the small streams which practically dry up during the long,
rainless summer, but it must depend on comparatively large
streams which flow in well-defined channels. With our modern
knowledge and machinery it is easy for us to make canals and
ditches and to prepare the level fields needed to utilize this
water. A people with no knowledge of agriculture, however, and
with no iron tools cannot suddenly begin to practice a complex
and highly developed system of agriculture. In California there
is little or none of the natural summer irrigation which, in
certain parts of America, appears to have been the most important
factor leading to the first steps in tilling the ground. The
lower Colorado, however, floods broad areas every summer. Here,
as on the Nile, the retiring floods leave the land so moist that
crops can easily be raised. Hence the Mohave Indians were able to
practice agriculture and to rise well above their kinsmen not
only in Lower California but throughout the whole State.

In the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, just as on the
Pacific coast, the condition of the tribes deteriorated more and
more the farther they lived to the south. In the regions where
the rainfall comes in summer, however, and hence favors primitive
agriculture, there was a marked improvement. The Kutenai tribes
lived near the corner where Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia
now meet. They appear to have been of rather high grade,
noteworthy for their morality, kindness, and hospitality. More
than any other Indians of the Rocky Mountain region, they avoided
drunkenness and lewd intercourse with the whites. Their mental
ability was comparatively high, as appears from their skill in
buffalo-hunting, in making dugouts and bark canoes, and in
constructing sweat-houses and lodges of both skins and rushes.