Tutocanula

"Tutocanula," 15" x 10", mixed media on panel

In 1851, a 49er, Jim Savage, led a militia into Yosemite Valley and set fire to every dwelling and food store in sight. First he attacked the Chowchilla, then later the Ahwahnechee, groups that had inhabited the region for centuries. The so-called Mariposa Indian War lasted for two years. By the end, the Chowchilla and Ahwahnechee were confined to reservations and control of the land had ceded to Savage.

In Discovery of the Yosemite, Lafayette Bunnell, a doctor and adventurer who joined Savage's battalion, recounts the following conversation between himself and Savage, having just torched a food cache. 

I volunteered a suggestion that some new tactics would have to be devised before we should be able to corral the "Grizzlies" [i.e., the Ahwahnechees]... The major looked up from the charred mass of burning acorns, and as he glanced down the smoky valley, said, "This affords the best prospect of any yet discovered; just look!" "Splendid!" I promptly replied, "Yo-sem-i-te must be beautifully grand a few weeks later when the foliage and flowers are at their prime, and the rush of waters has somewhat subsided. Such cliffs and waterfalls I never saw before, and I doubt if they exist in any other place." I was surprised and somewhat irritated by the hearty laugh with which my reply was greeted. The major caught the expression of my eye and shrugged his shoulders... "I suppose that is all right, Doctor, about the waterfalls, etc... but my remark was not in reference to the scenery, but the prospect of the Indians being starved out, and of their coming in to sue for peace. We have all been more or less wet since we rolled up our blankets this morning, and the fire is very enjoyable, but the prospect that it offers to my mind of smoking out the Indians is more agreeable to me than its warmth or all the scenery in creation.

What's particularly loathsome about the passage is the casual conflation of human brutality with aesthetic appreciation for the land, especially knowing the history to come. It reminds me of the Nazi camp guards who'd return home after a hard day of murdering and listen to Wagner. Does such cruelty often attend art? 

In 1863, the man responsible for Central Park in New York, Frederick Olmsted, took over from Savage and Lincoln signed off on a bill passed in Congress to establish Yosemite National Park, the third in the system. Yosemite is not just a park, it's an icon and point of national pride among liberals and conservatives alike. It wasn't established to protect people or even nature so much as to put it on display and to educate the populace about what was worth appreciating—a kind of zoo for rocks and trees, if you will. "Social sanitation through outdoor recreation," one contemporary writer called it.

My painting depicts the famous wet dream of rock climbers, El Capitan, with the valley below, from a spot we hiked up to with our kids this summer. Though brows would wrinkle if you mentioned it, another name for El Cap is Tutocanula, which has to do with an inch worm, Tu-toc, and the mountain's creation, according to one Ahwahnechee legend I dug up on the internet. Ahwahnechee names for other tourist favourites in the park exist too, but like Tutocanula the park's curation doesn't make use of any in official descriptions. 

Below the canonical scene, in a strip depicting white men firing a cannon, is an addition I didn't initially include in the painting until I'd bothered to read up on the early history of Yosemite. The strip is meant to fill in the purely aesthetic version of the story, the one told by rangers, Boy Scout leaders, climbers, hikers, hippies, and nature lovers. 

Alex Honnold climbing Tutocanula in the documentary "Free Solo."

 

The understanding of wilderness that we've inherited through the writings of Frederick Olmsted, John Muir, and others cuts away any hint of human society and people. It turns wilderness into a site of forgetfulness and denial, a kind of willful performance.

In this day of Idle No More, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and the Sunshine Movement—about rounding out the attention we give to all peoples, even those that may not be on our team—wouldn't it be better to look at it all squarely, honestly? To feel and experience it, perhaps, as openly, fairly, and even uncomfortably as we can?