During the past few years a rapidly growing interest in the
native Indians has been manifested by a large majority of
visitors to the Yosemite Valley. They have evinced a great desire
to see them in their rudely constructed summer camps, and to
purchase some articles of their artistic basket and bead work, to
take away as highly prized souvenirs.
They are also anxious to learn something of their former modes of
life, habits and domestic industries, before their original
tribal relations were ruthlessly broken up by the sudden advent
of the white population of gold miners and others in 1850, and
the subsequent war, in which the Indians were defeated, and, as
a result, nearly exterminated.