Uto-Aztecans in California 

Written by Tara Diaz

Submitted by S Salas

Here is something that most people don't know, but Yosemite was a stronghold of Uto-Aztecan people. Yes it is true. Yosemite was a band of Paiutes, an outpost of Uto-Aztecan people right in California.

I am a Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiute and we had always known that our people were part of the great Uto-Aztecan people.

Chief Tenaya father's was from a band called the Ahwahanees. They were from a different band unlike any of the surrounding bands of Indians. In the early 1880s a plague killed off most of his band so Tenaya's father took the remaining handful to their brethren the Mono Lake Paiutes. Mono Lake area was also called Teniega Bah, Tenaya's real name is Tenieya. There Tenaya's father married a Mono Lake Paiute woman and from that union Tenaya was born. Tenaya grew up amongst the Mono Lake Paiute people and when he was of age married a Mono Lake Paiute woman and had children. A shaman had advised Tenaya that it was safe to go back into Yosemite and Tenaya took about 200 to 300 Indians back into Yosemite. Tenaya's band raided rancherias and stole horses from the Spanish and the early Americans, like the Paiutes always did. Many surrounding tribes feared the Ahwahneechees.

Years later gold was found in foothills and many non-Indian people flooded the area disrupting the lives of many Indian people. Charles Webber, the founder of Stockton, had seen how James Sutter got local Indians to work for him dirt cheap so he made an alliance with a chief around Oakdale to get his people to move up to the foothills to dig gold for him. He used them to get rich, because he had a real cheap labor force. James Savage had moved to the area like other white people to get rich also from the Gold Rush. He had seen how Webber used the local Indians as a cheap work force instead of one person digging by himself. At first he got into a skirmish with a local foothill tribe around Merced and Mariposa border lead by a neophyte named Chief Bautista aka Vow-ches-ter or Keechee. They could not kill James Savage so they believed he was blessed by the creator. Jim Savage made alliances with Chief Bautista, who had come from the Mission Delores, to help him dig gold for him. Savage married many Indian women from the lower foothills tribes to seal alliances like they did in old Europe. Chief Bautista thought that if he used James Savage that if they allied themselves with the whites that they could help them fight and protect them from the Uto-Aztecan Paiutes who always retained their control over the high sierras. Chief Bautista also thought that the whites could protect them from their other enemies the Yokuts from the south. James Savage just used them to get rich.

James Savage used Chief Bautista as his overseer and when Indians would try to escape he would have them captured and returned to the mines. James Savage opened a trading post next to the entrance of Yosemite and in December 1850 the post was attacked and burned. Savage and his Indian miners chased who they believed did it, but when they got close to entrance a lot of the Indian miners (Miwoks) were afraid to enter.

In the months to follow many gold miners were killed and mule and horses were stolen as they got closer to Yosemite.

The local whites in the Valley asked James Savage to get his Indians to come in and sign a peace treaty and move a reservation. James Savage relied on his old friend Chief Bautista to bring in the rest of the chiefs to sign a peace treaty and move to the reservation. The rest of the whites did not trust any Indian, but later wrote that Chief Bautista did as he was told and brought in all the surrounding foothills tribes except two the Chowchilla Yokuts and the Yosemites. The Chowchilla Yokuts were once under James Savage, but had seen that he had lied to them and was not really trying to protect them but just wanted to use them.

Russio and Chief Bautista were the ones who coined the term "Yosemite" for Chief Tenaya's people. In their Miwok language it meant "The Killers" or "The Grizzlies" because they were afraid of them and said they never entered Yosemite Valley. Meanwhile the Mono Paiutes bragged about their Ahwahneechee brethren. Some people believe that Yosemite means "Oso - meti", because a lot of the Indians also spoke Spanish. "Oso" bear and "meti" people like the Grizzlies. Chief Bautista said that the Yosemites or "Monah" were taller and lighter than the "California Diggers" and were fierce warriors and fighters.

In March of 1851, James Savage gathered up the Mariposa Battalion, with his Miwok scouts, and was going to go up there and "teach them a lesson".

They encountered the Yokuts first who gave up without a fight. Then their Miwok scouts found the stronghold of the Ahwahneechees. Chief Tenaya was an old man by than and came in with a couple of his people to meet James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion, while the rest of his people escaped over the sierras back to Mono Lake. Tenaya tried to give his people a chance to escape by giving himself up, but James Savage was not having it they proceeded on, but were unsuccessful in catching them. Chief Tenaya said he just wanted to be left alone in Yosemite and did not want to go the western side because the Indians there were his enemies. He spoke to the doctor of the Battalion who was very sympathetic towards Chief Tenaya. Bunnell was the only person to meet Chief Tenaya and write a book about him. Bunnell wrote that Tenaya was the founder of the Paiute Colony of Ahwahnee, that Tenaya spoke a Paiute jargon. That his group was made up primarily of Mono Paiutes and few outlaws from the western tribes who did not want to live under white rule set up by their weak chiefs.

Tenaya was taken back to the reservation that was set up and he looked at disgust at the other Indians who once feared him and they were dressed up in gaudy white mans scarves and shirts. The tribes of the lower foothills were now not afraid of the great chief and harassed him.

He finally and his people finally sneaked off and went back to Mono Lake. Once again white gold miners were killed and a few horses stolen that the Mariposa Battalion again went up to capture Chief Tenaya and his band. The Battalion came upon Tenaya's camp and many escaped climbing the sheer cliffs. The Miwok scouts had led them to Tenaya's camp. The Battalion quickly captured 3 young Indians. Once tried to escape and he shot in the back. About that same time Chief Tenaya who had also been caught saw the dead boy lying where he fell and recognized him as his own son. He held strong but his lip quivered and gave his famous speech. He cursed his white captors and the Miwok scouts.

Once again he was taken back to the reservation and when no one was looking he escaped and went back to Mono Lake. There his follow Paiutes gave him an allotment for his people.

In Sept. of 1852, a year and a half after James Savage first captured Chief Tenaya, James Savage was killed in a dispute with another white man. He had shot James Savage to death. The Miwoks, when they heard of his death ran to Savage's body, they wailed and cried over his body. The chiefs threw themselves on his body and refused to let them take his body away. They even drank his blood. The white man who killed Savage had to leave town because the Miwoks swore to kill him. So James Savage's quest for gold and riches did not give him a long life.

Chief Tenaya had left Mono Lake Paiute area and the Paiutes were surprised. He had left to go to his Yosemite Valley. There some of his men instead of stealing horses from the whites, because they feared the white man would return, stole horses from their own brethren the Mono Paiutes. The Paiutes from Mono Lake were so incensed that the hospitably had been repaid with theft that they snuck into Chief Tenaya's camp and found them there with their bellies full of horse meat. The Mono Paiutes pounced on Tenaya's band and killed almost all of them accept, a couple of men who escaped. They took the remaining Tenaya's Child bearing survivors back to Mono Lake to be absorbed to their tribe.

The whites started to move into Yosemite and in 1854 a year after Tenaya's death the only Indians the white people saw in Yosemite Valley were Paiutes returning to gather acorns. The Uto-Aztecan Paiutes, just like Chief Tenaya and his band. Who held the granite fortress that was Yosemite Valley.

Later white ethnologists, looking to make it big and find their own Ishi, ran up to Mariposa looking for the Yosemite Ahwahneechees to get their story. What they ran into were James Savage's Miwok miners who told them that Yosemite was their homeland. The Paiutes in Yosemite, which outnumbered the Miwoks, refused to talk to the white people. That is documented, but since the Miwoks already were working with whites, they gladly talked to them. They wrote that Miwoks were Chief Tenaya and his people, which they were not. Lafayette H. Bunnell was still writing his memoirs and his book didn't come out until 1880s. In his account, the only man to meet and write about Chief Tenaya, he wrote that the Ahwahneechees were Paiutes. The Miwoks were extremely docile and not war like. Lafayette H. Bunnell's Book "The Discovery of the Yosemites, 1851, an the event that led to the war", has the real truth.

In 1970's Yosemite hired this white guy named Craig Bates, who was raised by a Miwok family and was fascinated by Miwok culture. He even married a Miwok woman and had a ½ Miwok son.

He has no inclination towards Uto-Aztecan culture and started to erase the real history of the Yosemite Indians. He called the Paiutes "visitors" and "Late-comers". He couldn't find any Miwok men, because most had died out in the early influx of whites. Many of the Miwok women married white men and the only men he found in Yosemite were Paiutes. So what he started to do was change Uto-Aztecan Paiute men into Miwoks. He started to say that the old Uto-Aztecan tales were made up. Like the tale of women of the water who was an evil spirit which the Paiutes called Pohono, in Spanish the Llorona. The Llorona, which is also part of Yosemite Indian legends, just like the old Mexican legend.

We found out he might not even have a college or university degree to hold that position he has had for over 30 years. Just that he was married to a Miwok woman. He has tried erase the memory of the Uto-Aztecan Paiutes out of Yosemite and replace it with those who worked with the whites.

So now we are asking to that they not give the History of Yosemite Indians to those who aided the white man in his greedy quest for gold, but to give it back to the rightful owner of Yosemite the Paiutes.

So imagine that Yosemite, right above Fresno and next to Modesto and Merced was once a stronghold for the war like Uto-Aztecan Paiutes who were the only ones who tried to fight off the invasion of the white gold miners in California.