But “a lot of them have just been erased off the face of the Earth,” he said.

There may once have been 300 tribes in Southern California, according to Gerald Clarke, an ethnic studies professor at UC Riverside and a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians.

Before there was a Riverside, San Bernardino, Redlands or Rancho Cucamonga, the Inland Empire was home to native communities for thousands of years.Īccording to the crowd-sourced Native-Land.ca website, the Inland Empire was once home to the Tongva, who are believed to have inhabited Southern California for up to 3,500 years the Payómkawichum (Luiseño) Kizh Cahuilla, who say they arrived in the region 5,000 years ago and the Yuhaviatam/ Maarenga’yam (Serrano) tribes - all of which today survive under multiple names in multiple federally recognized tribes.