The Ahwahneechee

For thousands of years, American Indians in Yosemite Valley adapted to climate changes, fires, droughts, and conflicts with other local Indian settlements. Yosemite Valley has been home to American Indians for approximately 8,000 years, and countless generations of Ahwahneechee lived near Lower Yosemite Fall at Koomine, their largest community. Ahwahneechee people regularly burned the Valley’s forests and meadows to keep them open for gathering and hunting, and ground fires in the oak woodlands helped acorns sprout and made collecting easier; acorn meal was the staple of the Miwok diet. In the mid-1800s, the California Gold Rush drastically changed their way of life, and vast numbers of their population were wiped out. In 1851, soldiers of the Mariposa Battalion became the first non-Indians to enter Yosemite Valley, burned the Village of Koomine, and forced resistant Ahwahneechee people from the Valley, though they were later permitted to return, rebuild Koomine, and adjust to the new Euro-American presence. In the early 1800s, about 3,000 Indian people lived here, but by 1900 fewer than 200 survived, and the others may have been victims of an epidemic. The U.S. Cavalry removed the Village of Koomien in 1906 and relocated its residents to another part of the Valley. Ahwahneechee descendants still live in Mariposa County and elsewhere, teaching younger generations and preserving Miwok and Ahwahneechee cultural traditions. Legends passed down through generations of Yosemite’s Miwok people tell of creation and of spirits in waterfalls and forests, explain the physical and spiritual order of things, and warn of dangers such as the Po’-loti, dangerous spirit women said to live in the waters below Cho’-lok, Yosemite Falls.

Yosemite Valley, California · United States