Yosemite: The Curse of Tenaya Canyon - Ep. 15

Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places in America, with towering granite cliffs, roaring waterfalls, Half Dome, El Capitan, and a valley so stunning it helped inspire the entire national park system. But tucked into that landscape is Tenaya Canyon, a dangerous stretch of wilderness sometimes called the “Bermuda Triangle of Yosemite,” where hikers, climbers, park employees, and even John Muir, America’s great wilderness evangelist and the man often called the father of the national parks himself, have been injured, stranded, or killed while exploring this infamous canyon. 

In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela investigate the alleged Curse of Tenaya Canyon: the story of Chief Tenaya, the Ahwahneechee people, the Mariposa Battalion, and the violent removal of Indigenous people from Yosemite Valley during the California Gold Rush. From the killing of Chief Tenaya’s son to the renaming of Tenaya Lake, Tenaya Creek, and Tenaya Canyon, we look at how a history of displacement became attached to one of Yosemite’s most dangerous landscapes.

Along the way, we dig into deadly falls, flash floods, Half Dome lightning strikes, strange disappearances, rescue missions, and the unsettling question at the center of the legend: is Tenaya Canyon cursed, or is “the curse” a way of turning stolen land and human tragedy into spooky tourist folklore?

This is a story about Yosemite, wilderness danger, Indigenous history, settler violence, respect for nature, and the uncomfortable line between a supernatural warning and a history that refuses to stay buried.

https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/origin_of_word_yosemite.html

https://npshistory.com/nature_notes/yose/v20n7-1977.pdf

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56042/56042-h/56042-h.htm#i_236

https://www.sfgate.com/california-parks/article/tenaya-canyon-in-yosemites-cursed-history-18121807.php

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/yosemite-hiking-accidents-kill-two-3136339.php

https://tahoequarterly.com/best-of-tahoe-2017/tempting-curse-chief-tenaya

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/yosemite-hiking-accidents-kill-two-3136339.php

https://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/746/Yosemite_rock_fall_database_narratives_1857-2011.pdf

https://mymotherlode.com/news/local/106197/yosemite-officials-believe-body-may-be-that-of-missing-foreign-exchange-student.html

https://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/stranded-hikers-rescued-from-tenaya-canyon.htm

https://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/lost-and-unprepared-in-tenaya-canyon.htm

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes.

*Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

Transcript

0:00

Truly like a rock in a hard place. But yeah, she ended up falling off and dying. This is fun for people. Like this is a situation that's like a recreation. Like, eat a candy bar, have sex, do something, play a board game. Like, come on. Welcome, Accursed Ones to Cursed Ish, the podcast where we follow the trail of the allegedly cursed, past the folklore and fear, and pull back the tangled underbrush to see what sordid details lie beneath. I'm Daniel Stevens. I'm Angela Mattis. So, uh, Angela, did anything cursed happen to you this week? Um, I am pleased and very excited to report that I don't think so, but I'm also in a very low risk week right now because I'm on PTO from work, so I'm mostly just like sitting in my apartment working on some writing things. So, like the opportunity for the world to come and smite me has been rather low. So I think I've slipped through the cracks. Well, I guess then I took all of our cursed energy for the week because uh let me tell you- You got cursed. I I don't I have a story to tell you. You can you tell me if you feel like this is a cursed moment. But so um I recently went on a hiking trip with my husband to California. Sounds like a curse already. Yeah, it was a walking trip trip. Yeah, the gas prices, the gas prices of the road trip aspect of it. No, I'm thinking more like the strenuous activity. I mean, yeah, but uh I guess we're a little crazy and we enjoy we enjoy forcing ourselves. Don't you guys go on like 30 mile walks just for shits and gigs sometimes? From time from time to time, yes. Those are kind of our we call those sometimes our maybe like our suburban hikes, and we will just go on nice long walks. We uh are your feet bones all just like broken. Remember we were in New York and we walked like 20,000 steps, and I was like crying because my feet hurt so badly, and you had to take me like I think you had to carry me at one point. Maybe not literally, but at least emotionally for sure. It got it got dramatic. I remember like almost crying to you and being like, I'm panicking, my feet hurt so much. You did struggle, yeah. New York took its toll on you. Um, yeah. Okay, well, let me let me get into what happened on our on our our hiking trip, and you can tell me if this feels cursed, and it leads right into the story I wanted to tell today because I did go to California with the intent of looking into a cursed story. So this was some on-the-ground reporting I was planning on doing. I was feeling a little nervous about it. I knew I was going to somewhere that is a cursed area. Um, but I didn't start my trip where that that that area was. I started farther south in Southern California, and we were in Joshua Tree National Park, and I was like, okay, good. This isn't even bear territory, we're just in the desert hiking, it's wonderful. I know not to say bear or earth or earth. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and listen to episode 13, Cursed Words. You can hear all about what we're talking about. The original cursed word. Exactly. Um, but so we were in Joshua Tree National Park, and I was like, we were hiking, I was enjoying it, and I was like, don't gotta worry about bears. I did know I needed to worry about rattlesnakes, but I was like, oh, whatever. Snakes will be fine. We were hiking on a on a very on this like kind of a back trail, like a not very well, well hike trail. We were the only people we saw on the trail uh for the the hike we were on. The trail goes from a wash, which is you know like a dry river bed, and then it at a certain point it had us go off the wash and take a small trail through like some brush in the desert. And we obviously were we knew rattlesnakes were in the area, but we weren't super worried about it. But it's not a normal thing to just zip on around and get out of there. You just like we'll keep an eye out, yeah, yeah. And generally, rattlesnakes are, you know, they don't want to find people, they're scared of people, they will only bite you defensively or if they're guarding their territory. Um, but anyway, so we're walking onto this uh off the wash onto this smaller little trail, and all of a sudden I hear a noise, and my dumbass is like, oh, they have cicadas here because I heard like a and I was like, oh, and just my natural instinct is cicadas. And I looked over to my side, and no joke, within a foot of me was a huge bright orange rattlesnake, and like in it was rattling, it was, it was, you know, doing orange? I thought they were always like greenish. There's a bunch of different I uh I I went and I looked and I found out what kind it was afterwards, but it was I mean, it was like out of a movie with its head back, striking, hissing at me, shoo shaking its tail. And Angela, when I tell you, I'm not afraid of snakes at all, but I have never screamed louder and I've never jumped faster and ran in my life faster than that. And so what happened was I saw the snake and it was very pissed at us. I mean, it looked so angry. In fact, if you want to click over, I have a picture of it. Wait, you stopped and take a you took a picture of this young lad, or you just found one. What would be such influencer culture? If you were literally like an angry snake and you're just like, hold on, babe, smile. I know I wish I took a picture of it. It was so cool. I've never seen a snake that close, but it was cool, but it was far more terrifying. So I booked it out of there and I immediately yelled to Scott and I said, Scott, run back. So he ran backwards and I ran forwards. So then the snake was between us, and we were like, oh crap, we're kind of stuck here. And so we gave it a minute, we figured it would leave. We thought, you know, oh, it'll be on its way, it's just gonna continue away. It's probably scared of us. And so we gave it a minute, and then one of us started to like approach to see if we could cross its path again. And within like when we got within any distance of it, with all of a sudden we would just hear and it would just start rattling again. So it was like we think maybe it was had its nest there, and so it wasn't gonna leave. So we were like separated by this snake, this rattlesnake that was like a foot off the trail. I mean, it was I could have kicked it out. Did you have that moment where you're just like looking at it being like, what the fuck do I do? Like it's such a scenario you don't get into. Exactly. It was just like I've never and it was like the last thing we need to do is get bit by a venomous snake. We looked it up afterwards. It is what we ended up seeing was a red diamond rattlesnake. It is poisonous, all rattlesnakes are poisonous. Um, supposedly it's not very aggressive, so we maybe found yeah, we maybe found it at a very inopportune time that it was seemed to be sticking around and was mad at us. But eventually we was homophobic. Maybe. Maybe that was okay. Also, by the way, another plug. Um, I have been working my little fingers to the bone on our social media. So if you're listening to this story and you're like, damn, I want to see that snake, we have an Instagram, we have a TikTok, I'll be posting pictures of the snake that looks like the snake because Daniel was too candy-ass to have a photo sesh with this angry little reptile. Yes, we'll call it candy because not self-preservation minded. I know I would have been so I would have been terrified. I would have done something stupid. That night we I was scrolling social media and saw a video come up on my on my feet of a guy in like in Appalachia somewhere who got bit by a rattlesnake that he, you know, stepped too close to in the brush. So it was just like, it is not, it's it's a terrifying thing to happen. So we eventually what happened is we had to get back to that wash that we left, and then we were able to meet back up and we abandoned the hike and just said, let's let's not tempt fate. I uh you know, we saw the snake, cool experience, but also terrifying, and don't ever want that to happen again. So then we moved on. We headed north towards our eventual endpoint, and we headed towards, we left Joshua Tree National Park and we wound up in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park. And I was like, okay, good, we're leaving Rattlesnake Territory, we're heading up into the mountains, we are heading into bear territory, but again, I'm not gonna talk about bears. Angela, we were three minutes onto our hike in Kings Canyon National Park, and would I not tell you if a bear did not come careening out of the forest right in front of us? I screamed. It was like that we could not catch a break. It was like first a rattlesnake, then a bear. Luckily, the bear was terrified of us. Like I said, we were we made loud noises, and it absolutely, I've never seen a more gigantic animal jump higher. It jumped over this tree as it was going uphill and it just I got a fallen log, and it just like leaped like 10 feet into the air to go over this thing, and it was insane and just terrifying. Could have ripped us apart if it wanted. But was it was it huggable? Did it look like a little snug bug? It did look a little snuggly, but I was very happy to just say, okay, we now have seen a bear as well. So it was like the trend line was really starting to worry me. Was like step one, rattlesnake, step two, bear, and then step three was the cursed area. Dingle. So we we the the next thing was to go into a cur uh into a place that I'm going to talk to you about today. Um, this is a place, it is in Yosemite National Park, and it's somewhere that the the locals there and many of their rangers often refer to as cursed, as sometimes even the Bermuda Triangle of Yosemite, due to its high frequency of accidents, disappearances, lost hikers, and there is a very interesting historical and cultural story that goes behind it that really uh, you know, tells a lot about the cultural. Gives it the boom. Yeah, and like it goes to like the background of the creation of the national park system. It goes back to early expansion out west, a very like American story um that I, you know, that was interesting to check out with my own two eyes. So Yosemite Valley is located in Central California. It's easiest to get an idea of where the park is in that it's um a few hours inland due east of San Francisco. I don't realize it was that close to San Francisco. I guess when you mentioned like Sequo, well, I don't know, like I've been to um the Mirror Woods. So when you say like Sequoias, I was like, okay, I know there's quite a bit of that, quite a bit of that over there. But I actually didn't know where Yosemite was in reference, like where in California it was. Yeah, so if you leave the San Fran, the Bay Area, you drive due east, you go um over some mountains, the coastal range, and then you go through the Central Valley. That's where all the farming and everything happens in California. And then you get to the other side of the Central Valley and you climb back up into the Sierras, that's where Yosemite Valley is, is in the Sierra Nevadas. It's uh super amazing. Anyone who's never been there, I highly recommend going there. I mean, everyone and their mother seem to go. It's super crowded every time you go. We went this year. We went pre pre-uh summer to try to beat some of the crowds. It was still insanely busy. Um, but it's full of incredibly beautiful, famous features. For example, there is the 3,000 foot vertical granite behemoth El Capitan. It's a it's one of the largest sheer cliff faces in the world. Uh the 25 foot hundred Yosemite Falls, um, a 5,000 foot rock monolith called Half Dome. I think I've seen people scaling Half Dome. It's like a death-defying experience, correct? Uh death-defying and sometimes death-happening experience. Oh, yeah. We're gonna talk about a few events on Half Dome. Oh, I've fallen into some algorithms and seen some of this content. So I sometimes I struggle with like scale and understanding. You know, I just like can't always imagine stuff. I know what we're gonna be talking about. I have seen the footage. If and and actually, Half-Dome, if you look at the at the episode art right now, uh there's a giant picture of Half Dome looming over a canyon that is actually uh that I took and you can also probably find that picture on our social media on our Christish podcast, Instagram and TikTok. For sure, for sure. Um, so it's a super iconic place. The Merced River flows down through meadows through the entire valley. It's a big U-shaped valley. It actually kind of looks a lot like Switzerland or like uh, you know, those like big meadowy valleys with rock cliffs on each other. So it's like big, big mountains. It's yes, it's it's absolutely one of the coolest places I've ever been. And according to the NPS, the National Park Service, uh, people have lived in the Yosemite area for as long as up to 8,000 years. Um thousands of years of of human uh occupation of the Yosemite area. Um in the 1800s, when we're really gonna start looking at this story though, um, there was a Miwok band they called themselves the Awanichi, and they called the valley Awani, which meant something like gaping mouth-like place. So, like because of the big, broad, wide valley of the Yosemite is and then Awanichi is like people of the Awani, so kind of like a subgroup of of of a larger group of of native tribes. Um, and they were led by a leader called Chief Tanaya. They were the people living in Yosemite Valley at the time when the the non-Native American settlers first came to to California, really, uh in the mid 1800s. Yeah. Um the group of people living there, it's a very interesting story in that they had actually just returned to Yosemite Valley because Tanaya's ancestors a few generations back had to flee the valley after after um a calamity. It's it seems like it was a disease that maybe ran through. I can imagine it's a danger, like honestly, it bl like boggles my mind that like it's these parks are dangerous. People die there all the time. And so can you imagine living there? Like, who had the bigger advantage, I wonder? Like us, who we can go to like REI and get all like geared up and use all this technology or whatever, or at least like understand the lay of the land. Or I wonder if they were better equipped for it because I'm sure you know stuff passed down, like stories and folklore and warnings and things, even like bare, like earths, like don't say it. Things like that. So I kind of wonder, but at the same time, like I feel like yeah, there probably was a lot of calamity popping up and making them need to move and come back and change and shift around because it had to have been some rugged living. I I mean, I can't imagine that sounds I mean, I like to go into the wilderness, but I go with a GPS-enabled map, and I go with modern waterproof clothing and you still practically get yourself killed. Exactly. So I I I can't imagine. I mean, obviously, the people who were living there 24-7, that was their life, they were much more in tune with what was happening. They could see, you know, they knew the patterns of nature, they knew the the the materials they could use for certain things and all that. Um I I would have to imagine they knew what they were doing more, no matter what our technology lets us do. We're part-time visitors to that, they were living in that. I can't imagine they were anything but much more in tune with with the land and with the way that nature worked. So Tanaya's people had left because of a an illness. They left the Yosemite Valley, they went in and they joined a different group living outside of the Yosemite Valley, but still in the general area of the Sierras. They joined the Mono Lake Paiute tribe. Living among that tribe, that's where Tanaya was born. When he was a young man, he and some of the other ancestors from that original group that left, he led them back into Yosemite Valley and said, Let's go back to the land of our ancestors. Let's go back, and they they did. They went and they lived back in the Yosemite Valley itself. In Yosemite National Park, there's this great museum. It's all about the um the native culture that you can see like a kind of a little recreation of some of their building styles and all that. So there's a lot of great information about the life that they were living there, uh the foods they were eating, the their day-to-day and everything, how their society was, you know, structured. Um but by 1849, uh obviously the 49ers, the gold rush was happening. Tens of thousands of people, non-Native American tribe members, coming to California looking for gold. Within two decades of that, 80% of the Native American population of California would be wiped out in a genocide. You know, we learned this all like on a specific spree, or was it like like was someone leading a charge of genocide? Like was it like a battle or wars? Or was it there was wars, there were there were battles, forced relocations, slaughters, disease as well was a main was a main driver of of the uh the death. Um we're gonna talk about a specific incursion in the Yosemite Valley that the the the government of California armed a militia to carry out. Um, not to cut to the chase or whatever, but I am rooting for this curse. Tell me that she is spicy. Tell me that she has some dastardly plans. Yeah, exactly. Uh I think that we'll get to that's kind of why this story exists, because there's some the there's some moral guilt here, I think, that we're as a nation and as a people and everything. So in around that time, the the governor, the government of California was looking at the Yosemite Valley as a valuable asset and some surrounding areas. So the second governor of California essentially empowered what's called the Mariposa Battalion. So this was this militia that was going to be there to to to execute the government's will, essentially, upon the native, the native groups in the area. Um, side note, calling yourself the mariposa battalion is like, I mean, but mariposa means butterfly in Spanish. I know, I was like, okay. It's also kind of a bad word as well. But like, that's a very non-threatening name to me, like the butterfly battalion. I mean, there's an area, there's a city nearby called Mariposa, so I it's just named. You're probably just idiots and they didn't even know. Yeah. Um, one of the main guys who was part of the Mariposa Battalion was this pioneer named James D. Savage. Um, he was actually an interesting. Living up to it? Yeah, yes, yes, lives up to his name. Uh honestly, a conflicting guy. When I read about him, it's like I mean, you've I'm sure you've found this. It seems like everyone in the in the old timeies, like there were or like in the old back in the day or in old. No, I feel like we should coin this in the old times. In the old times, sure. Well, in the old times. How cute, how baby, the little old timeies. People were often complicated. Have you noticed this where it's like they'll be horrible in one way, and then an another part of their life will be so endearing or so like interesting. And then they're because I mean, this is a massive hot take off the top of my head, but I think that a religion was far less questioned and much more prevalent. So I think that there was sort of this like embedded dichotomy of like people would go to church and they would be that person and then they would go and be rap bastards the minute they stepped out of it. Um, I don't want to rat hole too much, but one of the most interesting literary characters I've ever read is in um Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. And this character, like that's kind of his main ethos, is that he's this like evil, horrible, brutal, destructive person. But like he's very also like religiously driven, and kind of like the threat of hell will get him in line. So I kind of wonder if it's a little bit of that of like, um maybe it was more religious founded, but uh hot total hot take. I have no idea. I I agree with that general concept. I don't know if that applies to James D. Savage because from what what I mean from this is in his life, he had really close bonds with some native tribes. He grew to like live with some of them, learn their language. He even married into a native tribe, and at a like he was super close with some of them. At a certain point, he was even known by natives as El Rey Gero, which means I know what gero means. I mean it means the like white boy. Yeah, Wikipedia called it the blonde king, but I was gonna say white boy king if you're nasty. If you're nasty like that. Um so that yeah, and that obviously shows how Spanish had already become used by some people because the there obviously were Spanish explorers in California and the West long before people came speaking English, actually. Um but eventually the tribes would sour on his influence. Um, one story tells of Savage and a Chowchilla tribe chief. They went to San Francisco to do some deal, and I guess there was some sort of gambling issue. Savage gambled away the tribe's money, and the chief confronted him about it. And because they were in San Francisco, basically Savage publicly beat the guy in the street, and it was like this big, humiliating moment, and it was sort of like he used the power of his social status to be able to treat this guy that way. It was really crappy. Maybe he was complicated, maybe he was just a shitty person who took advantage at times and like learned languages to broker deals. To I don't know, but because then what you'll see when he does, he leads this Mariposa battalion, they start leading attacks on some native tribes after they say, you know, you guys have to go to a reservation, then they get resistance, and then they attack essentially. And like these attacks were brutal. The governor really wanted to just crush the morale of the natives to get them all to just agree to go to the reservations. There was a reservation in Fresno, for example. They were trying to get all the tribes in up in the mountains, up in the valleys to go to because they wanted to mine those valleys for gold. In April of 1851, they launched a campaign against the Chowchilla tribes. They were living in the Kings River, Kings Canyon area, and uh they burned their villages, their food stores, they murdered a bunch of tribe members, including the Chow Chilla chief. And the tribe eventually relinquished and and agreed to go to um a reservation. So after that attack, uh the Mariposa Battalion set their sight on the Awanichi in the Yosemite Valley. And they believe the Awanichi, led by Chief Tanaya again, they believe that they were responsible for some raids that had happened. Obviously, the Native Americans were fighting back. There were times where uh settlers they had their encampments completely razed. They were mur they were killed, yes, that but these were people fighting back against people coming in and taking their homes. Yeah, I don't think there's any question about that. Yeah. Um The battalion in May of 1851, they enter the valley um and they systematically burn villages and food supplies again. They kill, forcibly remove the residents, um basically get everyone out. Uh you know, they're they're clearing out the valley. Yeah, I'm sure it's like a playbook. At this point. Yeah. Um, before they had entered the valley, actually, they the Europeans didn't have a name for the valley. And they got the name Yosemite from the surrounding tribes, actually. The surrounding tribes, when they were asked about that area, said Yosemite or something similar to that, a word that they eventually anglicized or turned into what we now say as Yosemite. But they thought they were saying that was the name of the valley. It turns out what Yosemite meant was something in the Miwok language uh they were using to refer to the Awanichi, which was close something like Yosemite. And what it actually meant was those who kill or they are killers. So it's literally like that tribe, they're horrifying. They're killers. So the other tribe actually kind of had named them, you know, they maybe were a brutal tribe. Miscommunications. Um, Chicago is one of those where I believe the word Chicago means onion. So like somebody did not have their pocket translator that day. Yeah. There's also rumors that they thought Yosemite was the Miwok word for grizzly bear. And it's like, don't name it after bears. What are you doing? No, like, come on. Amateur. Yeah, I know, right? Um there is one guy, a member of the battalion, who wrote accounts of what happened. His name was Lafayette Bunel. And this is gonna be where we get the information about this, where this curse started. So just a huge caveat. This is a story told by the settler who came in, took the land of the people, killed the people, and made them leave. So his storytelling is, of course, suspect. It is history is told by the winners, yes. And so every single thing that, you know, I'm constantly going to say, grain of salt, this is just this guy's telling of the story. Right, right, right. Um, but he wrote a book called Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851. That was published in 1880. There's a quote they have about reaching Yosemite for the first time. These were the first non-natives to reach Yosemite. And he said, It has been said that it is not easy to describe in words the precise impressions which great objects make upon us. I cannot describe how completely I realize this truth. None but those who have visited this most wonderful valley can even imagine the feeling with which I look upon the view that was there presented. The grandeur of the scene was but softened by the haze that hung over the valley, light as gossimer, and by the clouds which partially dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. This obscurity of vision but increased the awe with which I beheld it, and as I looked, a peculiar, exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion. Which I really appreciate his description of like being awed by nature, but it's so frustrating to hear that and then think that his next actions were to go in and slaughter women and children from their homes. So it's just it's so frustrating to see, like, oh, you are a person who understands grandeur and beauty, but then also you're not going to treat the land with the respect and the shared, the shared value that we all as humans have for it. Well, I think I think that's the difference. They probably were separating the land from the people. And I know that, you know, I think there was a lot of dehumanization and a lot of like, you know, calling the you know people in the tribes brutes and making them out to be these monsters. There's a lot of that like propaganda and that those um like stereotypes. So I'm honestly not surprised that they were that dichotomous about it. Yeah. Okay, so the Mariposa Battalion is going through Yosemite Valley, burning, looting, killing, forcibly removing and displacing the Awanichi. Um at some point up in a canyon that is now known as Tanaya Canyon, at a lake that is now known as Tanaya Lake. Uh there was a group of Awanichi who became surrounded by the Mariposa Battalion, and five of them were taken captive, essentially. Um two of them were Tanaya's sons, one was Tanaya's son-in-law, and then two other tribe members. They essentially sent one of the broth one of the sons and one of and the son-in-law to go retrieve Tanaya to bring him back so they could do negotiations. Essentially, this was like, we have your sons captured, like we're gonna you're time to talk. Yeah. Um, while they were retrieving Chief Tanaya, apparently the other captives, and this comes from the people themselves, the the you know, this all comes from the settlers, the the the battalion, but it sounds like they intentionally allowed or saw the guys, saw the captives coming loose from their bounds and allowed it to happen and allowed them to flee so they'd have an excuse to shoot them. Um, yeah. So and this this Benell guy calls it murder. So there's like even the settlers aren't trying to like wash themselves of the guilt here. They essentially murdered some of these captives, including Tanaya's son. I get and then so what happened is Tanaya then came to to to discuss to to make a deal. And when he got there, he saw his son's body on the ground. Um, supposedly it was his favorite son. I don't know if that embellishment is necessary. Any of your sons being killed would be a traumatic moment for for any parent. So um, but apparently he sees his son's body and flies into a grief, grief-stricken rage. Um, it's it goes back and forth on when he said this. It's either right when he saw his son's body or slightly later, they flee and then are later like kind of surrounded again, and it's another moment. But there's two different quotes of what he said. So I'll read both, but there's two accounts of what he said. But he said, Kill me, sir captain. Yes, kill me, as you have killed my son, as you would kill my people if they were to come to you. You would kill all my race if you had the power. You wouldn't have to be a bigger one. Move to the next one. I've I've heard enough. You have killed the child of my heart. Why not kill the father? You may kill me, sir captain, but you shall not live in peace. I will follow in your footsteps, I will not leave my home, but be with the spirits among the rocks, the waterfalls, in the rivers, and in the wind. Wheresoever you go, I will be with you. You will not see me, but you will fear the spirit of the old chief and grow cold. Or he also maybe said, Kill me if you like, but if you do, my voice shall be heard at night, calling upon my people to revenge me in louder tones than you have ever made it ring. So this general idea that he had a moment of just like desperation, like, fine, I'm at my wit's end. Fuck you guys, but yes, I will fuck you. Yeah. Um, Tanaya was not killed that day. He was not killed that year. He he did eventually go to the reservation, um, begrudgingly. I mean, again, this story is told by the settlers, so I'm gonna say that whether he said any of this, I don't know. There's a lot of like the kill me if you must, and that sort of almost gives like moral weight to like, oh, this was like men in battle, not just like people coming in and destroying a community. Um so I, you know, skeptical to begin with, but a pretty straightforward, like, hey, you've killed my son, kill me, you're killing my people, we're gonna curse you in these lands. Like, it's not not that complicated. Right. Um, but there's a couple different accounts actually of Tanaya's death as well. It's not sure how he died, but a few years later, um, and there's like kind of conflicting stories, maybe the idea that some people wanted him to be remembered poorly. Um, but there's ideas that he died in a fight over a horse theft or a gambling or like a traditional hand game dispute, um, some sort of gambling dispute. But like the idea the the story is generally that he got into a fight with someone and his head was crushed white with a rock during the fight. There was also the idea that he was maybe the a tribe did capital punishment on him for that theft or something. So it's is I saw a lot of accounts. It's not really sure how he died. But it sounds like none of them were peaceful. No, no, yeah. Great. But from that, so obviously the Awanichi were removed from Yosemite. Tanaya supposedly cursed that canyon. Um after the California US government essentially has secured Yosemite to do with what they will, they do protect it. There is, it's one of the first laws ever to protect natural land. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln as president signed a law passed by Congress to create the Yosemite grant. So it was like, as much as it sucks to watch the US government destroying things, they also at that moment said, Hey, let's protect this. So it's it's again that dichotomy of having respect for the land, but not having respect for what that land was supporting before. Well, I mean, during this period of time, they were also that was like a civil war. So yeah. Lots of wild an out at that point in time, lots of loss of life and brutality. Yeah, so that was 1864, yeah, right, yeah. And then that paved the way for Yellowstone to become the first national park in 1872, and then Yosemite eventually became a national park in 1890. So it became it did become federally protected quite quickly. I will use the word protected with air quotes. Yes, because for example, there is controversy in how they have the stewardship that the government has had over this area. For example, there's a controversial area in the park called Hetch Hetchy. It was a dam they put up. There was a valley, they dammed up a river to create a water supply for San Francisco after the great earthquake in San Francisco. Uh, they didn't have adequate water supplies to put out all the fires. And so they're like early 1900s? Yes, early 1900s, yeah. Uh 1920-ish. 1906 earthquake, they finished the reservoir by 1920-ish. So, like it it was because of that they realized San Francisco needs a good reservoir. John Moore, he was super against flooding of I mean, they flooded this giant valley. I went hiking around it. It's cool, it's a nice reservoir, but it's not supposed to be a giant reservoir. Um, so they protected it, but they're still using it for the needs of people. Yeah. People to this day still f argue that the the reservoir should be drained. So I mean, it is not a non-controversial. I'm curious. Okay, like random, stupid thought, but like if they drain it at this point, the water has probably like eroded whatever. Yeah, but nature would take it back eventually. Yeah, that's true. Might not might take longer than our lifetimes, but you know. Yeah. So tourists start coming from far and wide. There's like, you know, people start saying there's all these crazy things here, and of course, they start fucking everything up. So, for example, uh, the Wawona tree, or also known as the tunnel tree. It was a giant sequoia tree. It's like thousands of years old, one of the biggest ever. What did these tourists get the great idea to do? They cut a hole in it, which eventually, so you could drive your car or your horse carriage through it, eventually killed the tree. And I'm sure that road just had to go there. Like it was the novelty of it. Oh my god. Yeah, it yeah. So they they cut it through it in 1881. It damaged the tree, and the tree fell in 1969. 2100-year-old tree taken down because of tourists. So luckily, the government did say, okay, maybe we should protect this place. So all these tourists came for years and years, and Tanaya Canyon, um, which was named after Chief Tanaya. We'll get to why they named it that later. It uh it's an interesting perspective on the entire story. But uh that canyon runs from Tanaya Lake high up in the mountains, and then it follows Tanaya Creek all the way down to where Halfdom sits at the main valley. Okay. And like I said earlier, this place has taken on a reputation as the Bermuda Triangle of Yosemite. The the canyon kind of meets the main valley at Half Dome, and that kind of right there is like the first terrifying part of Tanaya Canyon. It is the source of some of the fear of Tanaya Canyon because as the gatekeeper to the canyon, it has a nasty reputation for claiming hikers itself. At least three lightning strike deaths have happened on the dome, including a 1985 incident where five people were struck, killing two immediately. And there's also been over a dozen documented fatalities of hikers climbing up the slick final section, the actual dome section. If you've ever seen there's cables that you have to climb, it's like a very steep, slick granite face with cables. Um and like it takes a while. So I think, isn't it like the risk of it? Like, yes, you have the cable, but like the risk is like your arms are just noodles by the time you're up at the top, right? And it's also very crowded. So you're dealing with other people going at their speed, maybe to making it take longer or shorter, rushing you or slowing you down. So it's it's well, you think if you like, wouldn't you kind of just jumble into people and get caught by other people before plummeting down the side of it? Unfortunately, no. Um, I mean, if you if you wait, did you and Scott hike this Bermuda triangle area? We went we went into the canyon a little bit. Yeah, yeah, and I'll yes. And for the third round, yeah, exactly. And that's that was what I was like, the trend line was worrying me. I was like, oh god, we're getting to an actual curse place, and we've had two issues. But we were we were able to hike in and we took some pictures, looked around, and and left no problem. So so we did escape unscathed. Um what if you started like flickering and I was like, oh fuck, you're a ghost. And this is how I tell you. Daniel, yeah. I have some news for you. So yeah, Half Dome is the source of a lot of fear. Yeah, even just like literally, I almost had a panic attack just watching the TikToks about it. Like, who in their right mind? Well, just as an example, I will talk about the most recent death that happened on Half Dome, just to give an example of why it's so dangerous. Um, so in July of 2024, a 20-year-old hiker fell approximately two to 250 feet from the cable section of Half Dome um while hiking. So like slid down it probably. Yeah, and then yeah, slid and fell. Um because there's yeah, there's really steep parts, but then there's also sheer cli like if you fall off the wrong side, like if you then fall like you're on a cliff on the side, yeah, it it it and it becomes a cliff essentially. Um so she and her dad actually were hiking. She was an experienced hiking. I know this is a truly awful story. And they were at the summit and a thunderstorm rolled in, which is the very dangerous. Like I said, there lightning strikes happened. Um so when the weather changes slick, yeah, also what happens, and you need to get off very quickly. And so what had happened is they were trying to get down, and just an absolute traffic jam happened on the cables of everyone trying to descend quickly. And I guess in all of that commotion, like you know, they maybe tried to go off the cables for a second to get around some people who I mean, I've been in places where there's cables. I was never rushed, but there are people who freeze up and they just like can't take another step. And you're like, Look, I need to get down, you're blocking my way. So I it's truly like a rock in a hard place. Um, but yeah, she ended up falling off and dying. This is fun for people. Like, this is a situation that's like a recurring like eat a candy bar, have sex, do something, play a board game. Like, come on. It has its allure. I mean, I get it. It's it's yeah. So yeah, people can fall, obviously, and lose their lives off of Half Dome. Deeper into the canyon, though, there's even more and more examples of people having being lost or killed or injured. Um, John Muir himself, the namesake of Muir Woods and one of the original naturalists of our of the United States, uh, he himself had a had an incident in Tanaya Canyon. In an 1873 letter to a friend, he recounts his own fall in Tanae Canyon. He says, I was ascending a precipitous rock front smoothed by glacial action when I suddenly fell for the first time since I touched foot to Sierra Rocks. After several somersaults, I became insensible from the shock, and when consciousness returned, I found myself wedged among short, stiff bushes. I could not remember what made me fall or where I had fallen from, but I saw that if I had rolled a little further, my mountain climbing would have been finished, for just beyond the bushes, the canyon wall steepened and I might have fallen to the bottom. So he himself could not escape a disaster in this canyon. Um, he obviously was safe, but a close call, and he was someone who knew what he was doing. So I started being like, how many things really happen in this canyon? Like, of course, things are gonna happen in any any natural area. Yeah, I know I'm like waiting for the accursedness because I'm like, this is just the rules of the game, baby. Well, I found the NPS website. They have this like incident records website that just has records of all the incidents that have like ever happened in the national park, just kind of like the actual what the ranger wrote down. And like some of these things are wild. There are some stories in here, but I'm assuming you have a list. I'll just go through some of the more notable ones. Uh, in July of 2012, um, there was a father and daughter hiker on an unmarked trail. Um, a lot of the trails in this canyon are kind of like trails of convenience, they're not super well-marked. There are some well-marked trails, but others are kind of like, you know, you hear about a trail, you hear about a cool route, and you go follow it. So, this this father and daughter, they found themselves off trail and they came to a uh a kind of a rock cliff with just a rope hanging down and a helmet. And they and apparently, instead of thinking, let's turn around, they just use the rope and the helmet and climb down this like yeah, like when you run into a bear and when you run into a rattlesnake and you're like, oh, fine, keep on going. Yeah, this sounds familiar. So they just went down this mystery rope, getting further lost into the canyon, and then they came to a waterfall, they couldn't get up, and they couldn't get back, so they were trapped, and then they eventually had to be rescued. But miraculously they had cell service, um, which I can't imagine. The whole time I was there, I never once was able to get a single iota or text in or out. They miraculously had cell service and were able to call for help. So they they were able to be rescued. Um, in June 2013, two hikers with rock climbing experience tried to ascend the canyon, but they didn't have adequate repelling gear. So they tried to just do it via scrambling, which is just like, you know, hands and feet on rock. What ended up happening is they somehow managed to climb onto this rock wall, got separated, and they wound up in two different spots 500 feet from each other, and then neither of them could get back down. So they basically f climbed up onto this rock wall and then were stuck. They had to spend the night, they did manage to call, but only one of them spoke English, and the person who had the cell phone was the one who didn't speak English. So there was translation issues, and they coincidentally, an off-duty search and rescue team member happened to be hiking on their time off and heard about the issue, and they're like, Oh, I'll keep an eye out, and just like found them. So they were also able to be fun. Oh god, all I can think about is like the upper body fatigue. Like, I have gone rock climbing. Granted, I'm not like an athletic person, but I have gone rock climbing in places that are like rock climbing places, like walls and gotten stuck. So I can only imagine when you're just out there on the terrain. Oh no. Okay. Well, those are a couple people who just had they had to be rescued. There's tons of examples of the rescues, of course. Those are just a couple notable ones. And again, it's like, yeah, people get in over their heads. Um, we'll talk about a couple more, uh, a couple more serious incidents now. In June 1977, there was a couple, a husband and wife, um, they were hiking in Tanaya Canyon when a hail storm and a flash flood occurred, and they were near um Hidden Valley, they were near a waterfall called Hidden Falls. Oh, I thought I thought we were about to talk about ranch drip. Yeah. There's a 24-year-old woman and her 25-year-old husband. Um, and in a surge of uh kind of like a landslide that happened during a flash flood, the wife's foot became stuck in a rock. This is recounted by people who were Okay, horror sauce. Yes, yeah. This is a horrifying story. Um, so her foot became stuck and he was trying to get it unlodged, and then a f a second surge of flash flood came and swept them away, and they were both killed. Um they uh I mean, flash floods in all canyons are are a danger. It's something, you know, you'll be hiking in a dry canyon and you look up and there is a tree branch wedged, and you're like, that came from a flood. So that at some point the water was higher than that, and you know, it's just something you always need to be watching out for. But um obviously a very harrowing situation. On the 5th of July in 1996, two isolated incidents happen on the same day. A 23-year-old Spanish man fell 130 feet and died instantly. He was backpacking with his brother on the Tanaya Lake Trailhead. Um, they had gone off the trail and he fell at some point when they were when they weren't officially on a trail. That same day, a 24-year-old park employee died after becoming stuck in a hole between boulders he was repelling down hidden falls. And it's they're not entirely sure what happened, but they think what happened is he got stuck between some boulders and he couldn't get his way back out. There's some uh indication that he was tying some knots in his rope to make footholds for himself to be able to climb back out, but somehow in that he became dislodged. It was like water was rushing through this, and he somehow drowned in that hole. Um, I mean, that was a park employee who knew exactly what he was doing. This is another another thing that humans do that I'm just like, what are you doing? Like going into tiny little holes. Like whenever you hear people going in those like caves where they literally are on their backs, and I'm Just and they're like scooting along like earthworms. I'm just like, again, like watch a movie, crack a book. Like for fuck's sake. Why is this an activity that we're partaking in? It only is one way. I mean, so it's nice to be out in nature. Look at the cover art. It's like the we got a wonderful view. You can't. I'm fine with nature. I'm fine with a little hike as long as I'm done in like an hour and a half. I guess. I guess. Um, I'm not like a total sloth, but um Okay. Well, only a year before that employee's death, another MPS employee had died. A 33-year-old nurse who was employed at the Yosemite Medical Clinic. Um, she died while out hiking near Mirror Lake. She fell. Um, she and her companions, they were hiking to Hidden Falls. On the return journey, she slipped on some wet granite and fell 50 feet to her death. So, even just as simple as she was on trail, hit a piece of slick rock, fell, and died. And she, again, uh someone who had been there many times, an employee. Um, and also a 26-year-old St. Louis area man slipped and fell into Tanaya Creek um while scrambling on the rocks near Mirror Lake. He was carried away by the rapids. His friend who was there with him tried to jump in to save him, but they couldn't. Rescue teams arrived within minutes, but even then, his body had become like caught in an undertow and it was only 40 degree water. So even with rescuers there in minutes, he still uh drowned and was killed. Um, one last creepy story from Tanaya Canyon that I'll tell you is in June of 2005, a South Korean student who was traveling in California, he set out on a planned 11-day hike on the John Muir trail. This is not the Tanaya Canyon trail. This is kind of far from Tanaya Canyon, actually. Um a month after he started that hike, he was supposed to fly home. When he missed that flight home, his family realized he, you know, something was wrong. So they contacted the park and said, Hey, we think our, you know, our loved one is missing in the park. Here was what his itinerary was. They did an investigation, they looked for him, they found some people who were on trails around that time. He was last seen on the John Muir trail a couple days after he started that hike, a several days before he planned to finish that hike. They still could not find him. Um, after months of searching, they eventually found his backpack in Tanaya Canyon, which is not where he was hiking. And then eventually, a few days later, they found his body in Tanaya Canyon. And nobody really knows how he got to Tanaya Canyon. Technically, there are trails that go, and he could have like meandered his way through, but he was not planning to hike there. It was nowhere near his intended hike, and he still found himself in Tanaya Canyon dead. He got lured in by the curse. Okay. So essentially it's just this pattern. There are all these people falling, getting, you know, falling, dying, going missing in Tanae Canyon. And it's might just be st statistically significant enough that people I was gonna say, is this an uptick from like a similar type locale in like Yellowstone or something? I mean, this can't be the only place in the country that has these kinds of topography and conditions. Yeah, I would say it's definitely in Yosemite. Halfdome is considered one of the most dangerous parts of Yosemite, and so that gets lumped in with Tanaya Canyon, even though it's like at the mouth of the canyon. Um, and then, you know, I I I I don't think it really is necessarily. Maybe it is for Yosemite. I, you know, you don't hear tons about deaths at Yosemite. Um, but the Grand Canyon, you go there, there's signs everywhere, and it's like X people have died this year. So it's sort of like, you know, or like X, you know, and like someone just fell off uh Angel's Landing in Zion National Park. Like there are dangerous places all over. You're hiking, thousands of people are going there every year. It makes sense that that people are gonna have some issues, and like being outdoors is just inherently dangerous. Like we said, bears is step one, rebellious. Which is again why I don't understand this as like a hobby and adventure because like I have gone on hikes. I mean, again, I'm not like a total sloth. I went on a hike in Wisconsin in um Devil's Lake, and it's like a lot of rocks, and you're climbing around or whatever. And like I was just panicking the whole time because all I can think is like people die here and I am not special. Like I am not special. It could be me, and like there is no amount, I feel like in a place like that too, where it's like Yellowstone, it's like people who train for this, people who do this all the time, people who work here. Like, I don't think I could enjoy myself for one hot second on a hike there in anything but just like general, you know, beginner's terrain. Because all I would be able to think about is like people die here, and it's like uh like there is not a rhyme or a reason to it. It's not like you just showed up and went on a hike and you're an idiot. It's like people, you're just rolling a die, the dice, you know. And and that's healthy respect to have for nature. And I think that's it. It's nature is dangerous, people are gonna die, and then we call it a curse because like you want some sort of causation. You want something to say, it's not just that this person slipped and fell and hit their head on on rock, you know. It's right, it's there's something to it. And I think there's also there's definitely some exoticization of you know, Native Americans, like, ooh, this spooky, like a different culture, he cursed us. Like, you know, we see that we've seen that a lot. We've we've we've only been doing this for a few, you know, a few episodes, and we've already seen this, like whether it's Egyptian. Pretty good scapegoat, yeah. Yeah, whether it's just or like or with the Divak box, the Jewish folklore, it's just like you take an other, you imply that there's mysticism to it, and you say, Oh, they cursed us with it. So I it just that always feels icky to me to begin with. Yeah. But also part of that might be some like blame, guilt, like we our culture destroyed another culture. And is this a way to say to make us feel like stole the land? Yeah, yeah. Does this is this a way for us to sort of be like, oh, it's not so bad they got their revenge, it's not so bad they wanted to hurt us. It's not so bad because or you know, I I've I've that's the way I kind of imagined it. It's like if I were a guy killing people and taking their land, it might, it might be easier for me to be like, oh, he cursed me. Like I'm saying, if I were these Mariposa battalion people, it's like, oh, well, they cursed us, so they deserve, they didn't even like there were, you know, so it just to me it seems sort of like Oh, I mean, yeah, it's like we see so much evidence of it throughout history and throughout time of just like um like I was saying before, the negative propagandizing, the stereotyping, the um, you know, even we see it with just think of like how people try to turn immigrants into like they're eating people and they're eating dogs and shit. It's like same old shit. Yeah. It's like a reframing of instead of it's a way for us to look at it instead of sitting there and think, wow, we took that place. We get to think, oh, this is a cursed place. It absolves the blame, yeah. Yeah. Um, and that actually that does sort of like I said, I wanted to mention the Tanaya Creek, Tanaya Lake, Tanaya Canyon naming. Um, there was actually a an important moment when I was, you know, looking into what happened. There's this kind of important I or the idea of all of the the names that the natives had used for places, you know, and then we came and we we replaced those names. In the national park, actually, you'll often see signs. They kind of will say, like, hey, here's some of the other names. Some of the native names are being used again and kind of like reinstated. But there was this moment apparently around the time when Tanaya, Chief Tanaya, was resigning himself to the fact that they were going to the reservation. The settlers said, Hey, and this to me seems like a knife twist, especially given how Tanaya responded to it. But they were like, Oh, hey, we're gonna name these after you. Like, what an honor that is, right? Like, we're gonna name this canyon, this lake, this creek after you. And I guess they told him that, and he he's was just confused. And he's like looked at them and said, What do you mean? These already have names. And those names were Piawak, which was the lake, which was what is now Tanaya Lake. It meant shining rocks, glistening rocks. So that lake was already named, and like these things already had names, and he was straight up just confused. Like, what do you mean you're gonna rename something? What do you mean you're gonna name it after me? Like, they didn't do that. So the fact that we are calling it Tanaya Canyon, Lake Tanaya is honestly kind of a curse in and of itself. Like, that's not what Chief Tanaya would have wanted. He was confused, like they were he's that wasn't an honor in their culture, yeah. Exactly, exactly. And so it's sort of like Oh, you know, did they potentially just lack hubris? Like yeah, it sounds like like of course, these men would think that that was like an honor with their droves. Plus hubris. Yeah, plus some of them have awesome names, like Half Dome's original name is Tisayak, which means woman turned to stone, which is like that is a very cool that's some cool imagery, yeah. And is there do you know if there's like any conversation around returning them back to their original names? I'm sure there is. I the way I found several of these, uh, some of the ones that I know is they were on signs on the trail. Like there was a trail, there was a sign. It was like, hey, he just so you know, here's the actual like other names. So maybe that's step one in starting to go back. I know, you know, Denali, uh, now it's back to Mount uh McKinley, but like we just from Twilight. Just kidding. But like, I mean, yes, the naming of these things is likely to continue being a uh contentious topic. And I do let me give one final quote, then we'll give our final thoughts on cursed or cursed. So I I mean, I think we both kind of were saying it's exoticization of Native Americans, it's blame lessening, it's just nature and everything. I was thinking that too. I was like, there's no here. And slippery rocks and nature exactly. Yeah, weather changes, yeah. Um, but I did find a quote from who someone who is the great, great, great grandson of Chief Tanaya. Currently, they are the Southern Sierra Miwok Nation vice chairperson. Um, and they were quoted as saying the curse is common knowledge. We say it every time there's a big rock side or people die in the park. We always say a prayer and put down blessings. It's the curse of Tanaya. Everything in Yosemite is alive, it's the spirit of our belief. It remembers everything that those people have done to our people. When people are up there and they're not being respectful of the rocks and the plants, bad things happen. The stories of Tanaya, no matter the source, serve as a reminder of how we need to treat one another and nature. Whether you're indigenous or non-indigenous, you've got to be respectful. They are watching whether you're carrying yourself in a humble manner. Somebody or something is always watching you. And I really just think that's like a great way of summing up everything, a great way of thinking of nature. I it's I I know, like literally, it's good that you uh said that quote before we got to our thoughts on it, because I feel like that just made me totally kind of like flip like curse or no curse. I'm I like that that way of like framing it and describing it. As usual, humanity is probably the curse. Um, but I feel like I I really liked that quote. It really resonated with me. And that's why I stick to the cities and keep my hikes short and sweet. Yep. Yeah, I I really like that uh I was getting frustrated researching this story and finding that quote and seeing his perspective on it made me feel a lot better about all of it, frankly. Um, and and that's how I've always felt about like, you know, the one thing that I like about the any nature curse or like scary nature stories, it's like really just trying to enforce respecting the respect of nature and like to to understand how dangerous nature really is. So if that's if that's all this curse does, and also I you know, I love the idea of them saying that that is their that that's their belief system and that they are still, you know, feeling feeling power there. Yeah. And I guess to me that that makes I was gonna say not cursed, this this thing, but I think his perspective makes it absolutely into cursed-ish. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I vote the same. I think, yeah, I'm gonna s I'm gonna align with that, and I'm gonna say it's cursed-ish, all kind of based on the way that his uh ancestor described it. Okay. Well, then there we go. I mean, maybe cursed, maybe not. We'll see you next week. Cursedish is an ish media production. It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries, and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories, ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share, send us a hex at uh oh at cursedish.com. That's uh oh h all one word at cursedish all one word.com.