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Petition to Congress on Behalf of the Yosemite Indians (1978) (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
PETITION TO CONGRESS 2/3
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, THE PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES,
AND TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.
Your Honors:
We, the undersigned chiefs and head men
of the existing remnants of the tribes of the
Yo-Semite, the Mono and the Piute Indians,
who hold claims upon that gorge in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains known as the Yosemite
Valley, and the lands around and about it, by
virtue of direct descent from the aforenamed
tribes, who were inhabitants of that valley and
said territory at the time when it was so
unjustifiably conquered and taken from our
fathers by the whites, do utter, petition and
pray your Excellency and your honorable
bodies in Congress assembled to hear, deliberate upon, and give us relief, for the following
reasons to wit:
Ist. In all of the difficulties, disagreements,
quarrels, and violences which sprang up between our fathers and the whites of their days,
the first causes can invariably be traced to the
overbearing tyranny and oppression of the
white gold hunters, who had and who were
continually usurping our territory. Those
Causes were briefly as follows: The white gold
hunters brought among us drunkenness, lying,
murder, forcible violation of our women,
cheating, gambling, and wrongful appropriation of our lands for their own selfish uses. We
have been made aware that at this period there
was no harmonious system of laws or bonds of
restraint operating to check the lawlessness or
Violence of these bands of adventurous and
desperate white men, who had sought our
shores in search of gold, and little or nothing
Could be expected of them as remuneration for
our lands; nor could punishment be inflicted
upon them by laws which, if existing, remained
in the main unenforced: yet in after years, when
the long list of oppressions and outrages to
Which our fathers were forced to submit at the
hands of the whites had long ended by the
slaughter and dispersal of our tribes, no notice
was taken of the few who remained, and who
from then until now have continued to travel to
and fro, poorly-clad paupers and unwelcome
guests, silently the objects of curiosity or
contemptuous pity to the throngs of strangers
who yearly gather in this our own land and
heritage. We are compelled to daily and hourly
witness the further and continual encroachments of a few white men in this our valley. The
gradual destruction of its trees, the occupancy
of every foot of its territory by bands of
grazing horses and cattle, the decimation of the
fish in the river, the destruction of every means
of support for ourselves and families by the
rapacious acts of the whites, in the building of
their hotels and operating of their stage lines,
which must shortly result in the total exclusion
of the remaining remnants of our tribes from
this our beloved valley, which has been ours
from time beyond our faintest traditions, and
which we still claim. Therefore, in support of
Our petition, we beg leave to offer the following
reasons for our prayer:
Ist. We, as Indians and survivors of the
aforenamed tribes, declare that we were unfairly and unjustly deprived of our possessions in
land, made to labor in the interest of the whites
for no recompense, subjected to continual
brutality, wrong, and outrage at the hands of
the whites, and were gradually driven from our
homes into strange localities by their action,
and that our few retaliatory acts were feeble
and deserving of no notice, in comparison to
the gross injustices and outrages that we were
continually subjected to. And we respectfully
call your attention to the official report of Maj.
Gen. Thomas J. Green to Gov. Peter H.
Burnett, dated May 25, 1850, (page 769, Journals of the Legis. of Cal. for 1851); Brig. Gen.
Thomas B. Eastland’s report to Gov. Burnett,
June 15th, 1850, (page 770, Ibid); letters of
Gen. Eastland to Gov. McDougal (page 770,
Ibid), and various others. If we were in the
wrong the punishment we have suffered and