[1] His father Bradley Bunnell and his uncle Douglass Houghton (both physicians) were a major influence on young Lafayette, especially instilling in him a desire to seek adventure in "the West."

When they did finally settle in Detroit, young Bunnell was friends with the Ojibwe, Potowatami and French-Canadian youth.

For a while he was in charge of the hospital in Cordova, and had medical command of a regiment when they returned to Michigan at the end of the war.

[3] During the winter of 1849–50, while ascending the old Bear Valley trail from Ridley's ferry, on the Merced river, my attention was attracted to the stupendous rocky peaks of the Sierra Nevadas.

But few of the miners had noticed any of its special peculiarities.In 1851, Bunnell was a member of the Mariposa Battalion that became the non-indigenous discoverers of the Yosemite Valley.

Although he practiced medicine a little, for the most part he lived off his army pensions and wrote histories of the upper Mississippi.