Park ranger Shelton Johnson portrays one of the U.S. Army's Buffalo Soldiers as part of his interpretation of Yosemite's history. Find a link below to a video clip of him. Click on this photo to view his related web site.
As background, the U.S. Army served as the official administrator of Yosemite and Sequoia national parks between 1891 and 1913, and, in that capacity, it helped create a model for park management as we know it today. These army troops were garrisoned at the Presidio of San Francisco during the winter months and served in the Sierra only during the summer months. This arrangement was an unusual duty for troops and greatly prized by army men with one army officer referring to the Sierra Nevada as the “Cavalryman's Paradise.” Commanding officers became acting military superintendents for these national parks with two troops of cavalry, normally, assigned to each park. Each troop would be made up of approximately 60 men. The troops essentially comprised a roving economy—infusing money into park and local businesses—and thus their presence was generally welcomed. The presence of these soldiers as official stewards of park lands brought a sense of law and order to the mountain wilderness.
The hidden chapter of this U.S. Army history revolves around the participation of African-American troops of the 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry, who protected both Yosemite and Sequoia national parks in 1899, 1903, and 1904. (The parks are located approximately 150 miles apart.) Most of these men were veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War in which they were called "Smoked Yankees." Many of them enlisted in the South where opportunities for African-Americans were limited to sharecropping, and other labor intensive work.
Even though the Buffalo Soldiers wore the uniform of the U.S. Army, their ethnicity combined with the racial prejudice of the time made the performance of their duties quite challenging. In the early 1900s, African-Americans were routinely abused, or even killed, for the slightest perceived offense. They occupied one of the lowest rungs of the social ladder; a fact which served to undercut the authority of any black man who served in any position of power. Yosemite and Sequoia's Buffalo Soldiers had to be simultaneously strong and diplomatic to fulfill the duties of their job but to avoid giving offense.
Although officers were mostly Euro-American, an exception to this was Charles Young, the third African-American graduate of the U.S. military academy at West Point. He served as the acting military superintendent of Sequoia National Park in 1903. Although his tenure was brief, it was groundbreaking. Young is considered by some to be the first African-American superintendent of a national park. Most of the men under Young’s command in Sequoia, as well as the 9th Cavalry soldiers serving in Yosemite, were Philippine war veterans, but service in the Sierra brought about an astonishing change in geography and function for these battle-weary men. Their duties included confiscating firearms as well as curbing poaching of the park's wildlife, suppressing wildfires, ending illegal grazing of livestock on federal lands, and stopping thefts of timber and other natural objects. They oversaw the construction of roads, trails, and other infrastructure.
