Indian Village of Ahwahnee

Behind the Museum is The Indian Village of Ahwahnee which is a recreation of an Indian settlement in the Yosemite Valley, we left the museum through the back door and found ourselves in the village. A nice welcome sign greeted us at the beginning of the trail.

Among the many exhibits we saw the Sweat house which is heated by an oak-wood fire. The deer hunters would spend up to three hours inside then emerge and bath themselves. Then, they rubbed themselves with wormwood or another aromatic plant to remove human scent and allow the hunters to get closer to their quarry.

This particular sweat house replaced several earlier sweat houses that stood on this site and was built on a framework of four incense cedar poles covered with successive layers of buchbrush.

The Ceremonial Roundhouse serves as the center for the village religious activities to date. Since roundhouses need reconstruction every dozen years or so this structure was built in 1992 and replaced the one that was built in 1973.  It was built using four big oak posts for support, and the roof is constructed of incense cedar bark. The entrance is located on the southeast side of the structure facing the morning sun.

Next exhibit was the Miwok Cabin depicting the way Miwok people used to live. We learned from the posted information that Miwok cabin came to existence soon after non-Indian came to Yosemite in 1850’s and settle there. The local Indian people begun to emulate the building style of these settlers and that’s how these cabins came to existence.

Next exhibit was the Chief’s House, and reading the information we learned that Miwok leaders had large homes than others in the village, for they often hosted dinners and events for large groups of people and by the turn of the century many Miwok people built structures like this one: they were based on Miwok homes, but built using Euro-American technology.

Next we saw a re-created Umatchas which was considered a typical Miwok and Paiute early home and was made from cedar bark. It gave us a taste of how the Miwok and Paiute peoples lived; the places where they prepared and cooked their food, and more.

Another exhibit in the village was the Acorn Granary which used to store Black oak acorns. The granaries were raised above the ground on stumps and consisted of a nest-like containers made from grapevines and buck brush. The cavity was lined with wormwood and then filled with acorns. The entire granary was then shingled with conifer boughs and capped at the top with layers of more boughs, cedar bark, and after the coming of non-Indians, canvas.