For over 13,500 years, the land now known as the Presidio of San Francisco has been the ancestral home of the Ohlone people, specifically the Yelamu, a subtribe of the Ramaytush Ohlone who stewarded the northern San Francisco Peninsula. This fog-shrouded promontory at the Golden Gate was a vibrant hub of Indigenous life, where small villages dotted the bayshore and forested ridges. The Yelamu, numbering perhaps 2,000 in the region, lived in dome-shaped huts of willow and tule reeds, sustaining themselves through a profound reciprocity with the land. They harvested acorns from valley oaks, netted salmon and sturgeon in tidal streams, gathered shellfish from the rocky coves, and hunted deer and rabbits in the coastal scrub. Seasonal migrations followed the rhythms of tule elk herds and duck flocks, while basketry, shell beadwork, and oral traditions wove their cosmology into the landscape—stories of Coyote the trickster shaping the bay's contours.

Archaeological evidence, including middens layered with abalone shells and obsidian tools, attests to this deep-time presence, revealing trade networks stretching to the Sierra Nevada. Ceremonial dances under the stars honored ancestors, and healers invoked spirits from sacred springs like those in today's Presidio uplands.

European contact shattered this equilibrium. In 1776, Spanish explorers under Lieutenant Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza arrived, establishing the Presidio as a military outpost to guard the harbor and Mission Dolores, just miles inland. The Yelamu were coerced into the mission system, baptized en masse, and compelled to labor building adobe structures and tending fields—exchanging their hunter-gatherer freedom for Christian doctrine and European diseases. Smallpox, measles, and syphilis decimated their population; from thousands, survivors dwindled to hundreds by the early 1800s. Villages like Pruristac, near the Presidio's edge, were abandoned as families were herded to missions, their languages suppressed and ceremonies outlawed.

Under Mexican rule (1821–1848) and American conquest, further dispossession followed. Ranchos fragmented the land, and by the Gold Rush, the Ohlone were marginalized as "Mission Indians," many fleeing to urban fringes or intermarrying to survive. Yet resilience endured: descendants like those of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe trace unbroken lineages to these Yelamu forebears, advocating for federal recognition since the 1980s.

Today, the Presidio—once a fortress of empire—echoes with Ohlone ghosts. Archaeological digs unearth grinding stones amid eucalyptus groves, and tribal consultations guide park restoration, planting native bunchgrass to heal scarred soils. Rematriation calls grow louder, envisioning a future where Yelamu stewards reclaim their role, transforming military relics into centers of cultural revival. In this sacred ground, the Ohlone's history is not relic but living testament: a call to honor the original caretakers whose wisdom could mend our fractured earth.