NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBAL GEOGRAPHY AND CULTURE

According to Wikipedia, Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state in the United States since 1988, due to the Powder River Basin, a region in northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana that is the single largest source of coal mined in the United States and contains one of the largest deposits of coal in the world. In 2007, the Powder River Basin alone produced 436 million short tons (396 million tonnes) of coal, more than twice the production of second-place West Virginia, and more than the entire Appalachian region.[7] Overall, the Powder River Basin accounts for about 37 percent of U.S. coal production. According to the Department of the Interior, twenty-five Native American reservations have coal reserves. Navajo, Hopi, and Crow lands all have coal mines. The Southern Ute, Uintah, Ouray, Fort Berthold, Northern Cheyenne, and Zuni have coal reserves with potential for development. The development of coal resources on Native American lands has been guided in part by the treaties between the federal government and native tribes. In the past, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) arranged and managed coal development land leases. The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes. Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects (the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example), foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership (what little there was) was informal. After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. After white prospectors discovered gold and silver in the region in the mid-19th century, most of the Great Basin’s people lost their land and, frequently, their lives.