Historic equipment left at Hite’s Cove

      SAVAGE’S TRADING POST

      The site of one of James Savage’s trading posts is easy to visit. It is located on CA 140, 26 miles from Mariposa. The South Fork merges in from the east, and the site is now a motel. Nothing of the original trading post exists, but it is fun to imagine the early days. Adjacent to Savage’s is a trail to Hite’s Cove. In the 1860s John Hite’s Native American wife led him to a spot where he mined out about $3 million in gold. Today the trail is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and you can take the easy hike from CA 140 to see Hite’s Cove.

Gold Fever

      The growth of the white population in California grew through the 1840s without much exploration of the Sierra. Arrivals came by ship from the East Coast, while others came over land via the lower, safer southern route. To provide lumber for the growing population, John Sutter ventured into the forested foothills of the Sierra east of Sacramento to set up a sawmill. He planned to get rich by selling the raw material, lumber, to feed the coming building boom. In January of 1848, while working at Sutter’s Coloma sawmill (50 miles east of Sacramento), James Marshall came upon shiny flakes of gold. He showed them to Sutter, who decided to keep it quiet until work on a flour mill was finished. However, word leaked out, and a certain shopkeeper named Samuel Brannan in San Francisco heard the news and saw the opportunity to sell shovels, pans, and jeans. He ran though the streets of the city shouting “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!”

      History tells the rest. Men across the country dropped everything and flocked to the foothills in droves. Ships sailed around the horn with anxious easterners ready to stake claims. To speed transit, a railroad was built across Panama. The gold rush was on. Rivers and streams were rerouted to reveal their rich beds; giant sluice boxes sprung up. Towns with names such as Angels Camp, Nevada City, Hornitos, Mariposa, and Garrote (Groveland) became household words. Today’s CA 49 is littered with places that were once thriving gold towns. Sacramento boomed as supply stores, assay offices, banks, and brothels sprung up to support the miners. Newly rich miners found their way to San Francisco to relax and were quickly separated from their money. While many made small fortunes pulling out placer gold (the kind lying in streams), most of the real money was made by dry-goods sellers such as Brannan.

      The 1846–1848 Mexican-American War gave California to the United States. Reflective of the boom, California was made a state on September 9, 1850. Many of the men who did not get lucky or hire on with bigger mining companies decided they liked California’s terrain, weather, and freedom and settled in the foothills. Many began farming or working in support industries. It’s relevant to note that during this time, because gold is usually not found in high mountains, there was no reason for further exploration to the east. The High Sierra remained unexplored and Yosemite was unknown.

      Relations between the local tribes and the nonnatives became tense. The Native Americans were upset at the whites moving in. Some of the chiefs proposed that if the miners would give them some of the gold found on their lands, they could remain. The whites refused. The majority of the whites treated the natives as though they had no rights to be respected. Often, Native Americans who were working good mining claims were driven away by white miners, who then took possession of their claims and worked them. The Native Americans’ main sources of food supply were being eliminated by the whites as well. Their diet of acorns was impacted as oak trees were cut down and burned by miners. Land was cleared for crops, and deer and other game were being killed off or driven off by farmers. Tensions escalated—the Native Americans began stealing horses and then began a series of attacks on trading posts. The raid of James Savage’s trading post at the confluence of the Merced and the South Fork of the Merced spurred the locals to petition John McDougal, the governor of the new state, for help. In a letter to the governor dated January 13, 1851, Major James Burney, sheriff of Mariposa County, described the situation:

      They have invariably murdered and robbed all the small parties they fell in with between here and the San Joaquin. News came here last night that seventy-two men were killed on Rattlesnake Creek; several men have been killed in Bear Valley. The Fine Gold Gulch has been deserted, and the men came in here yesterday. Nearly all the mules and horses in this part of the State have been stolen, both from the mines and the ranches. And I now in the name of the people of this part of the State, and for the good of our country, appeal to Your Excellency for assistance.

      This resulted in the formation of the volunteer Mariposa Battalion. James Savage, mentioned earlier, became captain and led the volunteer group. While Federal Indian Commissioners were negotiating with tribes to relocate to reservations along the Fresno River, the soldiers pursued Native Americans who refused to cooperate. During the winter of 1850–1851, they chased a band believed to live farther north. The resultant events were dubbed the Mariposa Indian War. It was on March 27, 1851, that they entered what we now call the Yosemite Valley.

      The definitive source for the events of the Mariposa Indian War can be found in the Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, MD book Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851, which led to that event. Bunnell was the medical man for the battalion. He wrote his book 30 years after the events because he felt too many magazines and newspapers were “getting it wrong.”

      The whites were impressed with what they saw. The soldiers learned much from Chief Tenaya, the leader of the Ahwahneechee, who were made up of renegades from various tribes. The soldiers wanted to honor the Native Americans by naming the place after them. Unfortunately, they mistakenly thought the locals were called the “Yo-Semite.” It seems that through Native American interpreters, the soldiers confused the Sierra Miwok name uz-mati, or “grizzly bear,” with a collective noun yose-met-i, meaning “the killers” or “a band of killers.” The soldiers thought this meant “they are killers of grizzlies”—the bear that lived there. Chief Tenaya said that the name had been given to his band because they occupied the mountains and valleys, which were the favorite habitat of grizzly bears, and his people were expert in killing them. In actuality, the people who lived in the Yosemite Valley called it Ahwahnee. They referred to themselves as the Ahwahneechee. This error is easily understandable since the whites were unfamiliar with the language. Yo-Semite (now Yosemite) was used by early California geologist Josiah Whitney. The soldiers also tried to use Native American names for the rock formations, waterfalls, and sites, but the multisyllabic words were too much for later visitors to master. So today we have Vernal Fall not Yan-o-pah; Bridalveil Fall not Pohono; Yosemite Falls not Cholock; Mirror Lake not Ahwiyah; El Capitan not Tote-ack-ah-noo-la; and Half Dome not Tissiack. The spelling of these Native American words is a guess, as they had no written language. After Tenaya’s death in 1853, the remaining Yosemite Native Americans dispersed and Yosemite Valley became a white man’s settlement.

The Crush Begins

      Soon after its discovery, entrepreneurs entered the scene and began to promote Yosemite as a tourist destination. In 1855 James Hutchings led the first organized commercial tours in the valley. He kindled interest through his writings in his illustrated work Hutchings’ California Magazine. Soon artists such as Thomas Hill, Thomas Ayres, and photographers such as Carleton Watkins came to record the wonderful sights for anxious eastern audiences. In the early years, great men, such as Eadweard Muybridge, J. J. Reilly, C. L. Pond, Charles Bierstadt, Charles L. Weed, and George Fiske, brought images of the park to eager audiences. Sadly, many photos and negatives are lost to time due to the many fires that happened at Yosemite.

      Being an educated man, Lafayette Bunnell led the naming of many places in the valley. In his book he states:

      As I did not take a fancy to any of the names proposed, I remarked that “an American name would be the most appropriate;” that “I could not see any necessity for going to a foreign country for a name for American scenery—the grandest that had ever yet been looked upon. That it would