Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley 203 



southernmost of the three dialects of the once great Me-wuk 

 family — a family comprising a group of closely related tribes 

 occupying the western foothills and lower slopes of the Sierra 

 Nevada from Cosumnes River south to Fresno Creek. 



ORIGIN OF THE NAME YOSEMITE 



In this connection it is interesting to recall how the name Yo- 

 semite originated. In the early spring of 1851 the valley was 

 invaded by an Indian-chasing expedition. The word Yosemite, 

 said to be the name of the native Indian tribe, was proposed by 

 Dr. L. H. Bunnell, a member of the expedition, and accepted 

 by the others while still in the valley.* During the early fifties 

 there was some controversy between Bunnell and Hutchings as 

 to whether the proper form was Yo-sem'-i-te or Yo-ham-i-te 

 (or Yo-hem-i-te). Hutchings was right, Yo-ham-i-te being 

 the name of the band inhabiting a large and important village 

 on the south bank of Merced River at the place now occupied 

 by Sentinel Hotel and its cottages. These Indians hunted the 

 grizzly bear, whose name — Oo-ho6-ma-te or O-ham'-i-te — gave 

 origin to their own. The tribe next north of the valley called 

 the grizzly Oo-so6-ma-te, which doubtless accounts for the eu- 

 phonious form given by Bunnell and now universally accepted. 



PECULIAR CLASSIFICATION OF THE VILLAGES 



The villages and camps were sharply divided into two catego- 

 ries — those north of Merced River and those south of it. This 

 division has a far deeper and more ancient significance than 

 that indicated by the mere position of the villages with respect 

 to the river, for it goes back to the underlying totemic beliefs 

 that form an important part of the religion of this primitive 

 people. 



If one of the survivors is questioned as to the location of 

 the villages, he in replying constantly makes use of the terms 

 inside and outside as denoting one or the other side of the val- 

 ley ; and if the inquiry is pressed a little farther it soon devel- 

 ops that there is a grizzly-hear side and a coyote side, a land 

 side (Too-noo-kah), and a water side (Kik-koo-ah) . This per- 

 plexing state of affairs leads to the interesting discovery that 



*L. H. Bunnell, "How the Yo-Semite Valley was Discovered and Named." 

 Hutchings California Magazine, pp. 498-504, San Francisco, May, 1859. 



