True, the beautiful Kumeyaay ancestral lands secured for the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation were remote, harsh, and not well suited for farming, but the Sycuan people-because of their endurance, resilience, and intelligence managed to survive. The current 640 acre-one square mile-Sycuan Indian Reservation in Dehesa Valley was included in Grant’s Executive Order.
Grant, signed a Presidential Executive Order setting aside specific lands in San Diego County for the exclusive use and residence of the Kumeyaay. In 1875, after generations of terrible mistreatment of the Indians, the United States government, under the leadership of Ulysses S. Their ancestral lands from the Pacific Ocean to the sand dunes just west of the Colorado River, and some 75 miles north and south of the boundary line between Mexico and the United States.
The Kumeyaay people have lived and prospered in the beautiful and moderate climate of the Kumeyaay territory. There are a total of 18 Indian reservations existing in relation to the counties of San Diego and Imperial (and in relation to Baja California, Mexico to the south), more than any other county of the United States. Sycuan is one of 12 Kumeyaay Nation Bands existing today which are original to the Kumeyaay territory north of the U.S.-Mexico border.
