LAKE TEN-IE-YA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.
Noticing my look of surprise, he jokingly said that if I had only studied divinity instead of medicine, I could have then fully gratified my passion for christening. This, of course, brought out a general guffaw, and thinking me annoyed, he said: “Gentlemen, I think the name an appropriate one, and shall use it in my report of the expedition. Beside this, it is rendering a kind of justice to perpetuate the name of the old chief.”
When Ten-ie-ya reached the summit, he left his people and approached where the Captain and a few of us were halting. Although he had been snubbed by the Captain that morning, he now seemed to have forgotten it, and his rather rugged countenance glowed with healthful exercise in the sunlight. I had handled him rather roughly the day before, but as he now evidently wished to be friendly, I called him up to us, and told him that we had given his name to the lake and river. At first, he seemed unable to comprehend our purpose, and pointing to the group of Glistening peaks, near the head of the lake, said: “It already has a name; we call it Py-we-ack.” Upon my telling him that we had named it Ten-ie-ya, because it was upon the shores of the lake that we had found his people, who would never return to it to live, his countenance fell and he at once left our group and joined his own family circle. His countenance as he left us indicated that he thought the naming of the lake no equivalent for the loss of his territory.
I never at any time had real personal dislike for the old sachem. He had always been an object of study, and I sometimes found in him profitable entertainment. As he moved off to hide his sorrow, I pitied him. As we resumed our march over the rough and billowy trail, I was more fully impressed with the appropriateness of the name for the beautiful lake. Here, probably, his people had built their last wigwams in their mountain home. From this lake we were leading the last remnant of his once dreaded tribe, to a territory from which it was designed they should never return as a people. My sympathies, confirmed in my own mind, a justness in thus perpetuating the name of Ten-ie-ya. The Indian name for this lake, branch and cañon, “Py-we-ack” is, although a most appropriate one, now displaced by that of the old chief Ten-ie-ya. Of the signification of the name Ten-ie-ya, I am uncertain; but as pronounced by himself, I have no doubt of its being pure Indian.
The whole mountain region of the water-sheds of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers afford the most delightful views to be seen anywhere of mountains, cliffs, cascades and waterfalls, grand forests and mountain meadows, and the Soda Springs are yet destined to become a favorite summer resort. Mr. Muir has well said that the “upper Tuolumne valley is the widest, smoothest, most serenely spacious, and in every way the most delightful summer pleasure park in all the High Sierras.”
Now that it has become a part of the new National Park surrounding the old grant (see new map), and good trails reach it, wagon roads will soon be extended into the very “heart of the Sierras.”
We reached our camp in the valley without accident. Captain Boling at once gave orders to make preparations for our return to the Fresno. The next day we broke camp and moved down to the lower end of the valley near where we camped on the first night of our discovery, near the little meadow at the foot of the Mariposa Trail.
At sunrise the next morning, or rather as the reflections on the cliffs indicated sunrise, we commenced our ascent of the steep trail. As I reached the height of land where the moving column would soon perhaps forever shut out from view the immortal “Rock Chief,” my old sympathies returned, and leaving the command to pursue its heedless way, I climbed to my old perch where Savage had warned me of danger. As I looked back upon El Capitan, his bald forehead was cooling in the breeze that swept by me from the “Summer land” below, and his cheerful countenance reflected back the glory of the rising sun. Feeling my own inferiority while acknowledging the majesty of the scene, I looked back from Mt. Beatitude, and quoting from Byron, exclaimed:
Yosemite!
“Thy vale(s) of evergreen, thy hills of snow
Proclaim thee Nature’s varied favorite now.”
We reached the Fresno without the loss of a captive, and as we turned them over to the agent, we were formally commended for the success of the expedition.