Looking Down Yosemite Valley: An Artistic Analysis of Yosemite National Park

By Ivy Lagerberg

The story of Yosemite as it is told by works of art is often one-sided, and reveals national motivations and ideals of post-civil war America. 

Although the landscape of Yosemite National Park was formed by glacial interactions that took place millions of years ago, the works produced by artists like Albert Bierstadt and Carleton Watkins acted to solidify Yosemite’s place as an American landmark. Thus, although these artists didn’t literally “make” the landscape, their work metaphorically “made” the park’s meaning to the American people. The problem is that the stories that circulate about Yosemite National Park are dramatically different, with their messages in opposition to each other. Specifically, for many Native Americans, the inspiration for Yosemite National Park did not start as the ‘Garden of Eden blessed by God’ as seen in Albert Bierstadt’s oil paintings or as the ideal pastoral landscape as presented in Carleton Watkins photographs.(1) This period for them was marked with murder and brutality. The creation and reception of Albert Bierstadt and Carleton Watkins artworks exemplify the tendency to avert our eyes from grim realities and seek an escape mechanism with romanticized false images.

Before the California gold rush, settlers rarely traveled west of the Mississippi River. Western landscapes were unknown and dangerous but were some of the most breathtaking natural phenomenons in all of America. The desire for an adventure paired perfectly with a simultaneous gold rush, ultimately leading to further exploration and exploitation of the Western frontier. Western landscapes quickly became a source of national pride and identity. Artists were some of the first to explore the western frontier and create works based on the landscapes they encountered, with Albert Bierstadt a primary contributor to Yosemite’s widespread appeal. 

When viewing a Bierstadt landscape painting, one is immediately consumed by the massive scale and wide-sweeping views and is drawn into the image. “Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California” depicts a classic natural panoramic view of the long-hidden Yosemite valley in a style that initially appears hyper-realistic. Only upon further inspection can one see that this image is a composition, “not simply an obsessive map of nature.” (1) Highly textured rock formations frame the sides of the scene, and a valley filled with golden light runs down the center. Interestingly, Bierstadt scaled up the various rock formations for the sake of the painting’s drama, as although still massive, they look quite a bit smaller in real life. Why was this aspect of scale so important to the artist? It all has to do with feelings that the painting evokes from the viewer. By warping scale, Bierstadt was able to exaggerate how gigantic Yosemite appeared, possibly as a device to make the viewer feel small. There is something undeniably awe-inspiring about feeling small amongst a massive landscape, as it reverts our generally anthropocentric expectation of the world revolving around us. When looking at images of nature that fill you with such awe it is easy to assume you’re seeing with clarity, though you’re really seeing through a filtered lens. 

If this painting could be described in one word, it would be: heavenly. This is because Bierstadt’s paintings are situated within a wider political context of an extraordinarily grim time in American history. The civil war had just ended and there was significant post-war unrest. Americans were searching for beauty in any form. Thus, the idea that Bierdstadt’s wild primordial nature promoted was one of a representation of nationhood through the aesthetics of a landscape painting. It seems as if he painted what the settlers wanted to believe was waiting for them in the west, as he promoted an image of a “Garden of Eden blessed by God, untouched by civil war, and holding the promise of a new beginning” (2), which would heal the nation’s wounds. These gestures at idealism are painted in his work and can be read as a metaphor for the settlers’ soul. For example, in “Looking Down Yosemite Valley” warm golden light flows through the center of the scene. This light has been analyzed as a symbol for the all-encompassing spread of “illuminating civilization” and is a call to continue the colonization of America. The warped scale was meant to inspire awe, soothe tensions, and unite Americans with an appreciation for this uninhabited place which stood “untouched by war.” 

The problem with this story is that it is a false one. Before its “discovery” by the rest of the world, Yosemite had been home to several Native tribes. The park reflects some of this indigenous history, mainly in the form of naming, with sites like Wawona, Tuolumne Meadows, and the Ahwahnee Hotel. The Awaneechee people were the largest tribe to be forced out of the land, and now only exist in the park as the namesake of a hotel that replaced them. Although life and nature are emphasized, the tribes and the people that compose them have effectively been erased from Bierstadt’s paintings, as he tends to minimize the smallness of the landscape and maximize the largeness to inspire awe. We see a trend to evade history when we look at his landscapes, as his ideal depicts a “mythic world, a world sealed off from history and safe from the challenges of the future and the uncertain pilgrimage through time and change.”(1)  There is little suggestion of a world outside this closed painting that he has provided us, and what he has provided us is picturesque, stylized, and separate from the realities of the world “out there.” If in a Bierstadt painting a grand pine tree is just a speck, a human would be invisible amongst the colossal landscape. Thus he is rendering human beings and the histories they hold as insignificant in these paintings of such awe-inspiring landscapes. By shrinking the trees, and by erasing the beings that live amongst them, Bierstadt is promoting a false image of an untouched, uninhabited Eden waiting to be found. It has already been found. By sentimentalizing and vacating the West, rendering it appealing to the Eastern imagination, Bierstadt effectively used his artistic license to pluck Native people out of his story and out of history. 

In all my searching, I have found only one painting that includes human figures, entitled “The Oregon Trail.” Bierstadt is pretty well known for evading historical difficulties such as that of the racial frontier, refusing to confront them in direct narrative terms. But if we examine this painting closer, we can see how the contradictions of history are painted into his stories, “where they remain submerged–there, and yet not there.”(1) This piece contains conventions similar to Bierstadt’s other landscape pieces, such as a unifying golden light flowing through the center and a warped scale to show off the landscape of Yosemite, but it also includes imagery of a group of German emigrants traveling through the valley towards the mountains in the distance. The aspect of this painting that draws the majority of my attention though, is the muted settlement of teepees lying centrally in between the Germans and the distant mountains. The teepees are vague, distant, and they read as such. Clearly they are not the focus of this painting; the Germans are. The Native settlement is placed in the scene directly between the Germans and the mountains, forming an indigenous obstacle to the white man’s progress. Thus one can read this image as a story of progress through expansion, a typical narrative of the time. The teepee settlement lying in between the Germans and the distant mountains likely represents the belief that indigenous people are a direct obstacle to this progress. 

This ideology that Native people are getting in the way of progress acts to propagate the delegitimization of indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is often disregarded in our world that appreciates the “objective” as the only accurate truth. We can see how these different ways of knowing are often considered elementary and overlooked just by analyzing “The Oregon Trail” as the lack of sufficient attention given to Native people is most likely due to a lack of validation of the people themselves. I wonder how this story might change if the Native settlement was the subject of the painting rather than vaguely existing in the background. A different story would be told if a legitimate interest was expressed to learn alternative forms of knowledge and reorient our relationship with progress to advance in different ways. Our perception of who is “advanced” and “primitive” may simply be a question of framing, or who we pay more attention to. There is something powerful about inspecting the everyday, the mundane, as it in a way acts in opposition to this idea of “progress.” Bierstadt in this image grants us the power of seeing the mundane life of the Germans but does not allow the Awaneechee this same privilege. If we paint an image with the Native settlement as the focal point instead of as a vague addition, we might be able to see their day to day story; one of struggle, and progress, and all the complexities that exist in-between: a story of rich culture. We need to understand that progress doesn’t have to be so grand, it can just be the processes we engage with that keep us living and thriving. If we express interest in learning and seeing their everyday life, and widen our conceptions of advancement, achievement, and knowledge, we can learn more truth and revert this myth that the white man is the only person who is worth telling stories about. The Native story isn’t merely one of genocide: there are complexities that provide alternate stories, and these are alternate stories that are worth telling. 

The story of Too-Tock-Awn-oo-Lah goes like this: one day a bear and her cubs decided to rest on a flat rock. When they awoke, the rock had grown high enough to touch the sky, and they were stuck, unable to return to their home of Ahwahnee. All the animals of Ahwahanee saw the bears atop this mountain and wanted to help, but were not able to reach them. Mouse tried first but failed miserably. Next was Rat, then Mountain Lion, Fox, then Crow. Many animals tried to reach the stranded bears but none were successful. When all hope was lost, here came Too-Tock, a little green inch-worm. Everyone laughed and dismissed the worm, but he started to climb. Inch by inch Too-Tock made its way up the face of the rock, and after a matter of days, he finally reached the top. Sadly he arrived too late, and the mother and her cubs had died, but he brought a rib bone down to the base of the mountain to show he had made it to the top. Since then, the Ahawaneechee people have honored this feat by calling this rock Too-Tock-Awn-oo-Lah, or “Measuring worm rock.”(3) 

This is a story about the mountain you and I would call El Capitan. Only by hearing this story and engaging with indigenous history are we able to learn the true name of the rock face, and learn that El Capitan isn’t El Capitan, it is the Measuring-Worm Rock. Does this story not show an amount of progress and advancement? It’s like a precursor to the story of the tortoise and the hare that promotes the message that slow and steady wins the race, which is an advanced ideology to adopt. It’s the white man, in this case, that appears uninformed, misnaming the sites he is said to have conquered. Even the name Yosemite is incorrectly spread by ignorant white men, as in reality the land is called Ahwahnee for the Ahwaneechee people who resided there. We took this truthful name of the land and reduced it into the name of a hotel. The story Bierstadt told about Native Americans lying in between America and progress is one-sided, as we can learn so much if we open our eyes to different types of knowledge and progress.

Let us turn our attention to the photographs of Carleton Watkins and analyze their underlying messaging. It’s natural to look at photos differently than paintings, because the experience of viewing a photo versus a painting is distinct, and has different implications. With a photo, one expects a certain amount of authenticity that isn’t necessarily expected in paintings. Whereas a painter blatantly uses stylistic elements to convey a certain meaning, photographers are not granted this luxury in the same way. Photographers strictly rely on conventions like the framing of composition and lighting in order to evoke their meaning, thus although they appear as an authentic snapshot of the story unfolding, the underlying message can be just as tailored and edited as that of a painting. In this way, Watkins’ photographs may be said to have had an even greater impact on Yosemite’s rise in tourism and fame than Bierstadt’s paintings, as they seemingly convey reality, and this reality is so beautiful. 

Watkins regularly photographs wide-sweeping panoramic views of the land, usually utilizing a composition photographing from above and looking down at his subject. These choices emphasize scale very successfully, which went to solidify the already perpetuated image of Yosemite as this sort of out-of-this-world place of grandeur and plenty. “View of Tutokanula Pass, Yosemite, California” depicts a “clear, unobtrusive portrayal of the scenery and uncultivated landscape of Yosemite.”(4) The foreground is dominated by the middle ground, and the middle ground is dominated by the background. Lush vegetation and cascading waterfall create an image of blissful, uninterrupted nature. What he chose to convey in his photographs were the vastness and beauty of the space, and did so by climbing to the top of peaks and photographing below. What he didn’t choose to convey was any sign of human life. None of his photos which imply “the truth” of Yosemite to the American people actually conveyed the reality of the inhabited space or the gruesome realities that were happening at the time. The sequoia trees of Yosemite are some of the most awe-inspiring components within the space and a regular subject of Watkins’ photographs. Yet in all his photos of these trees, he never included one showing how settlers used to hang Native bodies from the branches. This is a strategic choice, to not sully Yosemite’s public image with its bloody reality. Remember, one of the reasons Americans were so attracted to Yosemite in the first place was that it appeared “untouched” by war; something that would change if the realities of the war within this place were shared. Just imagine the response to “Tutokanula Pass” if bodies were hanging from the sequoia trees. It would be difficult to look past that to see any type of beauty. So Bierstadt sentimentalized his images of nature and erased the stories altogether, finding a way out of history.

Watkins is sometimes credited as the person who “saved Yosemite,” but the narrative I have presented does not paint him in the same positive light. However, Watkins, as well as Bierstadt, shouldn’t simply be reduced to one-dimensional villains with the goals of erasing and delegitimizing the stories of the Ahwahneechee. The impact of their work represents a more nuanced situation than that. 

Importantly, Watkins’ photographs are credited as the thing that captured the attention of President Lincoln and is the direct inspiration for the Yosemite Grant, which was the first piece of legislation created to protect the land “for public use, resort, and recreation.”(5) Thus, his photographs and the legislation they inspired could be seen as pushing back against the common “God-given” entitlement to the natural world of the west that many Americans developed. The imagery of the golden light in Bierstadt landscapes flowing all around and covering everything mirroring settlers’ expansion, and the entitlement that this implies, is abruptly halted by the Yosemite Grant, with a message of protection and preservation. His art took advantage of these awe-inspiring landscapes “elicit[ing] in people who saw them a belief that what he showed must be protected from harm.”(5) Thus this image of uninhabited wilderness had to be created before it could be preserved. It’s worth noting just how well the Yosemite Grant succeeded. Just a decade after its “discovery,” logging and mining companies were scoping out the land to exploit, but this grant decommercialized the land and removed the threat. Thus, without these photos and the idealized image of untamed nature that they promote, we might not have the same Yosemite that we have today. 

Art is not insignificant. It’s a fine line between depiction and reality, and the deviations between them have the potential to tell us about ourselves. The art of Yosemite National Park shouldn’t be considered as a look into nature but rather a look inside ourselves, and at our internal nature. We have a reductive tendency that I argue is because it’s an easy way out of history. We mirror Bierdstadt and Watkins when we edit out what disturbs us, rather than engaging with discomfort. We yearn to be inspired by awe-inspiring things of beauty, and harsh realities make us turn away. Yet as forest fires begin to increasingly wipe out large plots of Yosemite land and more and more tourists visit, bringing their trash along with them, we still must claim these burnt sequoias and littered roads. We mustn’t only be drawn to scenes of beauty because the world is becoming increasingly less beautiful. Let us instead propagate images of the land inhabited harmoniously by Native tribes and spread the knowledge that this history did in fact occur.

References:

(1) Miller, Angela. “Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the Civil War Era.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. vol 21., pp. 40–59 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4102838.pdf (2001).

(2) Merrill, Linda., Rogers, Lisa., and Passmore, Kaye. “Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) Looking Down on Yosemite Valley, California, 1865” in Picturing America: teachers resource book, (Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities), Retrieved from https://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide_Chapters/PictAmer_Resource_Book_Chapter_8A.pdf. 

(3) First People, “Legend of Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La (El Capitan): a Miwok legend” accessed May 4, 2020, https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/LegendofTu-Tok-A-Nu-La-Miwok.html

(4) “The History of Yosemite National Park.” National Park Reservations. www.nationalparkreservations.com/article/yosemite-the-history-of-yosemite-national-park/ (accessed April 29, 2020)

(5) Hickman, Leo. “Carleton Watkins and the photographs that saved Yosemite.” The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/dec/30/carleton-watkins-photographs-saved-yosemite (accessed May 2, 2020)