but lived mainly on mesquite beans, the hearts of yucca
plants, and the fruits of the cactus. They also gathered a harvest from
the river reeds. To some slight extent they cultivated the soil by rude
irrigation and raised corn and squashes. They lived almost naked, for
the climate is warm and dry. Sometimes a year passes without a drop of
rain. Still farther to the north the Chemehuevas lived, partly along the
river and partly in the mountains to the west, where a few springs are
found. They belong to the great Shoshonian family. On the Rio Virgen and
in the mountains round about, a confederacy of tribes speaking the Ute
language and belonging to the Shoshonian family have their homes. These
people built their sheltering homes of boughs and the bast of the
juniper. In such shelters, they lived in winter, but in summer they
erected extensive booths of poles and willows, sometimes large enough
for the accommodation of a tribe of 100 or 200 persons. A wide gap in
culture separates the Pimas, Maricopas, and Papagos from the
Chemehuevas. The first were among the most advanced tribes found in the
United States; the last were among the very lowest; they are the
original "Digger" Indians, called so by all the other tribes, but the
name has gradually spread beyond its original denotation to many tribes
of Utah, Nevada, and California.

The low desert, with its desolate mountains, which has thus been
described is plainly separated from the upper region of plateau by the
Mogollon Escarpment, which, beginning in the Sierra Madre of New Mexico,
extends northwestward across the Colorado far into Utah, where it ends
on the margin of the Great Basin. The rise by this escarpment varies
from 3,000 to more than 4,000 feet. The step from the lowlands to the
highlands which is here called the Mogollon Escarpment is not a simple
line of cliffs, but is a complicated and irregular facade presented to
the southwest. Its different portions have been named by the people
living below as distinct mountains, as Shiwits Mountains, Mogollon
Mountains, Pinal Mountains, Sierra Calitro, etc., but they all rise to
the summit of the same great plateau region.

The upper region, extending to the headwaters of the Grand and Green
Rivers, constitutes the great Plateau Province. These plateaus are
drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries; the eastern and
southern margin by the Rio Grande and its tributaries, and the western
by streams that flow into