From: MADERA HERITAGE QUARTERLY Madera Genealogy Society VOL. VI – 2, MAY 1988 LAST SURVIVORS – Part 1 Ah-wah’-nee was the Indian meaning for “deep grassy valley,”and so the glacier –cut, granite-walled, unique, lush valley was named by them way back the other side of yesterday. For centuries braves roamed the seven-mile long canyon hunting and fishing while their squaws pounded acorns into meal and, stoically, saw to their men’s comfort. Wars and a black sickness interrupted and nearly destroyed their pastoral life and when, years afterwards, survivors drifted back to re-establish homes in Ah-wah-nee, white miners were encroaching on the Sierra Nevada. Ten-eye-ya was the chief of the new tribe which called itself “Yo-sem-ite,” meaning “Grizzly bear.” It was inevitable that the Yosemites and neighboring tribes should clash with the whites who took possession of their land, killed their game and cut their oak trees, thus eliminating their chief food, acorns. In retaliation the Indians raided, stole, and killed white invades, but bows and arrows were not match for rifles. These descendants of Yosemite Valley’s first inhabitants were reduced by killing, disease and reservation life to a band of last survivors. This portion of this article give a fragmentary history of the lives of Indian women in adapting to the whiteman’s tenure in their Ahwahnee. In March pf 1851, a punitive white battalion led by Major James D. Savage, entered Yosemite Valley in pursuit of marauding Indians. Although no braves were found to be captured, Savage and his men proceeded to discourage their return by burning their belongings, provisions, and u-ma-cha dwellings Lafayette H. Bunnell, a miner-member of the Mariposa Battalion, unearthed the only Indian who had not fled. An aged feeble squaw peered indifferently at him from the shelter of a huge rock at the base of North Dome, know by Indians as To-k-ya, “the basket”. Bunnell replenished her fire, pitying the woman who had been left behind to die. Savage questioned her in her Indian dialect, but she did not have much to say to him. She would not even tell him her age. -Continued-