Born to Climb: From Rock Climbing Pioneers to Olympic Athletes
Excerpt from Chapter X: On Stolen Land
Yosemite Valley is located in the western part of Sierra Nevada, a mountain range stretching through the present-day states of Nevada and California. When in 1848 the first lump of gold was accidentally discovered in the foothills of the Sierra, the entire population of California amounted to roughly 157,000 people. Six and a half thousand were of Spanish or Mexican origin, and fewer than 800 were non-native Americans. The remaining population was composed of the Karok, Maidu, Cahuilleno, Mojave, Yokuts, Pomo, Miwok, Paiute, Modoc and other indigenous tribes.
Within less than a decade, the California Gold Rush brought to Sierra Nevada roughly 300,000 migrants from all over the world. The settlers introduced laws which displaced the native tribes and forced them into reservations. Organised rides were a punishment for those who disobeyed and, in 1851, an armed militia attacked the Miwok and Yokuts people. They destroyed villages and food stores, killing or imprisoning whomever they found. Chasing their victims, they entered into Ahwahnee – or, as it is known today, the Yosemite Valley. They found there the peaceful people of Ahwahneechee, as well as refugees from various other tribes. The few survivors were removed to the Fresno River Reservation.
During the first two years of the California Gold Rush alone, around 100,000 Native Americans perished – murdered, starved or killed by diseases brought by the settlers. By 1873, there were only 30,000 left. The Ahwahneechee began returning to Yosemite as soon as their persecutors retreated. Finally, they were allowed to stay, but never again on their own terms.
Following the raid, accounts of Yosemite’s stunning scenery soon attracted more white visitors and settlers. In 1855, English journalist and entrepreneur James Hutchings hired two native guides to see the valley for himself, later writing:
‘Descending towards the Yo-Semite Valley, we came upon a high point clear of trees from whence we had our first view of the singular and romantic valley; and as the scene opened in full view before us, we were almost speechless with wondering admiration at its wild and sublime grandeur.’
For $400, he purchased a dilapidated, crude inn at the heart of the Valley and proceeded to further publicise Yosemite’s beauty. In 1861, his new employee was a thirty-one-year-old Scot, John Muir. He was as passionate about the Valley as his employer, but more charismatic. The visitors quickly recognised him as the expert, causing friction with Hutchings. John Muir quit his job and within two months found a new calling: an article about Yosemite’s glaciers began his career as a naturalist.
Meanwhile, out of the estimated 10,000 Ahwahneechee who had lived in the Valley before, fewer than a thousand remained. The biggest village, rebuilt after the destruction wrought by the raid, counted 300 heads. But even for those lucky enough to stay, the living conditions were increasingly difficult – dispossessed of their traditional ways of life, the only way they could survive was to find employment in the service of the settlers. At best, they were seen as a tourist attraction, showing off their traditional crafts and selling their wares.
John Muir and other early naturalists, although concerned about the preservation of Yosemite’s natural beauty, were not interested in the welfare of its original inhabitants. In 1890, largely thanks to Muir’s vigorous campaigning, Yosemite was made into a national park, ensuring that it could not be destroyed by agriculture, farming or tourism. By law, the Ahwahnee no longer belonged to the Ahwahneechee. The National Park was created out of ‘pristine’ and ‘uninhabited wilderness’, and history went on to systemically erase the violent dispossession of those who had once called it home.
John Muir founded the Sierra Club – ‘to explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast’ – only two years later.
Much of the High Sierra was still unexplored by the whites, and the Club members devoted themselves to mapping the mountains and christening every geological feature they saw. When Francis Farquhar witnessed the new techniques brought by Robert Underhill from the Alps, he immediately commissioned him to write an extensive piece for the Sierra Club Bulletin. ‘On the Use and Management of the Rope in Rock Work’ (1931) for the first time exposed to Americans to the gear tactics used by alpine climbers for decades. Underhill was also invited to California to teach in person. The Sierra Club climbers quickly formed a rock-climbing section and practised their new belay skills. Still, the ropes could not be trusted to arrest anything but a second climber’s slip, and leader falls were still unthinkable.
In autumn 1933, three climbers – Jules Eichorn, Bestor Robinson, Dick Leonard – mustered the courage to attempt the Higher Cathedral Spire, one of the two impressive pinnacles standing opposite El Capitan. To protect it, they took a bunch of ten-inch-long nails which they intended to use instead of pitons, still unknown in the US. Despite their best efforts, after a few hours they had to retreat. Immediately after, they placed a mail order to receive some proper gear from Munich. They returned to the Higher Spire in spring 1934, this time with real pitons, and soon stood on top, using both free and aid climbing to reach the summit. The ethics taught to them by Underhill rejected any direct aid, but the sheer difficulty of climbing on the Higher Spire forced compromises.
By the end of the decade, only twenty-two more routes were established in the Valley, testament to how challenging early Yosemite climbing was. Meanwhile, parallel to climbing, a more serious drama was unfolding.
From 1916, the Park Service took it upon itself to ‘preserve, revive and maintain [the] interest of Indians in their own games and industries’ and a fetishised ideal of an ‘authentic Indian’ was to be sold to white tourists during the Indian Field Days. The Park Service would closely manage the Ahwahneechee way of life and use it for financial gain. In addition, the Field Days were an occasion for the officials to ‘civilise’ the tribe, include them in the capitalist economy and educate them to eventually become American citizens.
The rare times when officials seemed genuinely concerned about the decline of the native culture, can perhaps be explained by the fact that it was seen as yet another commodity craved by the white settlers. The programme from the 1923 Yosemite Field Days announced that ‘the interest centred on the problems of the fast disappearing Indian race, should rank Yosemite’s efforts to preserve their customs as one of national importance’. Around the same time, marketing strategies were employed to attract consumers to the event, turning it into a major fair and generating significant revenues for the Park Service. Tens of thousands of tourists per year poured into Yosemite to experience their fantasy of wilderness and the ‘authentic Indian’.
The Ahwahneechee village, destroyed in the 1851 raid and rebuilt with traditional u-mu-cha dwellings, provided a backdrop for the Field Days. In front of its pointy wooden domes, native women weaved baskets sold to the increasing numbers of visitors. However, the village had long been considered ‘an eyesore’ and ‘a nuisance’ by the Park Service, which even considered ordering hide teepees that could better fit with tourists’ expectations. A new development plan proposed in the late twenties provided an excuse to raze the village to the ground – without consulting its inhabitants. In addition, the authorities made sure to ‘impress upon them in a proper way, that their residence [in the valley was] a privilege, and not a vested right; [and] that this privilege [was] dependent upon proper deportment’.
A new settlement was constructed to reflect the white people’s image of what they deemed the right balance between native authenticity and civilisation. Twelve cabins, all under forty metres square, housed up to eight family members each. This was all that in 1934 remained of the Ahwahneechee people.
