Sequoia National Forest: The Tule River Reservation and the Forest That Was Theirs First

The Tule River Indian Reservation occupies an enclave of more than fifty five thousand acres inside the Sequoia National Forest in Tulare County, a piece of land that the federal government set aside in eighteen seventy-three as a remnant of the territory that the Yokuts and other peoples of the San Joaquin Valley foothills had occupied for centuries. The reservation is surrounded on most sides by national forest land. The contrast in designation, federal reservation versus national forest, does not capture how much of the same landscape it is. Both were the homeland of the same people. One piece was reserved. The rest was taken.

The Tule River Tribe, which today includes members descended from multiple Central Valley and foothill groups forced onto this land in the post-gold-rush period, holds one of the most significant rock art sites in California. Painted Rock, within the reservation along the South Fork of the Tule River, contains Yokuts pictographs in a sandstone overhang that represent one of the most elaborate rock art panels in the region. The Tule River Tribe maintains a cultural relationship with painted rock sites throughout their historical territory.

The San Joaquin Valley Yokuts were among the most severely affected peoples in the dispossession period. Their population, estimated at various points between fifteen thousand and thirty thousand before contact, fell by approximately ninety percent in the generation following American settlement. The mechanisms were the same as elsewhere in California: violent displacement, loss of food systems, disease, and enforced relocation. The foothills that the Forest Service now manages as public land were cleared of their original occupants within a generation.

The trees in this forest were not there for the clearing. They were there before it, and they are here after. The people the forest displaced are also still here.