By March of 1851 the Indian Commissioners McKee, Barbour, and Woozencraft were actively assembling representatives of the numerous Sierra Indian tribes and driving sharp bargains with them to quitclaim their lands. On March 19, 1851, the commissioners in their camp (Camp Frémont) in the Mariposa region reached an agreement with six tribes and proceeded to establish a reservation for them. Their report refers to one tribe, the “Yosemetos,” who were expected at this confab but failed to appear. The friendly Indians who signed the treaty reported that this mountain tribe had no intentions of coming in. It was, therefore, decided to send Major Savage and a part of his Mariposa Battalion after them. On the evening of March 19, the day on which the Camp Frémont treaty was signed, Major Savage set out with the companies of Captains Boling and Dill. Captain Kuykendall’s company had traveled to the region of the San Joaquin and Kings rivers, in which locality the commissioners planned to negotiate another treaty. The force under the command of Major Savage followed a route very near that which is now known as the Wawona Road to Yosemite Valley. On the South Fork of the Merced, at what is now called Wawona, a Nuchu camp was surprised and captured. Messengers sent ahead from this camp returned with the assurance that the Yosemite tribe would come in and give themselves up. Old Chief Tenaya of the Yosemites did come into camp, but, after waiting three days for the others, Major Savage became impatient and set out with the battalion to enter the much-talked-of Yosemite retreat. When they had covered about half the distance to the valley, seventy-two Indians were met plodding through the snow. Not convinced that this band constituted the entire tribe, Savage sent them to his camp on the South Fork while he pushed on to the valley. His route again was that followed by the present Wawona road. On March 25, 1851, the party went into camp near Bridalveil Fall. That night around the campfire a suitable name for the remarkable valley was discussed. Lafayette H. Bunnell, a young man upon whom the surroundings and events had made a deeper impression than upon any of the others, urged that it be named Yosemite, after the natives who had been driven out. This name was agreed upon. Although the whites knew the name of the tribe, they were apparently unaware that the Indians had another name, Ahwahnee, for their Deep Grassy Valley.