Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 75, Native Americans 15, The Rockies and California.

In our overview of Native Americans thus far, we've covered a great deal of the North American continent.

We've covered woodlands and deserts, plains and coasts.

Now, we turn towards the one type of climate we haven't yet looked at.

The mountains.

In today's episode, we'll look at the two cultures of the Rockies, the Great Basin and the Plateau.

This will be in addition to covering California.

This will be our final Native American episode, at least for the time being.

Yep, we are going to do this one last time. So sit down, have a drink with me,

one last time. I want to talk about what I have learned, the hard-worned wisdom I have earned.

Then we'll use it to move us along. Now, to begin, as always, here is Alvin Josephi in the Indian heritage of America.

Quote,

The Great Basin of the North American West, extending across Utah and Nevada from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada,

and including fringe areas of the southern part of Idaho,

southeastern Oregon, eastern California, northwestern Arizona, and southwestern Wyoming,

is one of the hemisphere's driest and least habitable regions. In some parts of it are low,

barren, and rocky deserts and large salt flats where human

habitation is virtually impossible. Elsewhere, limited water supplies and meager food resources

provided a poor existence for native peoples. Generally, unsuitable for agriculture, the environment

inhibited the establishment of permanent villages and restricted the growth of population and the size

and organizational complexity of societies. As a rule, the small, scattered bands of Indians that

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