Early in the West

Just beyond the Mississippi River where the forests of the East gave way to fertile, well-watered
prairies lived...

* Mandan, Hidatsa, Crow, Omaha -- along the Missouri River.  Hunters, permanent villages with bark or earth lodges. 

* Cheyenne, Arapaho, Dakota (Sioux) -- Minnesota lake country.  Farmers who grew corn, beans, squash. 

* Early ancestors of Blackfoot, Arapaho, Shoshone -- West to the Rockies grasslands.  Nomadic, small hunters, food gatherers.  Followed the buffalo, traveled by foot in families, peaceful.

* Bannock, Ute, Painute, Goshute, Washoe -- Great Basin, food gatherers, peaceful, nomadic, poor, always moving and wandering in search of food, little time for fighting.
Divided further into:
    
     * Pacific Northwest - Salmon fishermen, prosperous, sedentary

    * Southwest - Agricultural pueblo dwellers, isolationists

Next time...meeting the white man philosophy
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Today in Pioneer History: On July 20, 1889, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged, after having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king.