Talk:History of the Yosemite area/Archive 1

John Muir

Interesting sidenote: I have a letter from a great uncle who was a ranger at Yosemite and Sequoia parks in the 30s. He relates the utter hatred that local people had for John Muir back then because in preserving the land for the future, he was taking jobs (and homes?) away from the locals. I guess that's one measure of his effectiveness. shoaler 15:04, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The letter is handwritten and I just have a photocopy, but here's part that I've transcribed. Some of it is a little raw:

Mariposa Grove of Big Trees Sept. 24, 1932

Dear Old Nan, et at:

Now the winter is a'comin' on up here, and we begin to wonder where our summer's wages have gone. There is a frosty feel in the air, and I have had to pull up a second blanket and even a third. The poison-oakers, the home guard, the foothill natives, have been predicting a storm for two weeks past. And I reckon we will have a storm eventually; if not, it will be a long dry spell, as the feller says.

Can you or Pol, or any of you, imagine camping and working right near the big trees and getting paid for it? "Big Trees" is the exact English name for them; Sequoia Gigantea the Latin, as you probably know. Anyhow, they are enormous things. Some are three hundred feet tall, & that's almost as tall as a football field is long. It must be about that far from your house to the Village Hall. ¡Figuraselo!

And some are 27 feet in diameter at 10 feet above the ground. Measure the length of your living room and see how it compares. Someone figured out that one tree, the Grizzly Giant, contains enough lumber to make a hanger for the Akron from one-inch boards, with enough lumber remaining to build two average dwelling houses.

So much for statistics; the trees are wonders any way you look at them. Majestic is the word, I guess, and you know I'm not given to slopping over. So shapely, so big, such pretty combination of red-brown bark and green green foliage. The leaves somewhat resemble a cedar, and somewhat a cypress, they say.

Well, in the southwest corner of the Park there is a high valley where there are several hundred of these trees. The geologists say that these trees extended in a belt north and south for many miles a few million years ago. Then came the glaciers moving down westward from the High Sierras and ground out most of the Big Tree belt, leaving only scattered groves which have persisted until now.

In the Mariposa Grove there are roads, and a museum where a ranger-naturalist of the Park Service is stationed from June through Labor Day. The museum is a replica of, and on the site of, the old log cabin built by Galen Clark who is said to have discovered the grove in 1857. By the way, they say that when Clark "discovered" the grove in that year, he found an axe and a shovel leaning against one of the Big Trees. What do you make of that! Furthermore, the natives hereabouts say that John Muir was a lazy bum, a horsethief, a sheepstealer, and that he had a ghost do his writing for him. Thus are our ideas shattered.

By the way, again, these foothill men, many of whom are working here in the Park, seem to be a type of the Simon-pure Californians. So different from the transplanted Iowans, the real-estate ballyhooers, the scramblers to live off each other that infest the Los Angeles country. These birds were born in the foothills, their parents were before them, and probably their grandparents too, maybe. They have worked in the woods, in the gold mines (the foothills below us are in the mother lode country), and know the country & where to hunt & where to catch fish.

We have a comp of tents, arranged in a rectangle, the cook-shack at one end. In the enclosed area, an enormous bonfire burns night & morning. In the evening, and on our double holiday (Saturday & Sunday off - 5 day Hoover week) there are almost endless games of cribbage and pinochle, and a continuous round of discussion and oration about the depression, wages, jobs, Japan, China, Russia, Aimee, Sunny Jim Rolph, and what a big bum Hoover is. Our weekly wage cut 162/3 %, but our board remains the same. True the board-cost was reduced 121/2% in June, by a local change in the Park. And no corresponding 162/3 % increase in the number of men employed; on the day when Hoover made one of his Pollyanna spiels about increase of employment, spreading of work, 4 men (about 10% of the total) were laid off in this camp, and men have been laid off frequently in the last month, throughout the Park.

What's the dope, the inside dope of Kiplinger & all? Is the nadir reached and passed, or is it only made to appear so by the kited stockmarket and the cheerful bits from Youngstown and Bethlehem, all sponsored by the Republican aspirants?

At the Rangers Club, where I stayed in the Valley (Yosemite Valley), they had the S.F. Examiner, which is so sensational. I used to buy the Chronicle, but it proved so prostrate before Hoover, that I finally subscribed for the S.F. Daily News, a Scripps-Howard evening sheet that is not so bad.

Down there in the Valley the summer was wonderful. Broad fields of uncut grass. The Merced River meandering through groves of Yellow Pine and Oak. Deer grazing here & there. A paddock of elk. Sheer granite walls rising a half-mile high in grandeur, until I at best got a little bit of a shut-in feeling. I like to be where I can "see off" to mountains 15 or 50 miles away. A multiplicity of roads, on which tourists mostly from California continuously passed. Every week-end night, a program of volunteer talent at Camp 15, with a whistling fool from Oklahoma U. as master of ceremonies. There an old fiddler who stamped as he sawed Turkey in the Straw & The Arkansas Traveler; a homely fat girl who played accordion rather well, while her homely thin girl-friend played piano, & the two sang "first" & "second" in old Methodist hymns. A round Jew who told funny jokes in Jew & Gentile, Irish and Negro. And everybody singing foolish rounds about "Scotland's Burning" and "Killee Killee Killee Killee Watch Watch Watch Watck Ki O Kinkum Kawa." Old and young, overalls and sport clothes all in a big semi-circle and having just a good time. And every night a Ranger Naturalist to tell about Geology or Trees or Birds or the delights of the High Sierra, or the days of the 49ers. And every night, that bizarre monstrosity, The Fire-fall. At nine o'clock p.m. a stentorian voiced attaché of the Curry company shouts from Camp Curry in the Valley, "Hello-o-o Glacier Point!" It's like hollering from Plandome to Manhasset; it's further, in fact. It's about a mile horizontally and a half mile vertically. Another employee hollers back from the top of Glacier Point, "Hello-o-o-o, Camp Curry," prolonging it like a hog-caller. Then Curry calls up, "Let the fire fall." And in the silence, the bated breath of the hundreds of dudes gathered below, comes back a little from Glacier Point, "All right" trailing downward in the end. Then the men up above, having had a roaring fire burning for hours on top of the cliff, begin to push the glowing embers over, and they are seen as a glowing red cascade, as the coals fall a thousand feet or more thru the air. As they push more embers over, this firefall continues for 3, 4, 5 minutes, during which time someone sings a weird nature song of McDowell or whatnot, everybody cranes his neck upward, or exclaims or remains silent in awe, according to his nature; cars parked at vantage points dim their lights; the young summer lovers wish it would end, for then the music would start in the dance hall, the nightly dance would begin; the employees who are here regularly soon begin to go about their business, letting the fire fall as it will.

Shoaler 12:32, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yosemite Indians were Paiute

The reference that suggests that the original Ahwahneechees were Miwok is not correct. The first account written by Lafayette Bunnell states "Ten-ie-ya was recognized, by the Mono tribe, as one of their number, as he was born and lived among them until his ambition made him a leader and founder of the Pai-Ute colony in Ah-wah-ne. His history and warlike exploits formed a part of the traditionary lore of the Monos. They were proud of his successes and boasted of his descent from their tribe, although Ten-ie-ya himself claimed that his father was the chief of an independent people, whose ancestors were of a different race."[1]Which meant that Ahwahneechees were a totally seperate tribe from any around, including the Miwoks. Chief Tenaya's mother was documented to be Mono Paiute. Tenaya married a Mono Lake Paiute woman and had children with her. That would indicate that Chief Tenaya's children would be mainly Paiute and not Miwok as mistakenly written. The undisputable Paiute territory included the mountain regions of the Sierra, from north to south. Miwoks held the lower ground from the foothills and lower. They were not friends. If you'd like more information on this, please read some of the posts at www.yosemitecampers.com in the Yosemite Indian categories,[2] where the Yosemite area Indians have discussed this at length. Some of the posters are actually directly related to Chief Tenaya.

1910 Map of Miwok territory by noted California Indian anthropologist C. Hart Merriam.[3]

Note that east of the Miwok territory is Paiute area. This is the earliest map of the Indian territory around Yosemite. Note that most of the Yosemite area is in Paiute land except around El Portal. Which is the entrance of Yosemite park.

By this time Miwoks had moved into the area. Before 1910 Merriam wrote that there was not a Miwok camp there twenty years before.

New definition of Yosemite

New definition of Yosemite was created in 1978 by one Craig D. Bates and is not correct. Bates changed the definition to "Some of them are killers", but that is not the original definition. He did this to explain why his wife's tribe, the Miwoks, were afraid of the Yosemite Indians. He was employed as the official Yosemite Indian ethnologist, but many Native Yosemite Indians believe he created this new definition for his own reasons.

Inline links

Just a thought, should the inline links in this article be there, or are they better off being converted to Template:Cite web with <ref> tags? MyNameIsNotBob 10:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

California bear

The official "State Animal" is the "California Grizzly Bear." The following is the quote from the official State of California website about the State Animal:

"The California grizzly bear (Ursus californicus) was designated official State Animal in 1953. Before dying out in California, this largest and most powerful of carnivores thrived in the great valleys and low mountains of the state, probably in greater numbers than anywhere else in the United States. As humans began to populate California, the grizzly stood its ground, refusing to retreat in the face of advancing civilization. It killed livestock and interfered with settlers. Less than 75 years after the discovery of gold, every grizzly bear in California had been tracked down and killed. The last one was killed in Tulare County in August 1922, more than 20 years before the authority to regulate the take of fish and wildlife was delegated to the California Fish and Game Commission by the State Legislature."

See Official State website

In addition, the following is the quote from the official State of California website about the California state flag:

"On June 14, 1846, a small band of settlers marched on the Mexican garrison at Sonoma and took the commandant, Mariano Vallejo, prisoner, They issued a proclamation which declared California to be a Republic independent of Mexico. This uprising became known as the Bear Flag Revolt after the hastily designed flag depicting a grizzly bear and a five pointed star over a red bar and the words "California Republic." The grizzly bear was a symbol of great strength while the lone star made reference to the lone Star of Texas. The flag only flew until July 9, 1846 when it was learned that Mexico and the United States were already at war. Soon after, the Bear Flag was replaced with the American flag. It was adopted as the State Flag by the State Legislature in 1911." (Emphasis supplied.)

See Official State website. NorCalHistory 07:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

References

Given that there are very few references in the article that can be reasonably attributed to any of the statements, I have marked this page as not adequately citing its sources, per WP:V and WP:OR. Keep in mind Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. UBeR ~ 00:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The page has plenty of references so the article tag you're using is inappropriate. If there are individual contentions you find improperly sourced, use an inline {cn|date=March 2007} tag and discuss here. -- TedFrank 23:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Ted, "If you encounter a harmless statement that lacks attribution, you can tag it with the {{Fact}} template, or move it to the article's talk page with a comment requesting attribution. If the whole article or an entire section is unsourced, you can use the {{unreferenced}} template." Given a majority of the article is non-attributable, this would be burdensome and messy to add [Template:Cn|{cn|date=March 2007}]] everywhere. For more in depth discussion of what I'm talking about, visit here: WP:ATT. ~ UBeR 23:45, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The article is well referenced and it is a featured article. Most likely the bulk of the writing was done prior to the development of the current citation techniques and is quite uncontroversial. Unless there is some question about specific bits of information which could easily be tagged with a cite needed tag, then there should be no need to question the overall references listed. Adding an ugly unref tag to the top of a featured article with no specific good reason is simply disruptive. Futhermore to edit war over the tag in this case comes close to vandalism or WP:POINT. I have no clue why you chose to slap that unneeded tag on this article - where else are you waging your war of disruption. There is no obvious controversy here - and no need for that tag. Vsmith 00:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC) Further, to quote from Wikipedia:Attribution:

Material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and quotations, should be accompanied by a clear and precise citation, normally written as a footnote, a Harvard reference, or an embedded link; other methods, including a direct description of the source in the article text, are also acceptable.

Now just what bits of material in this article do you feel is likely to be challenged? Vsmith 00:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Please note that this article was derived at the end of 2004 (by User:Maveric149) from several main sources, listed at History of the Yosemite area#Major works cited. If the consensus is that we need specific citations, I would recommend posting a request to User talk:Maveric149 asking for more specifics. hike395 01:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Obviously the issue isn't about being featured or looking pretty. The FA came before the current WIAFA. Policy supersedes prettiness. Common knowledge is allowed not be sourced. However, does the average person really know humans lived in the Yosemite area 8,000 to 10,000 years ago? Really? How can I check this fact? If there really is a source stating this fact, how can I be sure which one? This is why having just a section of is basically indiscriminate collection of sources is bad. This is why I added the template. Again, "If you encounter a harmless statement that lacks attribution, you can tag it with the {{Fact}} template, or move it to the article's talk page with a comment requesting attribution. If the whole article or an entire section is unsourced, you can use the {{unreferenced}} template." Given a majority of the article is non-attributable, this would be burdensome and messy to add {{Fact}} everywhere. ~ UBeR 03:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Since you asked me to look into this, UBer, here is my take. Ready?

You are (a) fighting a losing battle and (b) wasting time and (c) headed for a 3RR block.

You made your point already: you think there aren't enough references. Well, try tagging each unreferenced claim which you dispute.

Better, yet, tag them and list a few on the talk page.

Do not keep putting the tag in. It seems "tendentious". --Uncle Ed 03:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Second that. Listen to Uncle Ed and the Puppy here. Start by stating precisely what in the article you feel is not supported by the given references; discuss civilly with other editors of this article, and learn to work with others. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I've done both, actually. ~ UBeR 22:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No you haven't! She and I never agree on anything, but if we agree on this, odds are you're missing something.

Please make a list - right here - of what in the article you feel is not supported by the given references. Don't argue about each one, just list them, like this:

• ref #53 about nylon-eating snails - does not support the view that the Flying Spaghetti Monster crushes their sheels with his wiggly appendages.
• ref #57 about bears attacking humans - article text implies that Smokey the Bear started forest fires when tourists stole his picnic basket, but the ref was actually to an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon show, not to the actual park
• ref #63 about wolves eating sheep in Nebraska - no mention of sheep in the ref, which was about field mice in Alaska

Can you do this for me and the puppy? --Uncle Ed 23:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes - please either add 'cite needed' tags or list specific things that should be cited here and I will dig up the references I used to create this article and add inline cites. --mav 03:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Inline citations

The article has too few of them for FA. Most FA's have like 50 to 80 of them. This has 10 or 11, I think. Shannon1^{talk contribs} 20:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The article is very well written, but lacks them almost entirely, is what I mean.Shannon1^{talk contribs} 20:29, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I plan to work on adding more. --mav (please help review urgent FAC and FARs) 06:02, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Added 9 from main Yosemite article —hike395 (talk) 15:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Riot

• Yosemite Riots! I was there! Here's the real story. There were a quite a few people congregating in Stoneman Meadow. Most were sitting on blankets enjoying the view a few were throwing frizbies around. It was a very peaceful setting. Suddenly the meadow was surrounded with rangers. Most were on horseback carrying ax handles and/or ropes. Also, there was the sudden arrival of dozens of ranger squad cars. It was a very organized and well planed "riot"! They shouted "disburse" through their bullhorns and one minute later, the horse riders charged the kids in the meadow. They were swinging their ax handles and ropes indiscriminately. Many heads were hit. People were injured. It was the Park Service that rioted. NOT the kids in the meadow.
  • Posted by 74.38.53.185 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), moved to talkpage by   Will Beback  talk  06:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I commented on FARC and. . .

I was bold and did additional proofing-type corrections. I intended my commentary to be complete enough so you can follow them. Good luck on the FAR. Bettymnz4 (talk) 18:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your edits and declaration. :) --mav (reviews needed) 02:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)