Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1891-09-04
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.

A newspaper recently printed an account
of an Esquimaux manner of getting
wolves. The sayages fast some blubbe
to a sharp flint stone in due time vol
begins licking il; he cuts his tongue OF
the stone, " hen the taste Of his own blood
impels him to attack the morsel all the
more ravenousIy. The scent of the booC
soon summons the pack, who fall upon the
wounded brother and make an end of him
Then the Esq limaux drive them off an6
secure the hide of the deceased. This wit
serve as peg to hang some hunting and
fishing stories on. A very old master-in
fact the oldest of masters-has left a
WORK o. art on ivory, a scratched picture
of his contemporary, the mammoth, and il
is rather a spirited drawing. 1t is not at
all such drawing as the youthful artist
makes and then writes under, This is a
cow" it is a better drawing OF nam
moth than many of us would make of a
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 very complete series at the National
history museum. Just how this very old
master and his friends killed their NAM
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 mammoth's 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 NAM
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 of his great game. For it is q
matter of the first interest to observe that
primitive man is driven, by the very inef-
iiciency of his weapons, to rely on outwit-
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 paintive 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 a 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
! featheress stumps. Civilized man shows
little of the same sort of wit when he
takes fish with tackle that is too light
for the work unless employed with skill
and the Judgment that is based on a knowl-
edge OF the ish's habits when taking the
bait. Civilized man rather prides himself
on his flies that delude the prey, ye' man
of the most primitive order fabf icates
shrimps that serve the purpose, and pa
tiently gruds ishhook out of she'll or
| fashions one OF the hardwood points and
shanks sashed together with sinew. In
short, wherever his meat is, man contrlves
to take it and in this sense it is to be OBJ
served that his fellow man has always been
part of his meat, aud has put his wits to
their very prettlest 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
rudimentuy 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 it 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 up IN this so far rs to build himself
u little snow hut to sit in, with a hole
large enough for him to put hts hand
through to clutch the bird that comes
down upon the bait. There is one savage
man who excelS the modern with his shot
gun-the South American, namely, with
his blow gun. With this tool he equals
the finest rifle practice to a height of SOC
feet vertically. His arrow is rib out of a
palm leaf flexible, and feathered with raw
cotton. But il 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
affected for food. The discharge of this
gun makes no noise like that of drawing
u cork from a phial, Although Watertor
! the traveller, described the making OF
wourah poison, his recipe lacks veri6catio
1t is vegetable extract, boiled down tC
, the consistency of molasses, made efficient
{ With the poison faugs of tive kinds 81
, snakes and two species of singing ants
: RemoteSt man has taken animals by
snares, the slip moose being always on,
form, even when his fbers were stripped
from the inner bark Of trees. ReyuarC
the Fox stts'one % these for the king
messenger, the cat. The same remot,
man took his fish with the same flo
made both into lines and nets His owl
practice Of fishing with lines is atteste,
| bv his attributing it to animals. In TIN
Morse, the bear at the instiRation of tn
fox, e hes with Iii, tail through a hole il
, the ice till it is frozen in. and then pull
Mt it till i. comes off In the Bornn, it /
, the hyuea who puts his tail in the hol
; that the weasel may tasten tins meat to i
. but the weasel fastens stick 90 it insteaC
! arc the hynea pulls till his tai breaks
/. These two stories are told to account 70
, these animals being stumpy.tailed. /
! Reynard the fox the story is fastened o
i the wolf, and, in a Highland story, on tn
wolf again. In this L e fox shows tn
wolf the moon on the ice. and tells hir
. :. - 1, ,b,,sa Oh Nn ,,,,,st ,,,-or - 80, 4.