The Serrano Were Force-Marched Out of Their Mountains

The mountains directly above you have a name in the language of the people who lived here first. Yuhaaviatam. It translates, roughly, as People of the Pines. The Serrano people managed this mountain landscape for thousands of years before a Spanish friar ever saw it, burning strategically to keep the pine parklands open, moving seasonally between highland meadows and valley floors, navigating a geography they had learned across generations. The trails that now run through San Bernardino National Forest largely follow routes they established.

In eighteen sixty-seven, American settlers carried out a massacre against the Yuhaaviatam band. Tribal leader Santos Manuel led the survivors down out of the mountains to the valley below, where they settled near the hot springs at what is now Highland. The widely repeated story of a thirty-two day, roughly one hundred twenty mile forced march to the Pala reservation belongs to a different tribe, the Cupeno of Warner Springs, who were removed to Pala in nineteen oh three, not to the Serrano.

How many people died in the eighteen sixty-seven violence is not precisely established in the historical record. What is documented is the destination, the survivors' leader, and the result.

The result was a remnant population, a dispersed people, and a landscape reassigned to settlers, prospectors, and, eventually, recreation.

The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, federally recognized in eighteen ninety-one, are the direct descendants of the Serrano survivors. They are headquartered in Highland, in the valley below these mountains. They used revenue from a tribal gaming enterprise, opened in nineteen eighty-six, to fund land reacquisition, housing, cultural programs, and language preservation. They are still here. The mountain is still theirs, in the way that a people's relationship to a homeland outlasts any forced transfer.

When you hike a trail above Big Bear, you are walking on their cartography.