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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in History

Dispossessed Again: Paiute Land Allotments In The Mono Basin, 1907-1929, Robert B. Marks Jan 2023

Dispossessed Again: Paiute Land Allotments In The Mono Basin, 1907-1929, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Like most California Indians, the Kutzadikaa people in the Mono Basin on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains were dispossessed of their land in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, they were not then removed to a reservation. They were left landless with no rights to reclaim their land until the Dawes Act (1887) made land allotments to non-reservation Indians possible. This article explores the history of land allotments in the Mono Basin, and places that story into the broader context of U.S. assimilationist policies but more importantly into the context of local history. Kutzadika …


This Land Is Their Land, Char Miller Apr 2021

This Land Is Their Land, Char Miller

Eastern Sierra History Journal

An 1891 petition to the United States government from the Indigenous people of the Yosemite Valley in the central Sierras offers a blistering indictment of the settler-colonial expropriation of their homeland and a counter narrative to conservationists who have debated for more than a century the impact of flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley to provide water to San Francisco.


Sheep Replace Pronghorn: An Environmental History Of The Mono Basin, Robert B. Marks Mar 2021

Sheep Replace Pronghorn: An Environmental History Of The Mono Basin, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

This article examines the ways in which the hunting-gathering people of the Mono Basin lived before their way of life and environment was overturned by the nineteenth-century arrival of Euro-American settlers with vastly different ways of interacting with the environment. And it tracks some of these alterations by tracking when and how sheep replaced pronghorns.


Putting California On The Map: Von Schmidt’S Lines, David Carle Jan 2020

Putting California On The Map: Von Schmidt’S Lines, David Carle

Eastern Sierra History Journal

When Allexey Waldemar von Schmidt lived in California, from 1849 through 1906, the young state developed a reputation as a society of innovators and energetic problem-solvers. Von Schmidt was a surveyor and civil engineer, an involved citizen of San Francisco, a father and husband, and a pioneer whose triumphs and tragedies enlarged the California Dream. Historian David Carle argues here that this pioneering surveyor literally took California’s measure and documented every step of the way.


Crucible Of The Modern Republic: The Yosemite Grant And Environmental Citizenship, Jen A. Huntley Jan 2020

Crucible Of The Modern Republic: The Yosemite Grant And Environmental Citizenship, Jen A. Huntley

Eastern Sierra History Journal

The Yosemite Grant, which established the basis for the state, later national park in the central Sierra, initiated a powerful new force that constituted a tipping point in American environmental history, Jen A. Huntley argues. A moment in US history when the right combination of people and politics and ideas hit a nerve in the broad social psyche of a time and launched a new environmental understanding.


Making The Past Present: Editor's Note, Char Miller Jan 2020

Making The Past Present: Editor's Note, Char Miller

Eastern Sierra History Journal

For this inaugural volume of the ESHJ, editor Char Miller discusses the formative role that writer Mary Austin (1868-1934) has had in identifying many of the Eastern Sierra's key features, natural and human. This new journal hopes to add to the intellectual work that she launched, serving as a window into this complex, fascinating, and contested region.


The Ever-Changing World Of The Paiute, Joseph Lent Jan 2020

The Ever-Changing World Of The Paiute, Joseph Lent

Eastern Sierra History Journal

In this important article, Joseph Lent offers a counter-narrative to settler-colonial conceptions of what we now call the Eastern Sierra that derives its power from the oral histories of the Paiute nation.