KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
KA-MA was a young man who was very restless and unhappy in the valley.
Ever since a child he had heard the story of Tul and Ni-Va, and how
they went out from the valley and found the sea, which the valley
people called the Great Water. Tul and Ni-Va had been dead for a very
long time, but still the old men, who had heard the tale from their
grandfathers, told it about the fires at night, until the story became
a legend, and Tul and Ni-Va were spoken of as children of the gods.
None of the valley people had ever tried to find the Great Water again;
they were happy and contented where they were, and had no wish to
travel so far from their fires, their caves. But Ka-Ma, who listened
to the story with eager eyes, vowed that some day, when he grew to be
a man, he too would brave the unknown dangers of which the old men
spoke, and make his way to the river, and from there to the ocean.
He forgot this plan, when he grew older, but sometimes at night it
would come to him again, and make him restless and sad. But still he
did not go.
There was a young girl in the valley called Tula, and she and Ka-Ma had
played together when they were children. They liked each other very
much, and when they grew older, they fell in love with each other, and
wanted to marry.
In those days, when a young man saw a girl he liked, he would go to the
rocks in the hillside and prepare himself a cave. Then he would hunt
for her through the valley until he found her, and when she saw him
coming, she would run, trying to escape him, yet hoping in her heart,
if she liked him, that he would be swift enough to catch her.
Then, if the young man did catch her, he would take her in his arms and
carry her to the cave he had made ready, and it would be their home
from that time on.
Now Tula was swift, and strong, with long yellow hair, and smooth white
teeth, and as she grew up, Ka-Ma said to himself that he would take
Tula for his wife.
But Tor, who was the strongest man in the tribe, and was called its
chief, also liked Tula, and wanted her for himself. He had many other
wives, but none of them was as young and swift and strong as Tula. So
one day, Tor, seeing Tula bathing in the river, waited for her in the
rushes beside the bank. When she came out, he struck her lightly over
the head with his stone axe, and then took her in his arms and began to
carry her to his cave.
Ka-Ma, who had also been waiting for Tula, saw this and it made him
very angry. At first he crept along after Tor, afraid to do anything,
because Tor was the chief of the tribe, but soon his anger and courage
rose, at the sight of Tula in Tor's arms, and he ran up, axe in hand,
and demanded that Tor let her go.
The chief roared at him, and beating his breast with his fist, told
Ka-Ma to go away, but Ka-Ma stood his ground, for he saw that Tula who
had now recovered her senses, was smiling at him. Then Tor dropped the
woman, and drawing the axe from his girdle, came at Ka-Ma to kill him.
The chief was very strong, but Ka-Ma was younger and more active and
quick. For a long time the two fought, so that they were wounded on the
shoulders, and arms and chest, and the blood ran down their bodies to
the ground. Then Tula, who wanted Ka-Ma to win, picked up a stone and
threw it at Tor, and struck him on the side of the head, so that for
a moment he was stunned. With a great shout Ka-Ma raised his axe, and
springing forward, brought it down with all his might upon Tor's skull.
The heavy, sharp axe broke through the bone, and into Tor's brain, and
he fell to the ground dead.
Ka-Ma was frightened by what he had done, for he knew that Tor had many
friends, who would seek to kill him. So he hid the body beneath some
leaves, and telling Tula to wait for him, he went back to his cave, and
got his spear, and his bow and arrows, and tied what food he had in a
piece of skin and hung it over his shoulders. Then he returned to the
place where he had left Tula, and together they fled from the valley.
Ka-Ma, remembering what he had heard about the journey of Tul and Ni-Va
to the Great Water, made up his mind that he and Tula would go there
too. The story told by the men said that the path lay along the edge
of the great marsh, to a river, many times bigger than the one in the
valley, and that here the travellers had been sent a log boat by the
gods. Ka-Ma made his way along the marsh, with Tula following him,
carrying the bundle of food.
It took them three days to reach the wide river, because twice they
lost their way, but at last they found themselves on its banks. There
was no log boat in sight, however, and Ka-Ma made up his mind to
build a raft. He hunted through the woods until he found eight or ten
smaller logs, and these he tied together with thin strong vines, like
grapevines, which he tore from the trees. Then he and Tula got on the
raft and began to drift down the river.
Suddenly a shower of stones and arrows began to fall about them, and
looking toward the shore, they saw a number of the valley people,
friends of Tor, who had followed them to the river. Ka-Ma snatched
up his bow to return the fire, while Tula, whose mind was very quick,
began to paddle the raft toward the opposite shore with Ka-Ma's
broad-bladed spear. It was slow work, and meanwhile the stones and
arrows kept on falling about them, but moving along in the river
current, they were a hard mark to hit. So while a few of the arrows
and stones struck the raft, they did no harm. Tula kept on paddling
and the raft slowly began to drift in toward the farther shore, and
finally grounded in the mud. Snatching up their weapons and food the
two voyagers quickly waded to the bank and hid behind a clump of trees.
Their pursuers, however, did not give up the chase. Soon they began to
bring logs from the forest, and Ka-Ma saw that they, too, were building
a raft. There were five of them in all and they worked very quickly. In
a little while a second raft started across the river, on which were
four of the men. The fifth stayed on the other bank. The four who stood
on the raft paddled very hard with their spears, as they had seen Tula
do, and soon the clumsy craft was in the middle of the stream. Then
Ka-Ma took his bow, and fitted an arrow to it. Very carefully he took
aim, and fired. One of the paddlers on the raft fell, with an arrow
through his shoulder. The others, however, came on.
Again Ka-Ma fired, this time at closer range, and again his arrow found
a mark in one of the men. Then, as the raft drifted toward the shore,
Tula began hurling stones at it.
Unable to shoot their arrows with careful aim while on the shaky raft,
the two who were unhurt began to retreat, paddling furiously in their
haste to get back out of range. One of the men, who had been killed by
an arrow from Ka-Ma's bow, they pushed from the raft into the river. In
a moment the snouts of huge crocodile-like creatures appeared from the
water, and the body of the dead man was torn to pieces.
The taste of blood made the crocodiles furious; they pushed their great
bodies against the frail raft, driving it this way and that, and soon
the vines which bound the logs together broke, and the two passengers
found themselves struggling in the water. Their struggles did not last
long; the hungry crocodiles rushed at them, and quickly ate them up.
The fifth man, who had stayed on the shore, set up cries of fear and
rage, and ran away. Ka-Ma and Tula, on the other side, watched him go,
glad of their narrow escape. They did not try to continue their journey
that day, but made a camp on the river bank. They had no fire, to keep
away wild beasts, so Ka-Ma watched all night, spear in hand, while Tula
slept.
In the morning, after eating the last of the smoked meat they had
brought with them, Ka-Ma added some new logs to his raft, and bound it
with stronger vines, so that there would be no danger of its coming
apart, in case the crocodiles attacked them.
When they pushed off from the shore in the morning, they found the
current much stronger than it had been the afternoon before; there was
a tide running toward the ocean, but Ka-Ma and his wife, who did not
know what a tide was, were thankful that their raft moved so swiftly.
There were no crocodiles to be seen.
All day long they drifted toward the sea. The forests on each side
of the river became thinner and thinner, and by the time the sun was
sinking below the trees, the raft had come to the mouth of the river,
and the voyagers saw before them the wide curving surface of the ocean.
The sight of the Great Water terrified them, they were drifting right
toward it, and their raft, unlike the log of Tul and Ni-Va, did not
ground on a sand bar, but kept right in the middle of the rapid
current. They were very hungry, for they had had nothing to eat since
morning, and their tongues were dry and swollen from thirst. The legend
told by the old men in the valley had said that the river water as it
neared the ocean was salt and bitter, not fit to drink. They had tried
to drink it, as the day wore on, but could not, and the salt made them
more thirsty than ever.
These troubles, however, they soon forgot in the terrible fear that
they would be washed out to sea. Being land people, they were afraid of
the great, wide ocean; they wanted to feel the earth, solid and firm,
under their feet. And each moment they saw themselves being carried
farther away from it. The mouth of the river was now so wide, that in
the twilight they could scarcely see the low, sandy shores.
Both Ka-Ma and his wife knew how to swim; they had learned this, in the
river which flowed through the valley at home. With his spear in hand,
while Tula carried the bow and arrows, Ka-Ma sprang into the water, and
Tula followed him. Afraid as they were of the crocodiles, they were
more afraid of the sea, so they struck out for the shore with all their
might.
When they were almost tired out, they felt the sandy bottom under their
feet, and a few moments later they had waded to the bank, where they
lay for a time in the warm sand, resting.
Hunger and thirst drove them to their feet, for they knew they must
find food and water before the darkness came. Ka-Ma remembered that
the tale of the old men spoke of strange food, in shells like nuts,
which Tul and Ni-Va had dug from the sand. With the point of his spear
he also began to dig, and soon a pile of shell-fish lay before him.
When they broke the shells open, they found soft, jelly-like creatures
inside, which tasted very good and were moist enough to take away a
little of their thirst. At last, when night came, they threw themselves
on the sand tired out, and without keeping watch, slept until the dawn.
In the morning, Ka-Ma's first thought was to find water. Even the
shell-fish they ate for breakfast did not satisfy their burning thirst.
They went up to the higher ground of the shore, but the sand was hot
and dry, with no sign of a stream anywhere. Only a few low bushes and
trees grew about, and they tried to relieve their thirst by chewing the
tender green leaves.
Mother Nature, who saw the danger they were in, called Wind and Rain
to her and told them to make a storm. When noon came, the waves of the
ocean were dashing against the shore with a roar like thunder, and the
rain poured down in torrents. Ka-Ma and Tula lay on the ground, with
their mouths open, but the few drops which fell upon their tongues was
not enough to satisfy them.
When the storm was over, however, and the sun came out again, they
found many pools in hollow places in the rocks, and from these they
drank their fill. Then, feeling stronger, they went back farther and
farther from the ocean, until they found a clump of trees, with coarse
grass growing about, and a spring of fresh water forming a little pool.
The place where these trees grew was on a fairly high hill, overlooking
the ocean, and here Ka-Ma decided to make their home. He knew, of
course, that they could never again go back to the valley.
He had always been used to living in a cave in the rocks, until now,
but here there were no rocks, except those which jutted out along the
seashore. So he built a strong hut of saplings and rushes. First he
cut with his stone axe two posts, higher than his head, and as thick
around as his arm. At the top of each of these posts was a fork, where
the sapling had branched into limbs. He dug two deep holes in the
ground with his spear, and set the two posts in them, pounding down the
earth about them until it was firm and hard. Then he cut a third pole,
and laid it across the top of the other two, its ends resting in the
two forks. Tula, using rope made of plaited marsh grass, bound the
cross-pole firmly to the posts.
When this was done, Ka-Ma cut many more long slender saplings, and
placing one end of each on the ground, rested the other end against the
cross or ridge pole, to which Tula tied them fast. These long slanting
poles on each side, from the ridge pole to the ground, made a sort of
tent. Then they gathered great bundles of the long tough rushes which
grew in the salt marsh along the river bank, and wove these in and out
of the slanting poles, until they had made a sort of ragged frame like
coarse basket work. On top of this they laid more rushes, running the
same way as the poles, that is, from the ridge pole to the ground,
until the roof was many inches thick. Over these they tied more poles,
to hold the rushes in place. One end of the little hut they blocked
up with earth and brush; the other they left open, for a door, so
that they could crawl inside and keep dry when it rained. Ka-Ma was
very proud of his hut; he had built smaller ones like it, with his
companions from the valley, when hunting trips kept them away from the
caves for several days, but he knew this one was to be his home, so he
took great pains to make it large and strong.
[Illustration: EARLY STONE WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS]
It took them several days to build the hut, and meanwhile, Ka-Ma had
speared fish along the river bank, and shot some wild birds with his
bow and arrow, so that Tula and himself might have food. Having been
used to eating their food smoked, or cooked, they did not like the raw
birds and fish so much, but they had no fire, and knew of no way to get
any. So they made the best of what they had.
Here Ka-Ma and his wife Tula lived for many years, and their children
grew up, and built other huts in the little grove, and thus was formed
the first tribe of men to live by the sea. Because the way they lived
was different from the way in which their forefathers had lived in
the valley, they too became different. They ate more fish, and less
meat, and because they killed but few animals, they did not use skins
for clothing, but as we shall see later, began to weave a coarse
grass-cloth out of the rushes they found in the marsh. They became
great swimmers, built rough canoes out of wicker, covered with skins,
and because it was not easy to spear fish in the deep waters of the
river, the way it had been in the great marsh, they one day invented
the fishhook. All these things, however, we shall tell about in another
chapter.