Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1891-09-10
Weapons were Primitive, and the
Ancients Relied Principally upon
Their Wits.
How the Australian Black Fellow Sue
ceeded in Luring Birds on to
Death.
The South Americans Blow Gun and
the Wild Mans Use of
Nets.

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wolves The savages fast some blubber
10 sharp flint stone; in due time wolf
tegins licking it; he cuts his tongue on
the stone, " hen the taste of his own blood
impels him to attack the morsel all the
more ravenously. The scent of the blood
soon summons the pack, who fall upon the
wounded brother and make an end of him.
Then the ESQ limaux drive them off and
secure the hide OF the deceased. This will
serve as peg to hang some hunting and
fishing stories on. A very old master-in
fact, the oldest of masters-has left
WORK OF art on ivory, a scratched picture
of his contemporary, the mammoth, and it
is rather a spirited drawing. 1t is not at
all such drawing as the youthful artist
makes and then writes under, This is
cow it is better drawing of a mann
moth than many of US would make of
cow. The weapons of this old master and
his fellows were flint. They were arrow
and spear heads, axes and daggers, all of
flint, and can be examined by the curious
in a very complete series at the National
history museum. Just how this very old
master and his friends killed their mann
moths we cannot be certain, but we can
give shrewd guess that they did so much
as some later simple people have killed
elephants. They may have fastened
spear pointed downward to a
heavy beam and suspended it over
the mammoths tail in such way
that his curiosity would lead him
to investigate it, aud when he did so the
whole apparatus would fall driving the
spear so deeply into the huge beast as to
insure his speedy death, if not killing him
outright. This assumes that the mann
moth, like his successor, our own elephant,
was of an inquisitive spirit, and that the
very old master had detected this weak
ness. and that he played upon it to the
destruction or his great game. For it is q
matter Of the first interest to observe that
primitive man is driven, by the very inef-
tiCiency Of his weapons, to rely ON Cutwit-
ting his prey far more than later man Is
compelled to. In order that he may out
wit him he is obliged to have more accu-
rate knowledge of his prey's habits and
instincts and consciously to build upon
these in Turing the creature to his destruc-
ton. Thus we see our northern Indians
Initiating the plaintive call of the moose,
and our own fre-hunters trading on the
inquisitiveness of deer to examine fire at
night till the shine of it is reflected FROM
their eyes and shot secured. This Dor
rows excitement from the fact that a man
can bag his own mule. To take his ducks
the Esquimau waits till they have moulted
and are unable to fly then slips upon them
in his kayak and spears the creatures
which are beating the water with their
featherless stumps. Civilized man shows
little of the same sort of wit when he
takes a fish with a tackle that is too hight
for the work unless employed with skill
and the judgment that is based on a knowl-
edge of the fsh's habits when taking the
bait. Civilized man rather prides himself
on his flies that delude the prey, yet man
of the most primitive order fabricates
shrimps that serve the purpose, and pa
tiently grinds fshhook out of a shell, or
fashions one of the hardwood points and
shanks slashed together with sinew In
short, wherever his meat is, man contrives
to take it and in this sense it is to be OBJ
served that his fellow man has always been
part of his meat, and has put his wits to
their very prettiest test IN trailing and am
bushing, and lastly, in downright skill in
weaponry. Man makes his harpoon of
bone, and Long Tom Coffin is tabled by
Novelist Cooper to have used an iron one
against his fellow creature. The most
rudimentary bird trap is that of the Aus
tralian blackfellow, who stretches himself
on a rock as if asleep in the sun, holding a
piece of fish in his open hand. The bird.
be 1T hawk or crow, seeing the prey, and
not observing any motion In the native,
pounces on the fish, and in the instant of
selling it, is caught by the blackfellow,
who soon throws him on the fire and
makes meal of him. The Esquimau i'm
proves up1n this so far as to build himself
little snow hut to sit in, with hole
large enough for him to put his hand
through to clutch the bird that comes
down upon the bait. There is enc savage
man who eXCels the modern with his shot
gun-the South American, namely, with
his blow gun. With this tool be equals
the finest rife practice to height of 800
feetvertically. His arrow is rib out of a
palm leaf, flexible, and feathered with raw
cotton. But it is tipped with the wourali
poison, which begins to Supply instantly,
and in three minutes bird as large as a
barnyard fowl is dead. The flesh is not
effected for food. The discharge of this
gun makes no noise like that Of drawing
cork from a phial. Although Water ton
the traveller, described the making of
wourali poison, his recipe lacks verifcatio.
1t is a vegetable extract boiled down to
the consistency of molasses, made efficient
With the poison fangs OF two kinds of
snakes and two species of singing ants.
Remotest man has taken animals by
snares, the slip moose being always one
form, even when his fbe1s were stripped
from the inner bark Of trees. Re,nard
the Fox sets one Of these fer the king.
messenger, the cat The same remote
man took his fish with the same lib +
made both into lines and nets. His own
practice of fishing with lines is attested
by his attributing it to animals. In the
Morse, the bear, at the instigation of the
fox, fishes with his tail through a hole in
The ice till it is frozen in, and then pulls
at it till it comes off. In the Bornn, it is
The bynea who puts his tail in the hole
that the weasel may fasten the meat to it
but The weasel faStens a stick TO it instead
and The h1nea pulls till his tail breaks.
These two stories are told to account for
these animals being >tumpy- jailed. In
Resnard the fox the story is faster ed on
The wolf. and, in a Highland story, on the
wolf again. In this t. fox shows The
wolf toe moon on the ice, and tells him
it is cheese, and he must cover it with
his tail TO hide it till the fox goes to see
that the Kramer is asleep. When the tail
is frozen tight the fox alarms the farmer
and the wolf leaves his tail behind him.
This cheese is green. that is rev or
fresh one. Early travellers swallowed
some of these stories as gospel. Thus in
the south of India a missionary ported
an animal called the iackal. very like the
fox in England In habis and appearance
The good man was told that they often
catch the crab by putting their tails Into
its mole, which the creature would i'm
me0iatalv sic 70 in horp of fnod he 4ck a