Beesowuunenno

Beesowuunenno lay on the High Plains east of the Rockies, in the Wyoming and Nebraska country where short grass runs to the horizon and creeks cut shallow channels across the tableland. Bison herds grazed these uplands, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho, who had taken up horses in the eighteenth century, followed the herds across the plains. Water and shelter were scarce, so camps clustered along the streams. In 1820 the American explorer Stephen Long crossed this region and called the plains between the Missouri and the mountains the Great American Desert, a name that shaped how traders and travellers judged the country.