Crow's Range

An Environmental History Of The Sierra Nevada

David Beesley

• Verlag: University of Nevada Press
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780874176346
• Thema: Historia
• Thema: Historia del mundo

John Muir called it the "Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I've ever seen." The Sierra Nevada—a single unbroken mountain range stretching north to south over four hundred miles, best understood as a single ecosystem but embracing a number of environmental communities—has been the site of human activity for millennia. From the efforts of ancient Native Americans to encourage game animals by burning brush to create meadows to the burgeoning resort and residential development of the present, the Sierra has endured, and often suffered from, the efforts of humans to exploit its bountiful resources for their own benefit. Historian David Beesley examines the history of the Sierra Nevada from earliest times, beginning with a comprehensive discussion of the geologic development of the range and its various ecological communities. Using a wide range of sources, including the records of explorers and early settlers, scientific and government documents, and newspaper reports, Beesley offers a lively and informed account of the history, environmental challenges, and political controversies that lie behind the breathtaking scenery of the Sierra. Among the highlights are discussions of the impact of the Gold Rush and later mining efforts, as well as the supporting industries that mining spawned, including logging, grazing, water-resource development, market hunting, urbanization, and transportation; the politics and emotions surrounding the establishment of Yosemite and other state and national parks; the transformation of the Hetch Hetchy into a reservoir and the desertification of the once-lush Owens Valley; the roles of the Forest Service, Park Service, and other regulatory agencies; the consequences of the fateful commitment to wildfire suppression in Sierran forests; and the ever-growing impact of tourism and recreational use. Through Beesley's wide-ranging discussion, John Muir's "divinely beautiful" range is revealed in all its natural and economic complexity, a place that at the beginning of the twenty-first century is in grave danger of being loved to death. Available in hardcover and paperback.

1: A Sierra Shaped by Native People

For the Ahwahnichi of the south-central Sierra Nevada, Yosemite Valley was an everyday place. It was loved, to be sure, and the people who considered it part of their home territory have struggled to maintain their ties to it regardless of the efforts of military conquerors and federal authorities to deny their rights of ownership and occupation.¹ This devotion to the Valley is clearly expressed in the following Miwok creation story:

The Great Spirit gathered a band of his favorite children and led them on a long and wearisome journey until they reached the Valley now known as Yosemite. Here the Great Spirit made them rest and make their home. Here they found food in abundance for all. The streams were swarming with fish. The meadows were thick in clover. The trees and bushes gave them acorns, pine-nuts, fruits and berries, while in the forests were herds of deer and other animals which gave them meat and skins for food and clothing. Here they multiplied and grew prosperous and built their villages.²

The Valley is at about 4,000-foot elevation and snowy in winter. So this group of Mountain Miwok spent part of their year in villages lower down, on the Merced River at El Portal, Bull Creek, Hite’s Cave, or at other sites nearby on the Tuolumne River. This was more typical and warmer western Sierra foothill country, and it was here that permanent villages were located. But when the snow receded, many Ahwahnichi reclaimed their Valley camps, accepted other Miwok and Yokuts visitors from adjacent areas, and made the long trek over the Sierra to renew trade and other social contacts with their Mono Paiute neighbors to the east.³

Yosemite was a place where people lived, where they raised families, and where they obtained food, fibers, and construction and ceremonial materials that made their life possible. They also burned unwanted shrubs and trees and thus helped maintain the Valley in an open and more usable condition.⁴ The same was true for other native groups whose homelands were in the range. As with the Ahwahnichi, these other native groups have made attempts to assert their claims to traditional areas.⁵

Sierran Natives: The Mountain Miwok As Icons

For thousands of years Sierran natives made the range their home. In areas they inhabited or used frequently, they may have played a role in influencing the local geography, landscapes, and hydrological systems. Some anthropologists now call their actions a form of environmental management. The choices they made in their relationship with plants of their home regions may have affected local forest composition, as well as shaping nearby meadows, river system environments, and grasslands. Their hunting activities may have influenced population numbers and diversity of the mammals that they regularly killed. Most significant of all their effects on Sierra landscapes was their intelligent use of fire. Through their actions they worked within natural fire conditions to make those portions of the Sierra they inhabited relatively fireproof, useful, and productive of diverse floral resources.⁶

The native period provides a constructive example in how people can imagine a sustainable relationship with the Sierra, one that left all of its natural systems basically intact even though modified by human occupation. It is the only period in the Sierra Nevada’s environmental history when such a relationship of humans with the range has existed.

As a result of the great diversity in subregions, elevations, latitudes, and vegetation types, and because of the differences between the east and west slopes of the Sierra, generalizations about Sierran natives’ use of the range are not simple to make. Also, the fact that much of the native way of life in the Sierra was rapidly destroyed in the nineteenth century makes reconstruction of their lives difficult. But by focusing on the Mountain Miwok and the Awahnichi, we can piece together a tentative picture of the native environmental world. This account of their life-ways sets the stage for a more comprehensive consideration of Sierra Nevada native environmental history later in the chapter—one that will introduce other native groups and their interaction with the range.

Collectively, the Mountain Miwok occupied a very large portion of the central-western slope of the Sierra. They shared many cultural traits with their neighbors because all occupied similar environmental zones stretching north to south. The Miwok also traded and had contact with eastern Sierran groups including the Washoe and the Mono Paiute, thus bringing a blending of eastern with western Sierran cultural patterns.⁷ Fortunately for historians, the Mountain Miwok and Ahwahnichi have been widely studied by anthropologists. They were also the focus of early observations by the first Europeans and European Americans to enter the range.⁸

In modern aesthetic terms, the Miwok people were certainly among the most fortunate of California natives. The territory they occupied included some of the most beautiful landscapes of the range, encompassing the drainages of four major Sierran river systems, the Mokelumne, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Merced, as well as numerous tributaries of these rivers. The nearly twin and spectacularly beautiful Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy Valleys were within tribal boundaries, as was the sequoia grove at Mariposa. The three major geographic groups that made up the Mountain Miwok (Northern, Central, and Southern) utilized all the territory from the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley up to the snowy regions along the Sierran crest.⁹

The Miwok inhabited all the life zones of the central Sierra, ranging from the lower Sonoran through the upper Sonoran and on into the transition zone higher up. Most permanent village sites were located below the 4,000-foot level. Like other California Indian groups, the Miwok used higher-elevation areas seasonally—archeologists have discovered numerous village sites that were reoccupied after the snow disappeared. Yosemite Valley was also a travel route for trade.¹⁰

The Sierra Miwok were not numerous compared with their related Plains Miwok neighbors. But for a mountain people their population was relatively large—somewhere between 2,000 and 2,700.¹¹ Some village sites were quite large and long occupied, as witnessed by recent discoveries near Sonora, California. In 2001 a California Department of Transportation roadbuilding project unearthed an Indian site of at least twenty acres. Dated artifacts show that the Miwok and their predecessors used the area for at least 8,000 years. A CalTrans archeologist said that because of its off-and-on habitation for thousands of years by so many people, “we’re probably looking at the equivalent of a town.”¹²

Dependence on natural food sources tied the Miwok closely to their environment. The lower reaches of their territory connected them to the freshwater marshes associated with the San Joaquin River. Adjacent to this and moving up the major river systems they encountered broadleaf deciduous forests growing along the riverbanks and in the rich bottomlands. The lower and upper Sonoran areas of Miwok territory contained slower-moving streams with riparian vegetation such as willow and other plant species associated with meadowlands. Live oak, gray pine, and blue oak mixed with dry grassland above this.

Rocky slopes marked a further gain in elevation. In the transition or lower montane zone the streams became swifter and boulder talus and rocky cliffs appeared. Two types of chaparral could be found there. Black and golden oak, yellow pine, and Douglas fir were the dominant tree species. In the upper montane, subalpine, and alpine zones, even swifter streams occurred. Riparian vegetation included aspen at this higher elevation. Lodgepole and Jeffrey pine and red fir also became evident. Granite outcroppings and cliffs and deep river canyons were part of this mountain environment as well.¹³

In their quest for food, the natives incorporated nearly all mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and mollusks into their larder. Only one bird, according to pioneer ethnologist Ralph Beals, lay outside the category of what was defined as food: the turkey vulture. Its feathers did find ceremonial uses, however. A Miwok creation story even said that the legendary Coyote made native chiefs from turkey vulture feathers, whereas crow feathers sufficed for making common people.¹⁴

The overall Miwok territory was very large, but most Miwok lived in small communities and occupied only a relatively small portion of it. Within this tribal area they utilized all the life-zones that the village “owned.” Their knowledge of these places was intimate and included names and oral stories for all the local features and various plants and animals they encountered. Within the village’s sphere, they carefully categorized their resources and visited productive sites on regular seasonal cycles. They applied appropriate technologies not only to gain the resource but also to ensure its long-term availability. Proper ceremonial observances were part of this process. Some areas supplied food. Others were regularly visited to provide materials for shelter or cordage, or for minerals.¹⁵

Plants were extremely important in the Miwok resource inventory. Acquiring knowledge through observation and practice was key to native survival, and the plants they interacted with evolved through natives’ intervention and manipulation.¹⁶ A classic study of Miwok culture by Samuel Barrett and Edward Gifford illustrates the depth and breadth of native knowledge of the natural bounty in their territory. Available resources provided all the necessities of life, but it was food resources that tied the Miwok most closely to the natural environment. Although animals, birds, fish, and insects were all important parts of their diet, the plant world served as the most important and most reliable source of seasonal and storable food and medicines. Barrett and Gifford take thirty-six pages of their “Miwok Material Culture” to list and discuss various plants used by those living near Yosemite. Sixty-seven plants are noted for medicinal purposes alone.¹⁷

Miwok use and management of plant resources was intended to encourage abundance. Ethnographic accounts given by surviving native elders point to a spiritual connection with plants that they believed ensured continuing bounty. Proper attention and ritual were needed to show that humans cared for plants and animals. Human-caused disturbances, as well, may have helped shape certain plant species. Pruning of dead or old branches helped restore productivity in useful plants. Fire was probably the natives’ major land-use tool. Controlled fire eliminated unwanted plants or trees and promoted new growth that was more useful than older woody stems and branches. It kept areas open to encourage desirable plants to spread and at the same time produced browse that attracted deer.¹⁸ The Miwok credited the mythical figure Coyote with bringing fire to them and their neighbors, the Yokuts people. He was said to have stolen it from its guardian, Turtle, thus allowing humans to keep warm and to benefit in countless other ways.¹⁹

Of special interest to resource managers in the Sierra today is how intervention by the Miwok in the sequoia/mixed-conifer forests of what is now Yosemite National Park possibly acted to sustain sequoia health. The Mariposa Grove, as we call it today, was a long-occupied Miwok village site. Its native owners relied on it for food and for materials for making weapons, fiber, and baskets. By burning on a regular basis, the Miwok villagers possibly shaped the structure, composition, and vegetation patterns of the grove and the surrounding forestland. Their fires helped sequoia seed germinate. Along with the natural force of lightning, they may have played a role in maintaining the grove and controlling undergrowth that could have fueled life-threatening or resource-destroying large fires.²⁰

The Sierra Nevada, as illustrated by this account of Miwok life, was shaped in part by Sierran natives long before European contact. The geography, hydrological systems, forest structure, plant and animal species, and other important natural elements of the range were modified to suit people who called it home.

Introducing Sierran Native Cultures and Their Homelands

Native Sierrans have had a long and dynamic relationship with the range. This bond imposed restrictions—seasonality and mountainous terrain set limits even today—on the use of its resources. In return, native people used burning and proto-horticultural practices to increase the productive capacity of the land. From this relationship emerged a native perception of the Sierra Nevada and its natural systems—what could be called a landscape of the mind. At the same time, the landscape itself was formed in part by this mindset.²¹

Who were the people who lived in and shaped the Sierra for so many thousands of years? How did these original Sierrans interact with the range and shape it to their needs?

Just as the last glaciers that helped shape the primeval Sierra Nevada began to subside, human beings entered the range. Exactly when these Native Americans first occupied California, Nevada, and the Sierra Nevada is hotly debated by archeologists, but it was probably between 11,000 and 8,000 years ago in the early Holocene, as the region’s weather stabilized and grew warmer at the end of the Ice Age. Evidence for this Sierra Nevada occupation is fragmentary, but tantalizing to consider.²²

The earliest Sierran habitation may have occurred along the northeastern escarpment and the adjacent high country. These first Sierrans are likely to have come from the nearby Great Basin. There the unstable climate—associated with the transition away from Pleistocene patterns—may have forced them to seek refuge in the eastern Sierra to escape drying conditions in the basin. A series of related cultures, called “Tahoe Reach,” “Spooner,” “Martis,” and “Kings Beach” by archeologists, developed over an 8,000-year-long sequence. It is generally assumed that the late Kings Beach group is ancestral to the present-day Washoe. Occupation farther south, in the Owens Valley area, has been dated to 8,000 years ago as well.²³

Entrance into the western flank of the Sierra Nevada came later. Evidence has been found in the southern and central areas adjacent to the Sierra Nevada for human activity around 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. Native Californians may have visited and crossed over the Sierra Nevada at this time but chose to settle permanently elsewhere. Settlement may have been delayed because of low population pressures in other California areas. Those places—plains, valley marshlands, and riparian woodlands—simply offered an abundance of food and material resources. The Sierra Nevada did provide lithic materials, and therefore higher-elevation camps were periodically occupied in very early times. Information gathered at lower foothill sites established nearly 3,000 years ago gives some idea of where their residents lived and camped. It is clear that they relied on their hunting and collecting skills to feed their relatively small populations, thus giving archeologists some idea of their social organization as well. They used Sierran lithic resources, often crossing even the more rugged southern part of the range to acquire them.²⁴ The technology for acorn use, developed around 1,400 to 1,500 years ago, promoted permanent settlement of the southern and central Sierran foothills.²⁵

From a rangewide and ecological perspective, the native people of the Sierra Nevada in the late prehistoric period fall into two main groups. First, there were those who lived in the warmer and moister western flank of the range. These natives relied on hunting, gathering, fishing, and what some anthropologists call “prehorticultural” activities—pruning, tending, and fire management—to provide for their material needs. Then there were those who collected, hunted, pruned, tended, and burned—or, in one notable case, practiced a form of irrigation horticulture—in the arid eastern regions of the range. Both of these groups traded widely and used the higher elevations in the range seasonally.²⁶

The population of Sierran native people is estimated to have been about 90,000 to 100,000 at its highest point, just before European contact. Most of this population was concentrated on the western slope where resources were greatest.²⁷

Ethnographers and surviving descendants of these Sierran natives tell how prehistoric occupants of the range went about their daily lives and interacted with the environment. Their names and territorial homelands are well known for the period when historic contact occurred.²⁸

Often the major drainages of Sierra Nevada rivers and their tributaries marked well-defined group boundaries for west-side dwellers. Although there were some exceptions, complete watersheds of Sierran streams were generally included with...