Battalion soldiers thought the word
“Yosemeatea”" was a place name, but it was actually the Ahwahneechee
word for “killers.” 



Thus, Yosemite National Park is actually named for
the act of genocide committed by European-Americans a few years before
the valley was federally designated as a state park.


While shocking, this example is not unique to Yosemite. It is
emblematic of the fact that the history of parks, forests and other
public lands in the U.S. is interwoven with episodes of great cruelty,
often inflicted on the original and traditional inhabitants of what we
call North America. It reminds us that the legacy of the conservation
movement is complex and often dishonorable.

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