"This study explores and maps an ancient, historic, and contemporary travel corridor that follows the San Joaquin River in the Central Sierra Nevada of California. It is called the Nium or People’s Trail by the North Fork Mono Tribe, the French Trail in historic archives, and the Mammoth Trail on contemporary US Forest Service maps.... Goode challenged me to see the old trails (now turned into roads, overgrown, and not readily visible) connecting archaeological sites, creek crossings, plant gardens, meadows, and specific places with meaning and stories. He encouraged me to see the Nium Trail not as a distant, isolated feature, but as a Cultural Landscape connected in time, space, and meaning." (West, 2024)

"In the photographic history book presenting accounts from the perspectives of California Native families and illustrated with their own photograph albums, L. Frank wrote of the connections between Tribes embodied by the ancient footpaths that connect their traditional territories as follows:

'Despite the daunting Sierra, people from the eastern and western sides of the mountain range visited each other regularly. Centuries before American and European immigrants attempted to cross the Sierra in wagon trains, Native Americans had created a network of three main trails and a series of interconnected smaller trails that formed a massive trade system. During favorable seasons, Paiutes from the east and Miwuk and Mono people from the west would follow these paths to visit friends and family, attend dances and festivals, trade their own regional goods for others, and enjoy the beauty of the High Sierra.

From the east came salt, red paint, pine nuts, seeds, obsidian, fur blankets, and tobacco. The west offered salmon, trout, acorns, berries and other food, shell and bean money, and basketry materials such as redbud and bracken fern. Both sides traded their characteristic finely woven baskets. Paiutes from Mono Lake carried on regular trade with the Miwuk of Yosemite Valley, sometimes even spending the winter there in lean years. Intermarriage between the two groups was common. Treks across the mountains continued to take place well into the twentieth century. (Frank and Hogeland 2007:181–182) '" (West, 2024)

"The renaming and reuse of Indigenous trails was often the case, as the original Indigenous routes became the primary routes used by early explorers, miners, settlers, and sheepherders. Organized government expeditions and operations such as the California Geological Survey surveyors and mounted US Cavalry soldiers used Indigenous travel corridors, often with Native guides to map natural resources and keep sheepherding out of Yosemite National Park (Farquhar 1965). The “old trails” were improved for pack animals and later became US Forest Service and National Park Service (NPS) numbered and named system trails. In other places, trails were turned into county roads and state and federal highways. Although some traditional trails and corridors were destroyed by the introduction of horses, wagons, and cars, this trans-Sierran foot-path connection continues. "(pg. 45)(West, 2024)