High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! For over 3,000 years Sierra Miwok, Mono, Paiute, and other Native American groups have lived in the central Sierra Nevada region of California. When European Americans first visited the area that would later become Yosemite National Park, a band of Miwok-speaking Native Americans called the Ahwahnechee lived in Yosemite Valley. The California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century greatly increased the number of non-indigenous people in the region. Tensions between Native Americans and white settlers escalated into the Mariposa War. As part of this conflict, settler James Savage led the Mariposa Battalion into Yosemite Valley in 1851, in pursuit of Ahwaneechees led by Chief Tenaya. Accounts from the battalion, especially from Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, popularized Yosemite Valley as a scenic wonder.