Yosemite Fall (National Park Mystery Series)

by Scott Graham

  “Me?”

  “Of course. Even though Grover mentions in his account the idea that projectile points might have ended up lodged in the cliff wall, I don’t know how long it would have taken me and Clarence to search there, if ever. We’d have been too focused on what was in the dirt underfoot. You saved us from our archaeologist selves.”

  The same pink color as the gemstone in the side of Janelle’s nose rose in her cheeks as Chuck continued. “It’s even better than that, actually. Clarence and I will, of course, go ahead with the full site survey here next week, but your discovery of the ring is as close to validation of Grover’s account as we possibly could hope to find. It tells us his account of the prospectors’ escape from the valley is legit. Not even Sherlock Holmes could definitively solve the Case of the Murdered Gold Prospectors more than a century after the fact. But the ring lends credence to the suspicions about Rose, as suggested by Grover at the end of his account—when Rose shows up in Coarse Gold Gulch and announces that the other prospectors are dead, after which he sells the mine he’d owned with the two dead prospectors and disappears with the money.”

  Janelle took the ring from Chuck’s hand and turned it in her fingers. “So, legitimizing Grover’s overall account adds legitimacy, in turn, to Grover’s suspicion that Rose may have murdered his business partners.”

  “Or paid the tribespeople to kill them for him.”

  “When you put it all together, Rose looks pretty guilty, doesn’t he?”

  “He makes an awfully good suspect.” Chuck bent his fingers back one by one, counting off. “He had motive. He had opportunity. And he clearly profited from the murders.”

  Janelle lowered the ring. “But no one will ever know for sure, will they?”

  “At this point, the only thing we know for certain is who, ultimately, paid the price for the two murders.”

  “I’m guessing you’re about to tell me it wasn’t Rose.”

  “Given the history of the Old West, you can probably guess who it was instead.” Chuck reached for the printed pages, folded in his pocket, of a second account of the prospectors’ murders he’d studied in preparation for fulfilling the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation contract.

  20

  From Discovery of the Yosemite and Ensuing Years by early California explorer Lafayette H. Bunnell:

  Early in May 1852, a small party of miners from Coarse Gold Gulch started out on a prospecting tour with the intention of making a visit to the Yosemite Valley. The curiosity of some of these men had been excited by descriptions of it.

  This party spent some little time prospecting on their way. Commencing on the south fork of the Merced, they tested the mineral resources of streams tributary to it; and then, passing over the divide on the old trail, camped for the purpose of testing the branches leading into the main Merced. While at this camp, they were visited by begging Indians; a frequent occurrence in the mining camps of some localities.

  The Indians appeared friendly, and gave no indications of hostile intentions. They gave the party to understand, however, that the territory they were then in belonged to them, although no tribute was demanded. The miners comprehended their intimations, but paid no attention to their claim, being aware that this whole region had been ceded to the Government by treaty during the year before.

  Having ascertained that [the Indians] were a part of the Yosemite Band, the miners, by signs, interrogated them as to the location of the valley, but this they refused to answer or pretended not to understand. The valley, however, was known to be near, and no difficulty was anticipated when the party were ready to visit it, as an outline map, furnished them before starting, had thus far proved reliable.

  Unsuspicious of danger from an attack, they reached the valley, and were ambushed by the Indians. Two of the party were instantly killed. Another was seriously wounded, but finally succeeded in making his escape. The names of the men were Rose, Sherburn, and Tudor.

  The reports of these murders alarmed many of the citizens. The officer in command at Fort Miller was notified of these murders, and a detachment of regular soldiers under Lt. Moore, U.S.A., was at once dispatched to capture or punish the red-skins. Beside the detachment of troops, scouts and guides and a few of the friends of the murdered men accompanied the expedition.

  Among the volunteer scouts was A. A. Gray, usually called “Gus” Gray. His knowledge of the valley and its vicinity made his services valuable to Lt. Moore, as special guide and scout for that locality. The particulars of this expedition I obtained from Gray.

  Under the guidance of Gray, Lt. Moore entered the valley in the night, and was successful in surprising and capturing a party of five savages; but an alarm was given, and Chief Ten-ie-ya and his people fled from their huts and escaped. On examination of the prisoners in the morning, it was discovered that each of them had some article of clothing that had belonged to the murdered men.

  The naked bodies of the murdered men were found and buried. The captives declared that the valley was their home, and that white men had no right to come there without their consent.

  Lt. Moore told them, through his interpreter, that they had sold their lands to the Government, that it belonged to the white men now; that the Indians had no right there. They had signed a treaty of peace with the whites, and had agreed to live on the reservations provided for them. To this they replied that Ten-ie-ya had never consented to the sale of their valley, and had never received pay for it. The other chiefs, they said, had no right to sell their territory.

  Lt. Moore became fully satisfied that he had captured the real murderers, and the abstract questions of title and jurisdiction were not considered debatable in this case. He promptly pronounced judgment, and sentenced them to be shot. They were at once placed in line, and by his order a volley of musketry from the soldiers announced that the spirits of five Indians were liberated to occupy ethereal space.

  This may seem summary justice for a single individual, in a republic, to mete out to fellow beings on his own judgment. This prompt disposition of the captured murderers was witnessed by a scout sent out by Ten-ie-ya to watch the movements of Lt. Moore and his command, and was immediately reported to the old chief, who with his people at once made a precipitate retreat from their hiding places, and crossed the mountains to their allies, the Paiutes and Monos.

  Here ends the account of Lafayette H. Bunnell

  21

  After reading Bunnell’s account aloud to Janelle, Chuck folded the sheets of paper and slid them into his back pocket against the folded pages of Stephen Grover’s account.

  “I almost have the two accounts of the murders memorized by now,” he told her. He looked east along the ledge at the four uncovered projectile points lying atop the dirt. “Both Grover’s and Bunnell’s descriptions match perfectly with what we’ve found.” He touched the ring in Janelle’s palm. “Especially with what you found.”

  She made a sweeping gesture, the ring cupped in her hand, taking in the vehicles passing on Southside Drive at the foot of the slope, the dozens of hikers on trails crisscrossing the valley floor, and, a mile upriver amid the trees, the valley’s commercial center, Yosemite Village, with its restaurants, gift shops, galleries, visitor center, and museum. “I can’t believe history from a century ago can be so present in the middle of all this. We just walked up the hill and—” she held out her hand “—voilà.”

  He grinned. “You sound like a gung-ho rookie archaeologist.”

  The ring sparkled in the sun. “Finding something like this will do that to a person.”

  “As it should.”

  “But . . .” She hesitated.

  Chuck suspected she was thinking the same thing he was.

  “. . . if someone knew we would find this,” she continued, “they’d have taken it themselves rather than try to scare us away by rolling a boulder down at us. It’s not like it was that hard to find.”

  Chuck nodded. “I’m as confused as you are. They might not have found the
ring in the cliff face right away, but they’d have uncovered the projectile points in a matter of minutes, just like we did.”

  “What if they left the arrowheads for us to find?”

  “You mean, could they have planted them up here?”

  “Something like that. I don’t know.”

  “I can’t figure it out, either.”

  He took the ring from Janelle’s palm. “No way did they plant this,” he said. He used his cell phone to snap a couple of preliminary pictures of the ring, then sealed it in a clear plastic bag from his daypack.

  He held up the bag with the ring inside. “I bet the foundation people will see this as all the evidence they need for the circumstantial case they’re building against Rose, and against Lt. Moore for his summary executions of the five Yosemite tribespeople, too. It’s definitely more than they ever could have hoped we’d find for them.”

  “Don’t forget Grover’s description of the scout who was killed in revenge after the surviving prospectors made it back to the mining camp.”

  “Him, too,” Chuck agreed. “That’s six dead tribespeople, all told, who may well be exonerated in the court of public opinion by your find—not to mention the money the foundation and park service might make off it. Good work.”

  She smiled, her teeth flashing.

  He tucked the bagged ring in his pack. “We don’t dare risk leaving it up here.” He indicated the route back down the slope with an open hand. “Shall we?”

  She looked over her shoulder, where the boulder had crashed down the drainage past them the day before. “I’ll be more than happy to be long gone from here.”

  * * *

  The reunion attendees sat in a loose circle in their campsite after their return from the base of El Capitan. Jimmy slunk low in his webbed seat with his eyes closed. His crutches lay on the ground at his side, his soft-splinted lower leg stretched out in front of him.

  Chuck carried a chair from the Bender Archaeological camp to the reunion camp and unfolded it. Sitting forward in the chair, he displayed the gold ring in its clear plastic bag and told the story of its discovery. He heaped credit on Janelle and described what her find would mean to the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation.

  Leaving his seat, Dale crossed the circle to Chuck and fingered the ring through the layer of plastic. “It’s like Bilbo’s ring, from The Hobbit,” he marveled.

  “Hopefully it’s not quite that evil,” Chuck said. “But it’s worth a fortune, that’s for sure.”

  He recounted the prospectors’ actions as chronicled by Grover, pointing through the trees at the south face of the valley up which the prospectors had escaped. He described the executions of the tribespeople, as reported by Bunnell, too.

  “You get paid to check out things like that?” Dale asked, returning to his chair.

  Chuck passed the ring to Mark, seated beside him. “I usually study ancient history—societies more than five hundred years old. From an archaeological perspective, looking into something that happened only 150 years ago is fairly unusual.”

  Mark studied the bagged ring. “These Indians you’re talking about seem pretty fired up.”

  “‘Indigenous tribespeople’ is the preferred term these days.”

  “What about ‘Native American’?”

  “That’s mostly okay. Some people don’t like the word ‘native,’ though. It’s considered demeaning. And lots of people still like the term ‘American Indian’ as well.”

  “Sounds political.”

  “It is. People fight over the various names all the time these days. As for the Yosemite tribespeople, they were fighting for their ancestral lands here in the valley 150 years ago.” Chuck glanced at the meadow, shimmering in the afternoon sunlight across the road from the campground. “I think we’d all agree this place is worth fighting for.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the Yosemites,” Mark said. “I was asking about the, uh, tribespeople who hired you. Why are they so interested in this stuff after all these years?”

  Chuck leaned forward, addressing Mark and the rest of the group. “Millions of people pass through Yosemite Valley every summer. They’re interested in the natural world, in the outdoors, and—to your question, Mark—in what happened here in the valley before it became a national park. The average visitor spends less than twenty-four hours in Yosemite Valley. In the short time they’re here, they’re fed a quick story by the park service about the park and its history. Right now, the shorthand narrative is that the white man drove the Yosemites out of the valley after killings by both sides. But what if a significant piece of that narrative is wrong? Reading between the lines of Stephen Grover’s account, it’s entirely possible that the prospector named Rose murdered his business partners, Tudor and Sherburn, by his own hand, or somehow bribed or incited the tribespeople to kill them, so he could gain full control of the gold mine he co-owned with them.”

  Mark handed back the ring. “I still don’t see what that does for the foundation you’re talking about.”

  Chuck hung the bag from his fingers. “In telling the human histories of the national parks, the park service creates clean, simple narratives that are easy for tourists to digest during their short visits. But when you factor in the never-ending propensity for people to give in to the most powerful of human emotions—greed—there’s never a clean, simple history of any particular place or any particular national park, Yosemite included.”

  “So,” Mark said, “the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation is trying to set the record straight.”

  Chuck rocked his head from side to side. “Yes and no. The foundation has an agenda, and it’s looking for evidence to support that agenda. The foundation’s researchers go through historical records at museums, universities, and research centers looking for clues that might change the existing narrative of the settlement of the West.”

  “In the case of Yosemite,” Mark noted, “they found Grover’s account.”

  Chuck inclined his head. “Upon close reading, his account appears to tell a different story than the general understanding of what happened to the prospectors, and what subsequently happened to the tribe.”

  “Which is why they hired you to follow up.”

  Chuck lifted the plastic bag. “And, man, will they be stoked to see what Janelle found for them.”

  “But the ring doesn’t necessarily prove anything, does it?”

  “Ultimately, that’s not the idea. The most basic goal of the foundation is to instill a sense of pride in modern tribal peoples’ lives. You’ve probably heard of the Innocence Project, dedicated to freeing innocent death-row inmates from prison. The work of the Indigenous Tribespeople Foundation is similar. The ITF can’t entirely prove the innocence of tribespeople a century or more ago, but it can call into question their killings and executions by settlers or militiamen in the Old West. The case I’m looking into for the foundation here in the valley is a perfect example. The five Yosemite warriors I told you about were executed within minutes of their capture, without trial or any legal recourse whatsoever, for the supposed murders of the two white prospectors a week earlier.”

  Mark frowned. “But you’re saying whatever you find won’t necessarily solve anything.”

  “The goal is to raise questions. Who was responsible for the murders of the prospectors? Most likely, no one will ever know for sure. But a discovery like this—” Chuck turned the bag, showing off the ring “—once it’s released for the world to see, proves the reports of what happened are basically valid. That, in turn, proves the questions raised by the accounts of Grover and Bunnell are basically valid, too. In this case, no matter what Rose may or may not have gotten away with, the killings of his two business partners led directly to the summary executions by government-paid militiamen of five Yosemite tribespeople, in complete contravention of America’s laws, right here in this valley. The discovery of the ring helps make clear that the Yosemites were executed without due process for a crime they may well not have c
ommitted.”

  “You’re involved in some pretty esoteric stuff, you know that?” Mark said.

  “Everything archaeologists do is esoteric—digging up old stuff and trying to attach meaning to it.” Chuck pressed the gold ring, in its bag, between his palms. “But this ring isn’t esoteric at all. It’s the real deal. I couldn’t even begin to think how much it would bring on the black market.”

  “Seriously? That thing?”

  “Absolutely.” He described the ring’s probable connection to the Peabody family and its potential million-plus-dollar value, given the likelihood of its traceability to a Peabody mine.

  “But who’d be interested in buying it on the black market?” Mark asked.

  “The same people who are buying all the antiquities illegally flowing out of the Middle East and South and Central America these days. There’s a huge, global black market for archaeological discoveries. The Chinese, mostly. Rich Malaysians and Singaporeans are big buyers, too. Antiquities from the U.S. are particularly popular—and, therefore, particularly valuable.”

  “All I know is, you’re making my head hurt.” Mark pushed himself from his seat. “I could use another beer.” He made his way to the cooler and turned to the others. “Can I get one for anybody else while I’m up?”

  Hands shot into the air. Chuck tucked the bagged ring into his pocket and raised his hand, too.

  “It was Jimmy’s idea,” Dale whispered to Chuck a few hours later, after Dale popped his hand on the outside of Chuck’s tent to wake him up. Better, Dale explained on Jimmy’s behalf, for the group to do something other than just sit around and mope after Thorpe’s death.

  “We decided not to tell you,” Dale said with an accompanying chuckle, his voice low, when Chuck had dressed and they stood together in the middle-of-the-night darkness outside the tent.

  Chuck checked his phone. Just past midnight, a few hours after the second reunion dinner in camp and another early bedtime by the reunion attendees.