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Many summers and winters have come and gone since there lived in the Valley of Ah-wah-nee a large and powerful people, the Ah-wah-nee-chees. Long had they dwelt there in peace and plenty, but one sad year The Great Spirit became angry with them. There was famine in the Valley. No rain fell, and the acorn crop failed. The clover died in the meadows, and the game disappeared from the surrounding forests, and the fish from the streams. The earth trembled and the rocks fell down into the Valley from the surrounding cliffs. The snows melted in the high mountains and the floods came down into the Valley. Many of the tribe were killed by the falling rocks or drowned in the swirling waters. Those who escaped death fled in fear from the Valley. Some of them made their way across the high mountains to the shores of Mo-no Lake, and dwelt for a number of years with the Mo-no tribe.
A young chief of the Ah-wah-nee-chees married a Mo-no maiden, and to them a son was born. This son
they called Te-na-ya. When Te-na-ya had grown to manhood, and after the death of his father, an old man, one of his father's followers, urged him to gather the remainder of his people and return across the mountains to the old home of his fathers in the Valley of Ah-wah-nee, which was now his own by right of birth.
Te-na-ya welcomed this suggestion and gathered about him, in addition to his own people, adventurous members of other tribes, who were willing to acknowledge him as chief, and make the journey with him. They crossed the mountains in safety and once again the smoke from the campfires of the Ah-wah-nee-chees was lifted on the winds of the Valley that had so long before been the home of their fathers.
One morning a young chief of the tribe, while on his way to Ah-wei-ya (Mirror Lake), where he intended spearing some fish, was suddenly confronted by an immense grizzly bear. The bear resented this intrusion upon his domain and made a fierce attack upon the young chief. The chief, who was weaponless, armed himself with the dead limb of a tree, which was lying near, and, after being sorely wounded, succeeded in killing the bear. Bleeding and exhausted he dragged himself back to the camp where he told his story to the admiring members of the tribe, who, in acknowledgment of his bravery and skill, called him Yo-sem-i-te, after the fearless monarch of the forest, the grizzly bear. This name was transmitted to his children, and in time, because of their fearless and warlike natures, the entire tribe came to be known as the Yo-sem-i-tes.