Even today the lower Kutenai are noted for their water-tight
baskets of split roots. Moreover the degree to which they used
the plants that grew about them for food, medicine, and
economical purposes was noteworthy. They also had an esthetic
appreciation of several plants and flowers--a gift rare among
Indians. These people lived in the zone of most stimulating
climate and, although they did not practice agriculture and had
little else in their surroundings to help them to rise above the
common level, they dwelt in a region where there was rain enough
in summer to prevent their being on the verge of starvation, as
the Indians of California usually were. Moreover they were near
enough to the haunts of the buffalo to depend on that great beast
for food. Since one buffalo supplies as much food as a hundred
rabbits, these Indians were vastly better off than the people of
the drier parts of the western coast.

South of the home of the Kutenai, in eastern Oregon, southern
Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and neighboring regions dwelt the Utes and
other Shoshoni tribes. In this region the rainfall, which is no
greater than that of California, occurs chiefly in winter. The
long summer is so dry that, except by highly developed methods of
irrigation, agriculture is impossible. Hence it is not surprising
to find a traveler in 1850 describing one tribe of the Ute family
as "without exception the most miserable looking set of human
beings I ever saw. They have hitherto subsisted principally on
snakes, lizards, roots." The lowest of all the Ute tribes were
those who lived in the sage-brush. The early explorer,
Bonneville, found the tribes of Snake River wintering in brush
shelters without roofs merely heaps of brush piled high, behind
which the Indians crouched for protection from wind and snow.