People of the West

Reservations

Chief Tenaya leads the Ahwahneechee in a desperate stand to defend Yosemite from James Savage and the Mariposa Battalion. Raids on trading posts spark all-out war, and federal treaty commissioners move to strip Native nations of their homelands, forcing them onto barren reservations. In the struggle between survival and surrender, Tenaya resists through strategy and defiance. Rather than a story of pioneers taming wilderness, this chapter reveals Native determination to protect home and homeland against relentless conquest.