**CLPRA scripts are working drafts for recording sessions. Recorded performances may vary due to editing for broadcast.** Links key: CLP Atlas Informational (with hover) Online Books CLP Author page CLP Intern

L.H. Bunnell (1824-1903)

http://tinyurl.com/Bunnell Click the below to hear radio segment.

Tenaya Lake

From The Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851, 1880. Read Online

Reader: Daniel Maloney

Conflicts in California between white settlers and the Indians who lived here first were sometimes settled by force. Afterwards, it was the use of words that punctuated the conclusion.

Intent on relocating a group of "troublesome" Yosemite Indians, in 1851 the Mariposa Battalion, including New York native L. H. Bunnell, entered Yosemite Valley to capture the group and their leader, Chief Tenaya. After they achieved their objective, they gave names to various landmarks, sadly oblivious that in the process they were erasing previous ones.

As we climbed the mountains I looked back on the lovely little lake from which we were leading the last remnant of the once dreaded Yosemites to a territory from which it was designed they should never return as a people. I waited for Tenieya to come up and told him that we had given his name to the lake and the river. At first he seemed unable to comprehend our purpose, repeating: "It already has a name." Upon telling him that we had named it Tenieya because it was upon the shores of the lake that we had found his people, who would never return to it to live, his countenance fell, and he at once left us and rejoined his own family circle. His expression as he left us indicated that he thought the naming of the lake no equivalent for the loss of the territory.

After his experiences with the Mariposa Battalion, L. H. Bunnel served as a surgeon during the civil war. The Discovery of the Yosemite appeared in 1880.