By Gustav Fagersteen Early Tourists in the Saddle
My brother Whitney Grover quickly formed a company of twenty-five men, who were piloted by Aich, and started for the Valley to bury our unfortunate companions. They found only Sherburn and Tudor, after a five days march, and met with no hostility from the Indians. They buried them where they lay, with such land marks as were at hand at that time. I have often called to mind the fact that the two men, Sherburn and Tudor, the only ones of our party who were killed on that eventful morning, were seen reading their Bibles while in camp the morning before starting into the Valley. They were both good men and we mourned their loss sincerely.
After we had been home six days, Rose, who was a partner of Sherburn and Tudor in a mine about five miles west of Coarse Gold Gulch, where there was a small mining camp, appeared in the neighborhood and reported the attack and said the whole party was killed, and that he alone escaped. On being questioned, he said he hid behind the Waterfall and lived by chewing the leather strap which held his rifle across his shoulders. This sounded strange to us as he had his rifle and plenty of ammunition and game was abundant. Afterward hearing of our return to Coarse Gold Gulch camp, he never came to see us as would have been natural, but shortly disappeared. We thought his actions and words very strange and we remembered how he urged us to enter the Valley, and at the time of the attack was the first one to fall, right amongst the savages, apparently with his death wound, and now he appears without a scratch, telling his version of the affair and disappearing without seeing any of us. We all believed he was not the honest man and friend we took him to be. He took possession of the gold mine in which he held a one-third interest with Sherburn and Tudor, and sold it.
Years afterward, in traveling at a distance and amongst strangers, I heard this story of our adventures repeated, as told by Aich, and he represented himself as the only man of the party who was not in the least frightened. I told them that “I was most thoroughly frightened, and Aich looked just as I felt.”
Stephen F. Grover
Santa Cruz, California
The commander of the regular army garrison at Fort Miller was notified of these events, and a detachment of the 2d Infantry under Lieutenant Tredwell Moore was dispatched in June, 1852. Five Indians were captured in the Yosemite Valley, all of whom were found to possess articles of clothing belonging to the murdered men. These Indians were summarily shot. Tenaya’s scouts undoubtedly witnessed this prompt pronouncement of judgment, and the members of the tribe fled with all speed to their Piute allies at Mono Lake.
The soldiers pursued the fleeing Indians by way of Tenaya Lake and Bloody Canyon. They found no trace of the Yosemites and could elicit no information from the Piutes. The party explored the region north and south of Bloody Canyon and found some promising mineral deposits. In August they returned to Tuolumne Soda Springs and then made their way back to Mariposa by way of the old Mono Trail that passed south of Yosemite Valley.
Upon arrival at Mariposa they exhibited samples of their ore discoveries. This created the usual excitement, and Lee Vining with a party of companions hastened to visit the region to prospect for gold. Leevining Canyon, through which the Tioga Road now passes, was named for the leader of this party.
Tenaya and his refugee band remained with the Mono Indians until late in the summer of 1853, when they again ventured into their old haunts in the Yosemite Valley. Shortly after they had reëstablished themselves in their old home, a party of young Yosemites made a raid on the camp of their former hosts and stole a band of horses which the Monos had recently driven up from southern California. The thieves brought the animals to Yosemite by a very roundabout route through a pass at the head of the San Joaquin, hoping by this means to escape detection. However, the Monos at once discovered the ruse and organized a war party to wreak vengeance upon their ungrateful guests. Surprising the Yosemites while they were feasting gluttonously upon the stolen horses, they almost annihilated Tenaya’s band with stones before a rally could be effected. Eight of the Yosemite braves escaped the slaughter and fled down the Merced Canyon. The old men and women who escaped death were given their liberty, but the young women and children were made captive and taken to Mono Lake.
The story of this last act in the elimination of the troublesome Yosemites was made known to Bunnell by surviving members of the tribe.
In 1928, when I talked with Maria, a member of the original Yosemite tribe, her version of the massacre differed widely from the story told by Bunnell. Through her daughter she stoutly assured me that no Indians died in Yosemite Valley except those killed by whites and those who were ill. I asked her how Tenaya died and where. She explained that while the Yosemites were at Mono Lake they engaged in hand games with the Monos. These games are stirring affairs among the Indians. A. L. Kroeber states, “It is impossible to have seen a California Indian warmed to his work in this game when played for stakes—provided its aim and method are understood—and any longer justly to designate him mentally sluggish and emotionally apathetic, as is the wont. It is a game in which not sticks and luck, but the tensest of wills, the keenest perceptions and the supplest of muscular responses are matched.... Seen in this light, the contortions, gesticulations, noises, and excitement of the native are not the mere uncontrolledness of an overgrown child, but the outward reflexes of a powerfully surcharged intensity.”
According to Maria, it was in the heat of such a game that a quarrel developed between Tenaya and his Mono allies. In the fight that followed, Tenaya and five of his Yosemite braves were stoned to death. At least, this stoning feature agrees with former accounts of the killing. Horse stealing and a gluttonous feast in Yosemite Valley do not figure in Maria’s story. She insists that Tom “Hutchings,” the Yosemite Indian befriended by J. M. Hutchings, attended to the burning of the bodies and packed the charred remains upon his own back from Mono Lake to Hites Cove. There a great “cry” was held for two weeks; the remaining Yosemite Indians and all their friends bewailed the loss of Chief Tenaya and the four tribesmen.