Close on the heels of the warnings, however, came news of an attack on the Fresno store. All the whites except the messenger who had brought the news were killed. The Mariposa Indian War was on.
Savage had gone to Horse Shoe Bend in the Merced Canyon to solicit aid. He had hoped to find a more attentive audience there than among the county officials at Agua Fria. In his absence his Mariposa store was burned, its three white attendants were killed, and his wives were carried off by the assailants.
Cassady, one of the rival traders who had scoffed at Savage’s first news of impending disaster, was surprised in his establishment and met quick death. Three other murderous attacks took place in the immediate vicinity, and the whites finally leaped to the defense of their holdings.
James Burney, the county sheriff, took a place at the head of a body of volunteers who had banded for mutual protection. On January 6, 1851, James D. Savage accompanied this party in an attack made upon an Indian encampment of several hundred squaws and bucks under the leadership of José Rey. This was the first organized movement of the whites against the Indians of the Mariposa Hills.
By this time Governor McDougal had issued a proclamation calling for volunteers, and the Mariposa Battalion came into existence. Savage was made major in full command. Three companies, under John J. Kuykendall, John Boling, and William Dill, were organized and drilled near Savage’s ruined Mariposa store.[4] The affairs of this punitive body of men are dealt with in another chapter. Let it here suffice to say that its activities were especially directed against the mountain tribe of “Grizzlies,” and that on March 25, 1851, Savage and his men entered the mysterious stronghold, Yosemite Valley.
In 1928 it was my privilege to interview Maria Lebrado, one of the last members of the Yosemite tribe who experienced subjection by the whites. I eagerly sought ethnological and historical data, which was forthcoming in gratifying abundance. Purposely I had avoided questioning the aged squaw about Major Savage; but presently she asked, in jumbled English and Spanish, if I knew about the “Captain” of the white soldiers. She called him “Chowwis,” and described him as a blond chief whose light hair fell upon his shoulders and whose beard hung halfway to his waist. She had been much impressed by his commanding blue eyes and declared that his shirts were always red. To this member of the mountain tribe of Yosemite the Major was recalled as something of a thorn in her flesh. That he was a beloved leader of the foothill tribes she agreed, but hastened to explain that those Indians, too, were enemies of her people. Maria is the only person I have met who had seen Savage.
For five months Savage commanded the movements of the Mariposa Battalion. Its various units were active in the Sierra Summit region above Yosemite, at the headwaters of the Chowchilla, and on the upper reaches of the San Joaquin. In every encounter the Indians were defeated and they finally sued for peace. The prowess of Savage as a mountaineer and military leader is borne out in a letter, published in Alta California on June 12, 1851, in which the battalion’s sergeant major describes at length for the adjutant a foray at the headwaters of the San Joaquin:
... I am aware that you have been high up and deep in the mountains and snow yourself, but I believe this trip ranks all others. The Major himself has seen cañons and snow peaks this trip which he never saw before. It is astonishing what this man can endure. Traveling on day and night, through snow and over the mountains, without food, is not considered fatigue to him, and as you are well aware the boys will follow him as long as he leaves a sign.
The same Alta carries a resolution, signed by men in Dill’s and Boling’s companies, affirming in great detail their high confidence in Savage.
In addition to his activities with the battalion in the field, Major Savage functioned conspicuously in aiding the United States Indian Commissioners in preparing a peace treaty. He maintained a friendly attitude toward the oppressed Indians and, had the government made good its promises, or had the appropriations not been absorbed elsewhere, the tribes of the Sierra would have been more adequately provided for. The treaty, signed April 29, 1851, does not carry the “signatures” of Tenaya of the Yosemites or of the leader of the Chowchillas.