Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1916-04-05

! Red Eye.
But it was our incOnsequentiality
and stupidity that especially distresses
me when l look back upon that life in
the long ago. Once | found broken
gourd which happened to lie right side
up and which had been filled with the
rain. The water was sweet. and
drank it. | even took the gOurd down
/ to the stream and filled it with more
water. some of which | drank and
some of which poured over Lop Ear.
And then | threw the gOurd away. 1t
never entered my head to fill the gOurd
with water and carry it into my cave.
Yet often | was thirsty at night, es-
peciaT1y after eating wild onions and
Watercress, and no one ever dared
leave the caves at night for a drink.
Another time l found a dry gOurd,
inside of which the seeds ratified. /
had great fun with it for awhile. But
it was plaything, nothing more. And
yet it was not long after this that the
using OF gourds for storing water be-
came the general practice of the horde,
But l was not the inventor. The hon
or was due to old Marrow Bone. and
it is fair to assume that it was the ne
cessity of his great age that brought
about the innovation.
At any rate, the first member Of the
horde to use gOurds was Marrow Bone.
He kept a supply Of drinking water in
his cave, which cave belonged to his
son, the Hairless One, who permitted
him to occupy a corner of it. We used
to see Marrow Bone filing his gOurd
at the drinking place and carrying it
carefully up to his cave. Imitation
was strong in the folk, and first one
and then another and another procured
\ a gOurd and used it in similar fash
ion. until it was a general practice
with all of us so TO store water.
Sometimes old Marrow Bone had
sick spells and was unable to leave
the cave. Then it was that the Hair
| less One filled the gourd for him. A
little later the Hairless One deputed
the task to Long Lip his son. And
after that. even when Marrow Bone
was well again, Long Lip continued
carrying water for him. By and by,
If
never carried any water at all, leaving
the task to the women and larger chill
dren Lop Ear and l were independ-
emit We carried water only for our
selves, and we often Knocked the young
water carriers when they were called
away from play to I'll the gOurds.
Progress was slow with us. We
played through life even the adults,
much in the same way that children
play. and we played as none of the
other animals played. What little we
/ learned was usually in the course of
play and was due to our curiosity and
keenness of appreciation. For that
matter, the one big invention of the
horde during the time | lived with it
was the use of gOurds. At first we
stored only water i'll the gourds. in i'm
itation of old Marrow Bone.
But one day some one of the women
II do not know which one-filled
gourd with blackberries and carried
it to the cave In no time all the Wo-
men were carrying berries and nuts
and roots in the gourds. The idea.
once started. had to go on. Another
evolution of the carrying receptacle
was due to the women. Without
doubt some wOman's gOurd was too
small. or else she had forgotten her
gourd. But be that as it may. she
bent two great leaves together. pin
ming the seams with twigs. and car
ried home a bigger quantity of berries
than could have been contained in the
largest gOurd.
So far we got and no farther in the
transportation of supplies during the
years | lived with the folk. 1t never
entered anybody's head to weave
basket out of willow withes. Some
times the men and women tied tough
vines about the bundles of ferns and
branches that they carried to the
caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten
or twenty generations we might have
worked up to the weaving of baskets.
And of this one thing is sure-if once
we wove withes into baskets the next
and inevitable step would have been
the weaving of cloth. Clothes would
have followed, and with covering our
nakedness would have come modesty
Thus was momentum gained in the
Younger world. But we were without
this momentum. We were just getting
started, and we could not go far in
single generation. We were without
weapons. without fire and in the raw
beginnings of speech. The device of
writing lay so far in the future that
am appalled, when l think of it.
Even was once on the verge OF
great discovery. To show you how
fortuitOus was development in those
DAYS let me state that had it not been
for the gluttony of LOp Ear l might
4 have brought about the dOmestication
/ of the dog. And this was something
/ that the Fire People who lived to the
northeast had not yet achieved. They
were without dogs. This l knew from
observation. But let me tell you how
Lop Ears gluttOny possibly set back