Tenaya

Lafayette Bunnell, the doctor of the Mariposa Battalion, wrote that "Ten-ie-ya was recognized, by the Mono tribe, as one of their number, as he was born and lived among them until his ambition made him a leader and founder of the Paiute colony in Ah-wah-ne.

The few Ahwahneechee left Yosemite Valley and joined the Mono Lake Paiutes in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

[citation needed] An Ahwahneechee medicine man and friend of his father persuaded a young Tenaya to return.

[3] The Ahwahneechee were feared by the surrounding Miwok tribes, who called them yohhe'meti, meaning "they are killers"[4] By 1851, conflicts between the non-indigenous miners and the Native Americans in the Sierra started to increase.

The Mariposa Battalion was formed to carry out the relocation, marching Tenaya and his people to the Fresno Reservation.

Late in the summer of 1853, Tenaya and some of the men of his band were playing a hand bone game with some Mono Indians.

The gambling became tense and a fight broke out which ended with Tenaya being struck in the head with a rock crushing his skull along with several others of his band killed as well.