Yosemite. Yet another place on this continent that gets “discovered” and subsequently misnamed, by the first expedition of the Mariposa Battalion. Their mission was a punitive one. After gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848, thousands of miners came to the region to seek for their fortune. As the goldseekers began to exploit the land, the local native people fought to protect their homelands. A period of armed struggle followed, called the “Mariposa Indian War”. The Yosemite guide actually begins to give a just account: “By 1851, the continued threft of Indian lands and murder of native people resulted in the Mariposa Indian War.” As the Indians were angered by the encroachment of the western settlers and the way it destroyed their world, they attacked a trading post in the Merced River Canyon. In retaliation, the miners organized the state-sanctioned Mariposa Battalion.
This is the Battalion that, in the pursuit of Indians, entered Yosemite Valley on March 27, 1851. They were immediately struck by the beauty of the place. (from a diary of one of the members of the battalion: The grandeur of the scene was but softened by the haze that hung over the valley — light as gossamer — and by the clouds which partially dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. This obscurity of vision but increased the awe with which I beheld it, and as I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion.) That night the group agreed to call the place “Yo-sem-i-ty”, which they mistakeningly thought to be the native name.
The Indians who lived in the valley called their home Ahwahnee, which probably means “place of the gaping mouth.” They called themselves Ahwahneechee. They were primarily of Southern Miwok ancestry, and had trade and kinship ties with the Mono Paiutes from the east side of the Sierra (near Mono lake). Indian peoples have lived in the region for as long as 8,000 years, maybe even 10,000 years. They have profoundly marked the way the valley looks today: the pattern of oaks and grasslands is a result of the way they intentionally burned pieces of the land. They knew very well that the seeds of the giant sequoias need the heat of fire to grow, a knowledge that was only “discovered” in the 1960s by the National Park authorities, as the Visitors Center explains. So while the geological landscape is the result of many millions years of activity of water and especially ice (glaciers appeared about 1 million years ago), the valley is very much a space that has been cultivated by humans for a good number of thousands years.
Yet in 1851 white settlers of European origin arrive and they see wilderness. I’m deeply disturbed by this lens of “wilderness” in looking at a place – the projections and symbolic violence of that kind of representation, the actual violence it enables. In the years following the coming of the white settlers, the Indians were both killed and chased from the valley (into reservations at the foothills). Settlers moved in and by 1855 a first party of tourists came to the “Incomparable Valley”. Very soon Yosemite Valley’s ecosystem suffered from the new settlers and visitors: livestock grazing in the meadows, new orchard plantations, etc. Conservationists began appealing to the government to intervene again the private exploitation of Yosemite’s natural beauty. On June 30, 1864 (while the civil war was raging), President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to the State of California “for public use, resort and recreation,” the two tracts “shall be inalienable for all time”. For the first time in its young history, the federal government set aside scenic lands to protect them and to allow for their enjoyment by all people. This grant is considered the foundation upon which national and state parks were established (it was the basis for Yellowstone to become the first official national park in 1872).
The conservationist most connected to Yosemite is no doubt the Scottish-born John Muir, who first visited the valley in 1868. Here’s a piece of his narration of his first journey from San Francisco into the Sierra Nevada: Arriving by the Panama steamer, I stopped one day in San Francisco and then inquired for the nearest way out of town. “But where do you want to go?” asked the man to whom I had applied for this important information. “To any place that is wild,” I said. This reply startled him. He seemed to fear I might be crazy and therefore the sooner I was out of town the better, so he directed me to the Oakland ferry. So on the first of April, 1868, I set out afoot for Yosemite. […] Looking eastward from the summit of the Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow CompositÅ“. And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; below it a belt of blue and lark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching long the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple; all these colors, from the blue sky to the yellow valley smoothly blending as they do in a rainbow, making a wall of light ineffably fine. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.
If Muir is enchanted by the Californian Sierra, repeating a number of times that “no mark of man is visibile upon it”, he is struck with awe by the valley, which he compares to a temple. The most famous and accessible of these cañon valleys, and also the one that presents their most striking and sublime features on the grandest scale, is the Yosemite, situated in the basin of the Merced River at an elevation of 4000 feet above the level of the sea. It is about seven miles long, half a mile to a mile wide, and nearly a mile deep in the solid granite flank of the range. The walls are made up of rocks, mountains in size, partly separated from each other by side cañons, and they are so sheer in front, and so compactly and harmoniously arranged on a level floor, that the Valley, comprehensively seen, looks like an immense hall or temple lighted from above. But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose; others, absolutely sheer or nearly so for thousands of feet, advance beyond their companions in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly aware, yet heedless, of everything going on about them. Awful in stern, immovable majesty, how softly these rocks are adorned, and how fine and reassuring the company they keep: their feet among beautiful groves and meadows, their brows in the sky, a thousand flowers leaning confidingly against their feet, bathed in floods of water, floods of light, while the snow and waterfalls, the winds and avalanches and clouds shine and sing and wreathe about them as the years go by, and myriads of small winged creatures birds, bees, butterflies–give glad animation and help to make all the air into music. Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.
The only human activity that Muir recognizes in this garden of Eden, is the destruction by the new settlers. Perhaps more than half of all the big trees have been thoughtlessly sold and are now in the hands of speculators and mill men. […] All private claims within these bounds should be gradually extinguished by purchase by the Government. It was clear to Muir that the Yosemite would not survive the new economy and its commercial drive: These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
Muir’s campaign for the preservation of the region resulted in the creation of the Yosemite National Park in 1890, with the inclusion of Yosemite Valley and the Maripose grove in 1906, when they were ceded from Californian state control to the federal state. The mission of the National Parks was articulated as such: to administer all parks “in such manner and by such means as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
Then comes a piece of the story that i had no idea at all about. The park was under federal protection, but there was no National Park Service until until 1916. Which meant the park was protected for at least 10 years by the U.S. Army’s 24th Mounted Infantry and the 9th Cavalry, also known as the “Buffalo Soldiers” (remember Bob Marley’s song?), which were Afro-American regiments. They were established by Congress as the first peacetime all-black regiments in the U.S. Army. So just after the civil war, just after the general abolishment of slavery in the new republic. It seems that the Buffalo Soldiers were send to fight the Indian wars and then the Mexican wars. I need to find out more about this. Meanwhile i have this image in my mind of the immense natural beauty of Yosemite, white settlers (for money and gold), white conservationists (for “wilderness” sake), the massacre of Indians and their livelihoods, and recently broken-free-from-slavery Afro-American soldiers enacting federal laws in the region.
Yosemite – a monument of natural heritage, closely tied up with the establishment of national parks as an institution. Full of ambiguities, as the history of Yosemite shows. But not able to escape this ground of ambiguity&violence on this continent – there is indeed no garden of eden to be found here – it’s one of the few institutions of this new world i encountered thus far that i actually feel much sympathy for.
There’s something about the regulation of the masses that felt refreshing: access is not totally open, and it doesn’t work along criteria of money. You can only stay 7 nights in the valley during the summer period, 30 nights during the rest of the year. You have to camp in the designated camping areas. If you want to camp outside of the designated camping areas, you need to apply for a “wilderness pass”. And there’s something about keeping commercialization controlled. The groceries shops, the shop with hiking gear and the food places are all in the same wooden lodge style. Organized along “ethnic” niches of food – italian, mexican,… – but not branded. On our way back home the high way through every small insignificant town was basically a line up of the familiar colours and logos of McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell,… and just imagine how much these companies would pay for a license to open a franchise in the park (with it’s 3,5 million visitors a year…). But they are not there, and what a break that is. And then there’s something about civic education: in the context of the U.S. it feel so good to come to a place where the value of the public sphere is somehow communicated. In fact, this site of natural heritage is the most “public” space (i.e. infused with an ethos of public good, not to be confused with the mall…) i’ve encountered since i live in this California. There’s even something about passion: in the short conversations i had with people working in the park, like Bill and the elderly lady in the Visitors Center, it struck me how much they were invested and believed in the value of their work, for the public good, for future generations.
And of course the ambiguity doesn’t go away, and of course much could be improved. Like a move away from the emphasis on “wilderness” and “natural” park to fully include the human history of the place, and some kind of memorial & educational project on the genocide in the region. And get those cars out of the valley! (which would be such an opportunity for an educational experience on how public transport – the free hybrid busses that connect the whole valley – can function perfectly well).
oh, and then i must make a confession. nothing to do about it: in places of mass tourism which Yosemite definately is – visitation exceeded one million in 1954, and in the mid-1990s there were more than four million visitors a year – i just get into a communist-pioneer state of mind: education and leisure for the masses who are collectively responsible for the place, and should interpellate each other on the vices of individual indulgence… ay ay ay…
