This letter includes a clipping of an article mentioning Fay Fuller's achievement of being the first white woman to make an ascent to the summit of Mt. Rainier. In her letter, she offers the Editor of Century Magazine the opportunity to have her write an article and include images she took while on her climb.
Caption reads:
"Happy Thanksgiving from Yosemite!
Thanksgiving is not the only celebration of gratitude and plentiful harvest in the fall. Many California tribes hold acorn festivals each autumn, celebrating the acorn and thanking the Creator for providing an abundant harvest.
The original people of Yosemite depended on the acorn for much of their diet, and the California black oak came to symbolize life. This staple was collected in the autumn and stored in large granaries, to be used throughout the year. The versatile acorn could be turned into a wide variety of dishes, from acorn mush, to soup, bread, or cakes.
Tabuce (“Maggie”) Howard (1870-1947) was a Paiute woman who was born at Mono Lake but moved to Yosemite Valley at a young age. At first, she made her livelihood working in park hotels, and later by making baskets to sell to tourists. Most importantly, she also gave public presentations where she demonstrated traditional crafts and cooking techniques. Photos show her processing and pounding acorns, then cooking acorn cakes on a heated stone.
November is National Native American Heritage Month, and Yosemite is the ancestral home of seven traditionally associated tribes: the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, Inc. (aka Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation), Bishop Paiute Tribe, Bridgeport Indian Colony, Mono Lake Kutzadikaa, North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians of California, Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, and the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians. Learn more about Yosemite's original people on the park website (link in our profile.) #NAHeritage #Yosemite #nationalpark"
An unnamed woman assists in serving lunch to three men at a resthouse on the rim of Haleakalā Crater in Hawaii, seven years before the establishment of Hawai'i National Park Haleakalā Section in 1916. Haleakalā became an independent park in 1961.
An article from ABC News describes the return of 735 acres of ancestral lands to the Penobscot Nation. The land had been owned by the Elliotsville Foundation, Roxanne Quimby's land trust which also donated the federal lands to form Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Quimby's family describes their land donations as part of a reparations process and restoration of ancestral Wabanaki lands.
Ardra Tarbell, Acadia National Park Clerk and Administrative Officer, and Sylvia Cough, secretary to Park Superintendent Benjamin L. Hadley. The two women pose at Sieur de Monts Spring.
An artists cutaway rendering of the living and research spaces of the Tektite II underwater habitat, where the all-female dive team lived and worked for two weeks.
This basket is one of several Maggie Howard made incorporating her Paiute name "Tabuce" as the pattern.
Coiled. Willow, bracken fern root, redbud. H 7.5, Dia 15.2 cm
Yosemite National Park, YOSE 7863
Unlike other weavers who created their patterns by counting out beads as they wove, Maggie Howard would sometimes bead directly onto a pattern to avoid having to count beads. Maggie stitched the pattern to this basket and then beaded over it.
Coiled. Glass seed bead, willow, paper, thread. H 9, Dia. 16.2 cm
Yosemite National Park, YOSE 7223
NPS employee Bonnie Koploy stands in front of the sign at Brooks River Station, Katmain National Monument. The archive caption explains that Koploy wears "the 1962 NPS women's uniform without the pillbox hat and with trousers and walking boots instead of the skirt and pumps."
