Abstract

Real-Time Mapping, Populating Boundaries of Yosemite, California, Treaties
Track: Tribal/Indigenous GIS Programs
Authors: Danette Johnson, Sandra Gaskell, Anthony Brochini

Mapping the historic boundary marker references of each of the congressional maps from the eighteen unratified Treaties of 1851-1852 between the California Indians and the United States government required research to correlate data to visualize their locations. When the congressional treaty maps were compared to remnant family use tracts of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation defined by Stephen Powers (1866), they confirmed the literature review, family oral history, and population data reflecting existing occupation sites of 1850 inhabited inside the proposed Treaty areas. The value of retaining population loci has been beneficial in the preservation of traditional cultural properties found within them. The ethnographic villages confirmed through this activity, aligned resources which were to be depleted by the inflation of the populations located within the Treaty M, N, and E boundaries when the outlying lands were evacuated to provide space for colonization by the growing Gold Rush California immigrants.

Danette Johnson
Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation Yosemite, CA
P.O. Box 1881
Mariposa, California 95338
United States
Phone: 510-381-0425
Fax: 209-846-0157
E-mail: johnsd88@yahoo.com

Sandra Gaskell
ARC Archaeology
P.O. Box 1881
Mariposa, California 95338
United States
Phone: 209-614-2505
Fax: 209-846-0157
E-mail: arcresours@gmail.com

Anthony Brochini
Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation
P.O. Box 1200
Mariposa, California 95338
United States
Phone: 209-379-1008
E-mail: tony_brochini@nps.gov