I'm not exaggerating. Deron Marquez just showed it to me on a map, and it's right under the building we're sitting in. The fault line looks kinda nasty, zigzagging across the Indian reservation like a paper tear, but my new friends Deron and Vince don't seem to be bothered by it. We're hanging out at the tribal headquarters of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and Deron and Vince would rather talk about the 16 natural springs on the land, the source of the bottled water they'll soon be selling.

In fact, these guys would rather chat about almost anything except slot machines and blackjack tables. Deron, at age 30, is the tribal chairman, and his vice chairman Vince is 32. They're easily the youngest Indian leaders in California, and on the scale of serious Native American intensity, these guys don't even register. They look like a couple of easygoing dudes you'd shoot hoops with on the weekend, the kinda guys who would own one of those aprons that say "Grill Boss" while they flip burgers on the barbecue. Deron played football at Fontana High School and still has the easy grace of an athlete. Vince is the cut-up, favoring one-liners. When I ask how "full-blooded" the tribe is, Vince says, "Let me put it this way. If Deron or I married any girl in the tribe, it would be incest."

Yet these are two important Indians right now, because they're sitting on the best gambling location owned by any of the 107 California tribes. San Manuel Casino, which opened for bingo in 1986, poker and Asian table games in 1994, and everything else a year ago, is just 60 miles due east of Los Angeles. "If someone in Hollywood gets the itch," says Deron, "we're the closest place." And ever since Proposition 1A was passed last April, giving California Indians the go-ahead to run full-fledged Vegas- style casinos (everything except craps and roulette), panicked Nevada gaming executives have been waiting to see just how Madison Avenue the tribes are willing to get.

If San Manuel is any indication, the answer is: Not very. The casino is a fairly modest building that looks like a festive Mexican restaurant. Bingo is still the prime draw. (At 2600 seats, it's the third largest room in the country, and on a weekend night, headliners like B.B. King, Sinbad, David Spade, Louie Anderson and James Brown work the main stage in the bingo hall.) They do hardly any advertising. There are no billboards on nearby Interstate 10, very little neon, and— pretty amazing in the casino world— no alcohol. The place is buzzing, even on a Tuesday morning, but mostly with low-limit poker players. (Californians love their poker.) There's no real restaurant in the place, just snack bars and a few food carts. And there are no signs on the main freeway. I had to stop and ask directions at a gas station just to find the place, nestled as it is at the end of a dead end road up against the steep slopes of McKinley Mountain.

"As you can see," says Deron, "90 per cent of our land can't be developed because it's on the side of the mountain. We're going to expand the casino by about double to make room for all the slot machines we're allowed to have, but our expansion is geared at current demographics— middle-income people, people from the area. Once the expansion is done, that's it. The tribe owns additional land, but it's not on the reservation so it can't be used for gaming. Our goal is to get to the point where we don't need gaming."

There are 137 members of the San Manuel Band, which by California standards is a big tribe, and they're considered leaders among the sovereign California nations, partly because Marquez is a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic Studies who has lectured at both of his two alma maters, the University of Arizona and Cal State San Francisco, and partly because the San Manuel Indians haven't sold out to gambling fever. They've broken ground on their water-bottling plant in nearby San Bernardino, and they've entered into a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Commerce to market their water overseas. They've also made plans for a retail complex that would include an amphitheater and cultural center.

"People see a casino and think it's a bunch of rich Indians," says Vince, "but that's not what we've done with the money."

"We've used most of the money for simple infrastructure things," chimes in Deron. "The main difference between now and ten years ago is that people no longer have to live in trailer homes. For years we couldn't even get HUD homes. We were promised them but we never got them. California was always last on the government dole for health, housing, everything, because California tribes are small and we didn't have the clout of the big land-based tribes. We had no paving, no water."

"When I was growing up," says Vince, "there were orange groves here, apricot fields, and just a fire road. Most people had moved away to get jobs."

And like a lot of tribes who finally have the money, the San Manuels have invested in their own culture, history and language. "A lot of our heritage was pretty much on life-support," says Vince. The language of the San Manuels is pretty much dead. Many of their stories are lost. And it's a small miracle that somehow the "bird songs"— part of the heritage of all Southern California tribes— have been revived. "One thing gaming has given us is a profound respect for self," says Deron. "You have a rebirth of interest in heritage when you make your own money." They've already sponsored a few cultural festivals, one of which featured native crafts, including "Indian porcelain dolls" made by a tribe member. (Porcelain originated in China and was copied by Europe in the 18th century, requiring an incredibly complex kiln, so it's probably not very authentic.)

Hopefully it's not too late to reconstruct their history. What's known is that they were originally called "Serranos" and were mountain-dwellers who ranged freely around the areas occupied by modern San Bernardino, Riverside and Temecula. In the late 1840s, after their treaty was broken and their land was taken by gold prospectors, the Serranos were accused of "raiding," which can mean anything from petty theft to murder. (It's unclear whether they committed any crimes. The official tribal history says that it was a false accusation.) They were systematically hunted down and killed, and only a few survivors managed to stay alive, huddling near the hot springs located at the present-day site of the Arrowhead Hotel, in the resort area of Lake Arrowhead. A community of Serranos grew up there, but in 1891 the federal government moved them to their mountainous 648- acre reservation— virtually worthless land at the time— where they've remained ever since. They take their name, San Manuel, from one of their early leaders, Santos Manuel, who survived the murderous attack and rebuilt the tribe.

There are a few pure-blooded Serranos left, but most have intermarried with neighboring tribes, like the Cahuilla, Diegeno, Paiute, and what is euphemistically referred to as "other," better known as the white man.

Not many people wander away from the casino, but if you do walk a half block south, you'll find a half-acre of land that the San Manuel band decided to develop last year. They didn't build more parking, or an RV park, or a smoke shop, or a hotel. They built Tribal Unity Park, with some nice sculpture and landscaping. The government stole their historic land and gave them a little worthless crumb in return, but they still wanted to give something back.

What's most impressive about this laidback tribe is that they didn't go for a big splashy commercial Vegas-type venture, like those of the Cabazon and Morongo bands near Palm Springs, nor did they throw up a skanky slot parlor, like some of the Indian casinos out in the desert. The San Manuel Casino is part of its community— contributing $2 million a year to charity and employing 1500 locals— and its whole purpose is sort of like Jimmy Stewart's building-and-loan in "It's a Wonderful Life." They want their people to have a little something of their own before they die. In that respect, it's not so much Native American as plain old American.

© Copyright 2001 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs