The Mariposa Battalion: First Outsiders Into Yosemite
Near Wawona, California
In the spring of eighteen fifty one, a group of California militia volunteers entered these mountains looking for a band of Ahwahnechee people who had raided a trading post in the foothills. The group was called the Mariposa Battalion, commanded by Major James Savage, a trader who spoke several indigenous languages. The battalion pushed deeper into the mountains in March of eighteen fifty one, reaching the valley on March twenty-seventh.
What happened next made history, though not for any military reason. The battalion became the first group of non-Native people to leave a detailed account of entering what would become Yosemite Valley. They were not there to sightsee.
They were there to remove the Ahwahnechee and force them onto a reservation in the San Joaquin Valley. Many were captured. Others fled into the high country and never surrendered.
One member of the battalion, a doctor named Lafayette Bunnell, recorded his impressions in remarkable detail, publishing an account years later that helped spread word of the valley's extraordinary scenery. But the battalion had a job to do, and they did it. The valley the Ahwahnechee had called home for centuries became a place that would eventually be visited by millions of people who knew little of the circumstances of its so-called discovery.
