Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 1 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 15

CHAPTER XI

Tenieya was a wily, voluble and rascally old fellow, who with one plea or another prevented or delayed the march to the valley. Had the rangers been left to themselves, they would have made short work of the campaign, but they were bound by the orders of the commissioners, and much time h.ad been frittered away with powwows and procrastination. Patience at last ceased to be a virtue.

Volunteers were called for the "Deep Canyon" Party and Boling's and Dill's companies stepped out as if on parade, but the select were chosen after a footrace in the snow, the inspiration of Boling. A camp guard was left behind of the distanced. At last the start was made in the snow, trailing in single file, Savage leading, Tenieya an unwilling guide, and the party entered the valley on March 21, 1851, the first appearance of the white man.

This was the very thing that Tenieya had tried to prevent, because of a traditional prophecy. A great medicine man, a friend of his father, induced him to leave the Mono tribe of his mother, and as their chief establish himself in the valley of his ancestors with a few descendants of the Ahwahneechees and other renegades, who had been living with the Monos and Paiutes. The patriarch, had prophesied that while in possession of the valley the tribe would increase and become powerful, he cast a protective spell upon it, but cautioned that, if ever the horsemen of the lowlands (the Spaniards) entered, the tribe would be scattered and destroyed, his people taken captive and he be the last chief. The rangers' stay in the valley was limited to three days, because the provisions were exhausted, and the return to camp was taken up with some 350 Indians, including seventy-five surrendered Yosemites, all of whom save one, escaped from Boling and nine men, on the night before the last day's march to the reservation. Most of the runaways were retaken on pursuit.

But the Yosemites and Chowchillas refusing to leave their haunts, new campaigns were necessary against each, first against the Chowchillas encamped on the north fork of the San Joaquin. The march was taken via Coarse Gold and a circuitous route on which Crane Valley was located and named. Savage was called away as interpreter to treat with Kaweahs sent in from the south by Kuykendall, who in season ended the campaign against the Tulare valleyites by vigorous operations in the valleys, foothills and mountains of the Kings and Kaweah Rivers, chasing them even into the high Sierras.

Boling in command headed for the Chowchillas' camp. They fled demoralized, Rey, their chief, having died from his wounds. They surrendered, subdued by hunger and swift pursuit, and though after the Yosemites the most warlike they proved the most tractable and reliable of the mountain tribes.

For the second valley expedition some of Kuykendall's men at headquarters volunteered with the supply train. Dill, with part of his company, was retained at headquarters as guard, while Gilbert with part of h.is, reported to Boling. Dr. Pfeiffer was placed in charge of a temporary battalion hospital. Surgeon Bronson resigned to reap the returns of his negro slaves mining on Sherlock's Creek, Leach succeeded him and Dr. Black went with Boling, who marched on against the Yosemites into the valley, sending out scouting and searching parties, burning wigwams and acorn stores to starve out the band after it was evident temporizing had no results. This was the plan throughout the Mariposa Indian War, as it was called. Three sons of Tenieya were the first captured in the valley.

Escapes of individuals from camp left two captives, who were fastened to an oak tree, tied back to back, while scouts went out to surround and seize Tenieya. The captives loosened themselves, deliberately observed by the guards, and starting to run were fired upon, and one who was killed proved to be Tenieya's youngest and favorite son. Lieutenant Chandler and scouts returned with the captured chief, and the latter's first sight in camp was the body of his son. It broke the old chief's heart, and he manifested it in moody silence, or alternative laments and tirades, so that "hardly anyone could help sympathize with him in his great sorrow."

Tenieya was "a greedy and filthy glutton" though, and it is related by Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell, M. D., volunteer surgeon of the battalion and its historian, that surfeited with fat pork and beans and soldier rations he became dyspeptic and begged to be put out to grass in the meadows. The novel sight was presented of the chief staked out at the end of a rope in the hand of his guard grazing upon young clover, sorrel, fresh ferns and bulbous roots.

The rangers remained in the valley for about one month, ever on the move to locate and bring in recalcitrants, and Bunnell as the most sentimental one naming most of the valley points of interest. About June, and no more Yosemites to be located in the valley, Boling advanced higher into the mountains to a large lake on the north fork of the Merced ten miles northeast of the valley, observing which Tenieya employed every artifice to divert him and made several escape attempts. Here on June 5, the remainder of the tribe was found and made captive, half-starved and in a miserable state from the privations of the close pursuit. There were thirty-five, nearly all part of Tenieya's family. Oft to the reservation they were marched, and the lake was named for the old chief. The "war"' was ended. The commissioners had gone to the Kings River Farm to treat with the bands collected there. There being no more hostiles from the Tuolumne to the Tejon, the battalion was mustered out on July 25, 1851, at Buckeye Creek, midway between Bridgeport and Mariposa. . . . The reported last survivor of the battalion was Robert Eccleston, pioneer resident of Forbestown, Butte County, who died in Oakland, Cal., on February 1, 1914, at the age of eighty-one years. He came overland and was a cattle raiser near Forbestown. The muster roll shows that he was a private in Company C, enlisted as a New Yorker at the age of twenty-one.

At the reservation Tenieya was never much in favor. He was "set in his ways, obstinate and exacting" — "cranky" in other words — and the other Indians taunted him with his downfall. He chafed under the contemptuous treatment and asked for leave of absence, pleading that he could not endure the heat of the sun and preferred his acorn diet to the government rations. Nothing loath to be rid of him with the endless squabbling, he was released and trailed back to the valley with the remnant of his relatives. Others were allowed in time to go and early in May, 1852, some of these ticket of leave absentees ambushed Coarse Gold Gulch,, French prospectors, who had entered the valley.

Rose and Charbon were killed and Tudor seriously wounded but escaped and arrived at Coarse Gold later in August. The news spread alarm and there was fear that the excited Indians at the reservation would desert and another outbreak would result. In fact those encamped outside hurried to the agencies for protection lest they be picked off in revenge for the latest murders. Lieutenant, Moore from Fort Miller was sent with: soldiers to punish the Indians and entered the valley by night. One of his volunteer scouts was A. A. ( Gus) Gray, who had been in Boling's company and afterwards was a captain in Walker's Nicaragua filibuster expedition. The party captured five of the murderers. Tenieya apprised by a scout of all that followed kept in seclusion. The murderers did not deny the accusation and wearing part of the apparel of the dead Moore did not bandy words but summarily pronounced judgment and ordered them shot, which was done.

To justify himself or to allay public curiosity, Moore published a letter in the Mariposa Chronicle descriptive of the expedition. In this letter the word "Yosemity" was for the first time written "Yosemite." It attracted attention and the changed orthography has continued since. The "autocratic power" assumed in shooting the Indians was at the time the subject of public criticism. To Moore attaches the credit of being the first to draw the attention of the scientific and literary world to the wonders of the Yosemite Valley, his position as an army officer establishing a reputation for the facts that another correspondent might not have commanded.

Tenieya had fled across the range to the Monos. He had nothing to do with the murders but Moore followed in close pursuit. Tenieya knew the mountains better and escaped, skulking among the cliffs and chasms, driven from pillar to post. Moore finally gave up the pursuit and Tenieya returned, late in 1853, to the valley, followed by some of his veteran incorrigibles. The Monos and Paiutes returned one day from a successful Southern California foray, and the Yosemites ill repaid the hospitality of their former hosts by making of? with some of their stolen horses. The Monos in revenge set upon the Yosemites with Tenieya as the principal object of attack, while at a horse meat banquet. One young Mono chief, having spent all his arrows, hurled a rock with such force as to crush in Tenieya's skull, and others cast rocks upon the prostrate body until in accord with, the Paiute custom he was literally stoned to death and buried under a pile of rocks. All but eight of Tenieya's young braves were killed.

Hittell describes the finale: "The Monos then pursued the other Indians and killed all, except some very old persons who were allowed to escape and some young women and children, whom they carried into captivity across the mountains. There was no longer any Yosemite tribe, nor so far as known any living being of Tenieya's blood. He was in truth the last of the Yosemites." The Independent Order of Red Men tribe at Madera has taken for its name that of the Last of the Yosemites.

Success did not crown the labors of the commissioners in treaty making and establishing reservations. There was a lurking but strong suspicion that they knew little about the country and much less concerning Indians, that everything they did was a mistake and not infrequently in excess of their powers. They travelled in style like a circus caravan and at considerable public expense, with dragoon escort and accomplished little of importance or lasting benefit, while making presents and being lavish in promises for little or no return value. Their treaties were disapproved and nearly all the debts contracted were repudiated as unauthorized. The established reservations were almost useless, and very unpopular. Governors McDougal and Bigler opposed them in the legislative messages, McDougal favoring removal of the Indians beyond the state, and Bigler denouncing the reservation system as wrong, fraught with evil to whites and Indians, calculated to irritate collisions and imposing heavy burdens on the government.

The work and its results proved so unsatisfactory that the commission was abolished and Congress adopted a new system with Indian agents as managers, and the valley reservation Indians were liberated after about four years of restrictions. The Indian question was one which gave the legislatures of the 50's much concern, but the old state of affairs continued and the extermination went on.

During the summer of 1853, Dr. Bunnell and E. G. Barton traded and mined on the Merced on the north side, several miles above the north fork, but that winter the place was plundered, desolated and the two men in charge murdered. The body of one was pierced nine times with five arrows still quivering in the flesh when found. Boling was then sheriff' of Mariposa County, but the case was beyond his jurisdiction, the supposition being that the crime was perpetrated by Tuolumne renegades once under Tenieya and that they were on the Upper Tuolumne.

The last serious Indian outbreak in the valley was in the summer of 1856, when the Four Creeks of Tulare went on the warpath. Volunteer companies ran them down in six weeks, and there has not been another uprising since. Fresno County contributed some fifty rangers for this campaign, the Millerton and vicinity company under Ira Stroud and the Coarse Gold and Fresno River company under John L. Hunt.