Fact and Fiction In 1848 the shout heard \'round the world was "Gold in California!" The Rush was on.
The life she might have lived is in these pages..
Like so many, this anonymous Indian woman is lost to history.
And then seeing her land spoiled, her people hunted, her culture destroyed.
But we can imagine her thoughts, her fears, her life before this moment, dancing the old dances, singing the old songs, gathering acorns, weaving baskets.
Nothing more is known of her.
A diarist described her as wearing calico, barefoot astride a roan horse, glancing behind her at men on horseback carrying rifles.
These events, factually documented and fictionally recreated, include major and minor historical participants, most prominently the nameless Indian woman riding at Savage\'s side, guiding the Mariposa Battalion expedition.
In 1851 Savage\'s ragtag militia, the Mariposa Battalion, entered history as the first white men to see Yosemite Valley.
Jim Savage, a former mountain man famously befriending Indians, learned their languages, married into their tribes and, when desperate Indians marauded, was tasked by the infant state\'s government to collect them onto reservations.
Endangered native people saw invaders dig up land gently tended for centuries, deer and fish disappear, cultures collide.
Fact and Fiction In 1848 the shout heard \'round the world was "Gold in California!" The Rush was on
