One Best Hike: Yosemite's Half Dome. Rick Deutsch

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      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 be better to give it an Indian name than to import a strange and inexpressive one; that the name of the tribe who had occupied it, would be more appropriate than any I had heard suggested.” I then proposed “that we give the valley the name of Yo-sem-i-ty, as it was suggestive, euphonious, and certainly American; that by so doing, the name of the tribe of Indians which we met leaving their homes in this valley, perhaps never to return, would be perpetuated.”

      Yosemite was charted by the U.S. Geologic Survey of California in 1863. Early visitors originally called Half Dome “South Dome” because they felt it balanced North Dome across the valley. Over the years, it has been called Cleft Rock, the Rock of Ages, and a few others that did not stick. However, Half Dome was soon the common name.

      To help protect the pristine environs from commercial interests, in June 1864 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, which deeded Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees (at the southern end) to the state of California. The bill mandated that this land be used for resort and recreation “for all time.” The grant was overseen by the Yosemite Board of Commissioners, which was led by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Galen Clark was the first caretaker of the park. Note that only those two tracts of land were set aside for California to manage; the U.S. government retained the rest. John Muir arrived in 1868, and his writings influenced the country so much that, in 1890, Yosemite obtained federal protection as a national park. At that time the park was comprised only of the land not in the Yosemite Grant. Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees were left under California jurisdiction. In 1905 the legislature of California re-granted Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove back to the U.S. government. Congress accepted the state grant in 1906 and added these lands to Yosemite National Park. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 at Promontory, Utah, provided a fast way for people to get to the west, and the park continued to grow in the 1900s. Today attendance approaches 4 million visitors annually.

       4

      The Ascent of Half Dome

      No one conquers Half Dome; Tissiack lets you pass.

      —Rick Deutsch

      Since the whites entered the valley in 1851, they dreamed of getting to the top of Half Dome. There are no indications that any Native Americans ever made it to the top. In 1869 Josiah Whitney, the chief geologist for California, looked up and said, Half Dome is “perfectly inaccessible, being probably the only one of all the prominent points about the Yosemite which never has been, and never will be, trodden by human foot.”

      Many early settlers attempted to scale the 45-degree back side of Half Dome, including James Hutchings and Charles Weed in 1859. They brought Weed’s photography gear but were unable to ascend the steep mountain. In the early 1870s John Muir’s climbing buddy, expert climber George Bayley, also tried with the same result. This shows the difficulty of the task; Bayley was later the first to reach the top of Mount Starr King. Perhaps John Conway’s sons got the closest. In September 1873 Conway, who also later crafted many trails at Yosemite, had his young sons attempt the feat. Led by 9-year-old Major Conway, the lizardlike boys, as described by John Muir, scrambled barefoot up the rock and inserted steel rods into cracks to which they attached a rope. Major reached an elevation of about 300 feet above the saddle, but father John mercifully called him back when he reached a steep point where he could find no projection to attach the rope.

      It was just five years after Whitney’s proclamation that George Anderson, a Scottish immigrant and former sailor, set out to top the mountain. Third-party accounts and writings years after the event have blurred the facts, but we believe Anderson quietly set up his work area in a small cabin he built nearby (the location has not been discovered but is believed to have been near a stream on the east side of the current Half Dome trail). Another cabin, where Anderson later lived at Foresta, is now on display at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center in Wawona.

      George Anderson’s cabin at the foot of Half Dome; credit: The Pacific Rural Press, 1881.

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