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Lafayette Houghton Bunnell (1824–1903) was an American physician, author, and an explorer of Yosemite Valley. Born in Rochester, New York, he grew up in Detroit, and as a young adult lived in western Wisconsin. He served in the Mexican-American War. He moved to California during the Gold Rush and was a member of the Mariposa Battalion that became the non-indigenous discoverers of the Yosemite Valley in 1851. After several years working as a surveyor and miner in California, he returned to Wisconsin. In 1861 he enlisted in the Union army in the Civil War and served three tours in various medical capacities. After the war, he settled in Homer, Minnesota, where he practiced medicine and wrote books on his account of the naming of Yosemite Valley and on local history.

Early life
Lafayette Houghton Bunnell was born in March 1824, the son of Bradley Bunnell, a physician, and Charlotte Houghton Bunnell. Not much is known of Bunnell's life in Rochester, but his father was already thinking about a move west because in 1828 he visited Detroit and received a license to practice medicine there. In 1831 he made the decision to move to the family, but they were delayed by weather in Buffalo, an as there was a cholera epidemic, he became busy in medical practice there. Lafayette contracted cholera as well. In early 1832, the Black Hawk War broke out and the far western flank of settled territory in Illinois. Writing in the third person, Bunnell said: "Although but eight years old at the time of the Black Hawk war, that event, and incidents connected with it, he distinctly remembers. The passage through Buffalo of United States troops on their way to the scene of conflict made a vivid impression that years have failed to eradicate."

The troops were under Winfield Scott, and cholera broke out among them, decimating the unit and causing alarm over the disease as they passed through Detroit and the tiny frontier settlement of Chicago.

Detroit
Sometime later in 1832 the family moved to Detroit, then a small fur-trading village whose population was an amalgamation of French,  Ojibwe (Chippewa) and  Odawa (Ottawa), but which was beginning to attract Yankee settlers and eastern investors. Almost immediately they moved again to Saginaw for the winter of 1832-33, but moved back permanently to Detroit in the summer of 1833.

In Detroit, Bunnell became friends with the boys of the various cultures already living there. "I was vain enough not to allow an Indian to do what I could not. Or if he did, it was not for long, for I practised his art of swimming in the swift cool current of the Detroit river, paddled his birchen canoes until I could excel him in speed and endurence [sic], and when the ice formed on that treacherous stream, I would skim over the ice on skates where his instinct would not allow him to enter.... The spirit of rivalry soon extended to my French boy companions, and the result was that by this close association, I soon 'picked up' a pretty good knowledge of bad French and some good Indian." His mother, concerned that the influence of the wilder ways of these frontier boys was having an undesirable influence, enrolled him in O'Brien's Latin School (although the family was not catholic). As Bunnell says, in his third-person narrative: "There can be no doubt of the masterly ability of O'Brien as a teacher; but his method was the old one he learned in his bible, to "spare not the rod!" So, after a very short term at that school, receiving in the meantime a few extra lessons in the manly art of self-defense, the writer one day with a ty-yah! left the school and his books never to return.

A new method was then tried with the young savage, and his experiences at the "Bacon Select or High School," of Detroit, are cherished in grateful memory."

Aside from his stop-start formal education, and his friendship with the multicultural frontier boys, Bunnell also had various other important experiences that rounded out his skills and knowledge. "I had become well acquainted with the families of the old French fur traders," said Bunnell. For a time as well he had to be taken out of school and put to work, due to his father being unable to support the family (an unspecified financial crisis), as an assistant in a drug store and, during which time "though young for the work" he was sent "by his employer to take orders and make collections in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia." Probably as important as any other formal or informal influence on Bunnell was his mother's cousin of Douglass Houghton, a distinguished naturalist and physician who was influential on young Lafayette. Douglas Houghton, graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was a member of the Schoolcraft Expedition of 1832, mayor of Detroit, Michigan State Geologist, and  Houghton, Michigan's namesake, who died in a shipwreck on Lake Superior in 1845. Bunnell recounted how when listening to Houghton "these conversations were overheard by an observant child of good memory, and they made him ambitious of adventure, and just a little romantic."

In 1840, at age 16, Bunnell was relieved of his work as a druggist's assistant reintroduced to formal education, this time studying medicine with his father "for want of other resources" he "attended private clinics and demonstrations" as well as reading of the medical literature, which although it bored him "in order not to disappoint the fond expectations of [my] parents, [I] worked against [my] inclinations." At age 18 in 1842, his restlessness caught up with him, and upon receiving a request from his brother Willard &mdash; 10 years his senior &mdash; who was working as a fur trader on Big Bay de Noc, with his father's approval he ventured off up the St. Clair River, along the shores of Lake Huron, and through the Straits of Mackinac to join him.

Life in Wisconsin on upper Mississippi
At first Lafayette had trouble locating his brother and spent the winter with a trader named Captain Lacey, who hired him to help with his trade at various points on the way down to Green Bay when the ice broke in the spring. Lafayette received word that his brother had spent the winter with his wife Matilda at the mouth of the Menominee River, and there they reconnected. Willard had decided by then that for health reasons he felt it was better to relocate on the upper Mississippi, and Lafayette readily agreed. "At my father's house, in Detroit ... the Snellings, of Detroit, of the family of Col. Snelling, for whom  Fort Snelling was named, would sometimes launch out into poetic descriptions of the beauties of the upper Mississippi...." So they busily arranged their affairs, buying and selling goods and furs up and down the bay, and set out in a canoe across the Fox-Wisconsin waterway to Prairie du Chien, eventually settling upriver at Trempeleau, where only one other non-Indian settler lived at the time. Along the way they traded with HoChunk, the few who had not yet been removed to reservations west of the Mississippi. They also met Augustin Grignon who was semi-retured and running a fur trading post at Butte des Morts. "Grignon actually pictured to us, in graphic language, the lumber trade that would spring up, and the cities that would arise, and advised our securing a location at the mouth of the river, but we were too obtuse to see things from his point of view, and when I asked why he did not make the selection for himself, his reply was that for the fur trade his location was best, and that in view of his age, he had no new ambitions." Grignon was right as within a few years Oshkosh would become an important manufacturing city.

When Lafayette, Willard and Matilda arrived at Trempeleau in June 1842, the situation with respect to the various Indians already settled there was in a state of flux. On the east (Wisconsin) side of the Mississippi, title had been nominally ceded to the federal government. However, since the Black Hawk war ten years earlier, and with a significant amount of commercial interaction, relations were generally peaceful and largely honest, despite some petty crime (and a few murders) of the frontier variety. A powerful Dakota Sioux village occupied the site which eventually was to become the city of Winona. Aside from nominal restrictions due to the status of title cessions, and the fact that the federal survey had not yet been performed and the land could not be privatized, both Ho Chunk and Dakota continued to wander in small bands and as individuals throughout the area, on both sides of the river. In this situation, the Bunnell brothers' specific knowledge of native languages as well as general knowledge of and respect for the cultures seemed to serve them well in this pioneering period.

Lafayette, sometimes with his brother and sometimes as an individual entrepreneur, including via hiring local help when needed, engaged in various commercial activities in the period. He plowed a claim in what is now the city of La Crosse &mdash; pre-emption law required development of a sort &mdash; which he later sold the rights to. He set up a wood yard in Trempeleau, for the growing steamship traffic (wood being the primary fuel in those days). His largest enterprise was a logging operation on the Chippewa River eight miles south of the Eau Claire River, one of the first in the region which was to become so important to the development of northern Wisconsin later in the century. However, due to various circumstances he never fully realized any significant profit from that operation.

Return to Detroit, Mexican-American War
In [____] his mother died and his father Bradley moved out west to join his two sons. Eventually Bradley became disillusioned with the hard frontier life and moved back. Shortly thereafter, and in the wake of the disastrous results of his logging venture, Lafayette moved back to Detroit also, where he again took up medical studies, this time with [Dr. _______].

When the Mexican-American War broke out, Lafayette enlisted in the First Michigan Volunteer Regiment. The unit never saw action &mdash; by the time it was deployed to the region around Mexico City, hostilities had ceased. The unit di garrison duty in Cordoba. As the two medical officers for the unit became ill, Bunnell assumed the position of [chief medical officer ____]. He remained the medical officer in charge of a detachment when the unit was mustered out in Detroit in July 1848.

To California
When Bunnell was mustered out rumors were already afoot about the California gold strike, but it was not confirmed until President Polk's annual speech to Congress in December. "Having acquired a taste for a free life when the gold discovery in California became a fact, I went overland through Mexico to Mariposa...." Even before the gold rush, a primary means to get to California was via steam ship &mdash; two monthly mail packets were authorized by Congress in 1847. The most common route between the oceans was across Panama, but it was not uncommon to disembark in Vera Cruz and catch a California-bound vessel in Acupulco, probably the fastest overall route until the Panama railroad was built, and familiar to Bunnell after his service in Cordoba. Bunnell's exact travel dates and arrival are unknown, but:

During the winter of 1849-50, while ascending the old Bear Yalley trail from Ridley's ferry, on the Merced river, my attention was attracted to the stupendous rocky peaks of the Sierra Nevadas. In the distance an immense cliff loomed, apparently to the summit of the mountains. Although familiar with nature in her wildest moods, I looked upon this awe-inspiring column with wonder and admiration. While vainly endeavoring to realize its peculiar prominence and vast proportions, I turned from it with reluctance to resume the search for coveted gold; but the impressions of that scene were indelibly fixed in my memory.

Ridley's ferry is currently flooded by McClure reservoir, roughly at the Bagby recreation area, a motorized boat ramp. Bunnell's destination was the Mariposa "Diggins'", a prime destination for fortune seekers.

In 1851 hostilities broke out between early white settlers and some members of the local native population. As was typical of these hostilities in this period, and especially in the early years of statehood when authorized response was hard to come by, the Mariposa Battalion was organized in the emotional atmosphere of this outbreak and achieved little strategic success, with several dozen innocent lives being lost (miners and native alike). Nevertheless, the militia, by serendipity while in search of tribal leaders who were involved in various raids on American settlements, stumbled upon the valley. Bunnell explored the Valley and named many of its features. Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian war of 1851 (1880) contains his account of his exploration and the actions of the Battalion. The majority of what is known about Chief Tenaya and the Ahwahnechee was from Bunnell's written accounts. Bunnell was the first person who encountered Chief Tenaya who subsequently wrote a book.

"As I did not take a fancy to any of the names proposed, I remarked that "an American name would be most appropriate;" that "I could not see any necessity for going to a foreign country for American scenery &mdash; the grandest that had ever been looked upon. That it would be better to give it an Indian name than to import a strange and expressive one; that the name of the tribe who had occupied it would be more appropriate than any I had heard suggested." I then proposed that we give the name of Yo-sem-i-ty, as it was suggestive, euphonius, and certainly American..."

Return to Wisconsin and Civil War
Bunnell served as a surgeon in the American Civil War. In fact in his book about the account of the naming of Yosemite, he identifies himself as "of the the 36th Wisconsin Volunteers," a clear indication of the centrality of his involvement to his life. This identity is frequently left off of references to his book. (In fairness, this is likely due to the length of the overall citation as it is to any prejudice towards the importance of his years in California compared to his life an role in the Midwest, although no doubt the fame of Yosemite tends to overshadow a balanced overall view of Bunnell.)

Bunnell spend about 5 years in California before returning to Wisconsin. He enlisted at La Crosse in 1861, was appointed a hospital steward in June, and was discharged in May 1862. In November 1863 he enlisted in the Second Wisconsin Cavalry, originally organized by  Cadwallader Washburn. While most of the fighting in the western theater had died down by the time of Bunnell's enlistment, the 2nd Wisconsin had seen significant action against Quantrill's Raiders and other  "border ruffians" in Missouri, and in the sieges of  Vicksburg and  Jackson, crucial strategic victories for the Union forces. Bunnell was discharge from the 2nd Cavalry in March 1865. He enlisted as a surgeon in the 36th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment  in July 1865, but was mustered out with the rest of the regiment that same month, as the war was now over.

Bunnell was a soldier and adventurer as much as anything else, so his motivation for enlisting on the side of the Union was no doubt motivated by these factors. However, the cause of abolitionism and Free Soil politics was well-known among the gold fields of California, as well as in the Republican stronghold of Wisconsin, a co-claimant as the birthplace of that party. The Mariposa Diggins' were (nominally) owned by John C. Fremont, first Republican candidate for president in 1856. There is no record that Fremont and Bunnell ever met, but they were both part of the same tide of social forces in the politically tumultuous 1850s, spiritual comrades in a broad sense if not ever comrades in practical fact. Washburn was also a Republican and Free Soil stalwart, highly influential in the political climate of the upper Mississippi Valley, the same general region that gave rise to Ulysses S. Grant, as a notable example.

Homer, Minnesota
After the Civil War, Bunnell returned to Homer, Minnesota, where he lived in the house his brother built. Willard died in 1861. He married Sarah Smith, daughter of Joel and Anna Smith, early settlers, and Edward S. Smith, prominent in railroading. They had no children.

How Bunnell spent his days in Homer, which given that he lived to be almost 80 comprised nearly half of his life, is a subject for further research. By some accounts, he spent a good deal of time reading, socializing and studying botany. He had two war pensions, and he described himself as "comfortable but not affluent."

He did practice medicine in Homer, but by most accounts it was a modestly sized practice. He had patients in Homer as well as Winona. His qualifications to practice medicine have been the subject of much speculation. In 1921 Dr. Howard Kelly, a co-founder of the John Hopkins Hospital and a prolific writer on medical history, wrote a story of the life of Bunnell. In his research Kelly discovered that Bunnell did receive a medical degree from the La Crosse Medical School. However, this short-lived institution seemingly a shell organization for local physicians to be able to practice dissection legally. It only conferred three degrees, and Bunnell's was an honorary degree given in 1864 during one of his furloughs from the war. It was after receiving this degree that he was given the rank of major. As one writer put it, "Apparently the Trustees of the La Crosse Medical School decided to give a local soldier some assistance." Despite what by modern standards might be considered dubious qualifications, in that era, "many men who received prominence in the practice of medicine had no great schooling and some had no diploma...."

What is well known about Bunnell in his days in Homer is that he wrote several significant works. One was his account of the "discovery" of Yosemite (xxx pages in its first publication), another was Winona and its Environs (yyy pages), and another was several chapters consisting of zzz pages in The History of Winona County. Aside from these major works, he wrote letters to the editor of the Mariposa Gazette clarifying the history of Yosemite and the mining country, and as a friend and acquaintance of many prominent people that he met in his adventurous days as a younger adult, he almost surely wrote significant private correspondence. Thus he became an unaffiliated scholar, despite "[__ self effacing quote from Bunnell. __]"

Each of these works has been given a title which misdirects the potential reader from realizing the wealth of the work inside. For example, the Yosemite book has several chapters on general history of the early mining era in the Mariposa region, as well as early tourist expeditions to Yosemite by prominent and important figures such as officials from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. (It is a common misconception that most immigrants came to California by wagon train. Most actually came via steamship, bridged by the Panama Railroad.  The Pacific Mail S. S. Co. was for a time associated directly with, and at other times a rival to, Cornelius Vanderbilt.)  He has significant discussion about the relative merits of proposals by Professor [ ___ ] Whitney and John Muir as to the geological history of Yosemite Valley. Muir had yet to emerge as an influential figure and yet Bunnell sided with his assertions for how glaciers once filled the valley, which is now the accepted consensus. As noted above, his attitude about native people is complex, but on balance enlightened for his day &mdash; particluarly as he wrote in wake of the Battle of Little Big Horn, when anti-Indian fervor was running high &mdash; and he expands on his opinions and observations by backing them up with critical analysis.

Winona and Its Environs is similarly mis-titled. The California Med [blah blah] calls it "a mine of Indian lore." In fact it is much more than that. While it tends to skip around chronologically at times, it includes major autobiographical accounts of Bunnell's life in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, all of which shed light on life in the territorial days of the Old Northwest. The details of his trip with Willard and Matilda along the Fox-Wisconsin waterway is valuable to any student of this historically important territorial trade route.

Bunnell died July 20, 1903, in a Homer after a brief illness. His obituary said he was a "man of genial, kindly disposition who possessed a remarkably tenacious memory. His writings left and indelible impression on the community ... and he must surely be considered Winona County's most distinguished citizen."

Place names

 * Bunnell Point at the east end of Little Yosemite Valley is named in his honour.
 * Homer, Minnesota was orginally known as Bunnell's Landing.