So far as can be ascertained, the course of migration of this group, like that of the whole stock, has been in a general southerly direction. The Comanche traditions state that about two hundred winters ago they lived as one people with the Shoshonees somewhere to the north of the head-waters of the Arkansas River.[137] This is borne out by similar traditions among the northern Shoshonees.[138] That very careful student, Mr. George Gibbs, from a review of all the indications, reached the conclusion that the whole group came originally from the east of the Rocky Mountain chain, and that the home of its ancestral horde was somewhere between these mountains and the Great Lakes.[139] This is the opinion I have also reached from an independent study of the subject, and I believe it is as near as we can get to the birth-place of this important stock. This stock presents the extreme of both linguistic and physical development. No tongue on the continent was more cultured than the Nahuatl, and so were those who spoke it. The wretched root-digging Utes, on the other hand, present the lowest type of skulls anywhere found in America.[140] The explanation is easy. It was owing to their lack of nutrition. Living on the arid plains of the interior, little better than deserts, they had for generations been half starved. They were not agricultural, but lived along the streams, catching fish, and making a poor bread from the seeds of the wild sun-flower and the chenopodium. Their houses were brush huts, or lodges of dressed buffalo skins; and where the winters were cold, they dug holes in the ground in which they huddled in indescribable filth.