made the touch of his hands like the flames of the protecting fire. And
although Big Foot and Quack Quack brought him every day fresh fruit and
other food, which they sometimes roasted in the coals, he drove them
away. Steadily he grew worse until madness came into his eyes and his
voice rose above the quiet of the night and Laughing Boy grew fearful in
spite of the friendly fire. For the roars of the sick man, Tall, echoed
through the woods and the forest enemies would hear and approach.
But Tall could not be restrained. A new strength that comes with the
fever fed his veins, and a night came when he thrust his companions from
him and disappeared, screaming into the woods. They never saw him again.
For as he ran, his wild cries filled the night and the very branches of
the trees seemed to waken with the tumult.
Then came the grim howl of the hyena and the soft fall of padded feet
upon the earth. Down the gulley a strange voice arose. Life stirred in
the bushes and the hair on the head of Laughing Boy rose in terror.
Farther and farther receded the wailings of the sick man till at last a
howl re-echoed in the darkness that brought the band of tribes people
huddling together in fear. For it was the cry of the sabre-toothed
tiger. Came then a stillness with only the voice of Tall driving the
sweat out upon their bodies.
And while the little band fed the friendly fire and gathered near its
protecting flames, they waited for the end of the sick man. It came at
last, one long scream of agony, when the greatest enemy of all the
hordes came upon him.
Big Foot knew and Strong Arm knew and the others of the tribes knew also
that the danger to themselves was over for the night, but long they
crouched in the light of the flames, ears twitching, nostrils quivering,
like images of bronze frozen with fear.
* * * * *
Many other adventures befell the mixed group from the different clans,
on their journeyings toward the Hollow which had been the home of the
Cave People. There were dangers encountered and evaded or overcome in
every hour of these eventful days. But at last they reached the ridge
above the edge of the Hollow. Quack Quack and Strong Arm and the Foolish
One and the others climbed the hill and gazed over into what had been
once a lovely valley. But much of this lay filled with the soil left by
the flood. Tall grasses waved in the breeze, and many new blossoms
lifted their heads. And nearly all of the old familiar caves were filled
with mud and covered up.
It was all very queer. And while they proceeded with caution, as men
going into a strange land, the brush before them parted and they beheld
the grinning features of Big Nose and Light Foot and behind them others
of the Cave People, and a fuzzy woman from among the Hairy Folk and
strange people and former enemies from the other clans, all of whom had
escaped the flood and wandered back toward the dwelling places of their
tribes.
And Strong Arm scooped out the soil that had been washed against the
opening of a high cave upon the hill and entered it to rest after his
long journey. And he dug with his hands into the soft earth, for he
remembered the tubers he had buried there one day when he had been
hunting with the men of the tribe, for he was hungry. And lo! _many_
juicy tubers he found where he had buried only two or three. And Strong
Arm and Quack Quack ate of the potatoes, while, for a Cave-man, Strong
Arm pondered deeply on these things.
He thought much of _one_ tuber and how it had made _many_ tubers, and
recalled the words of his father, who had spoken of the _mother_ potato.
Then he felt Quack Quack at his side and forgot the matter and fell
asleep.
Necessity has been the great spur to the progress of mankind, and it is
probable that over and over again, in the early stages of primitive
culture, the use of fire was discovered and lost and forgotten and
regained before men realized the need which fire supplied. It is almost
certain that the art of pottery was discovered and lost and rediscovered
times without number. It is equally certain that it took primitive man
many, many long, dark years to learn to plan for the periods of want and
famine.
In tropical countries, where food was to be had in abundance almost the
whole year around, no necessity arose for the raising of crops. Man
would never have felt the need of learning to cultivate food stuffs in
this environment.
Savages had only the vaguest notions of the relation of cause and
effect. It was necessary for buried tubers to sprout new potatoes year
after year, for the plants to multiply before their very eyes and the
_necessity_ of planting food to have arisen before the relation of
sowing and reaping could begin to mean anything to them. Only then did
_planting_ assume any tribal significance.
Doubtless it was in some semi-tropical country that the discovery of
Strong Arm first began to make an impression upon the awakening minds of
the early savages. Buried sweet yams and others of the potato family
which had multiplied and become many yams or potatoes, must have been a
wonderful windfall when discovered by the half starved tribes, in the
midst of a long season of want. The cause of their growing would then be
carefully observed by the clans.
Be sure that it was necessity that forced the first early savage to sow
and bury against the days of coming hunger. Man did not take naturally
to work. For several hundreds of thousands of years he dwelt in tropical
or semi-tropical lands, where food was usually plentiful, it was only an
urgent need that forced him to sow and till the soil. Before that time
he had dwelt in the continual problems of the day and had been compelled
to give no real thought nor plan for the morrow.
* * * * *
Strong Arm slept in the cave with Quack Quack after their long journey
back to the home of their fathers. And he dreamed a dream wherein he saw
Tall, the great man from the strange tribe, alive and walking about,
just as he had done before the sickness came upon him when he had
wandered out into the night and met the sabre-toothed tiger.
And in his dream Strong Arm saw Tall stand before his cave and thrust
many tubers in the ground where one tuber had been. And when Strong Arm
awoke he told Quack Quack and his brothers and Laughing Boy of his dream
in the few words he knew and in signs and pantomime.
And so much Strong Arm wondered that when he ate of the fish that had
been roasting, he removed one fish from the ashes and carried it to his
cave, where he buried it in the soft earth. Then he took the bones of a
young boar and buried them also, for when these bones are cracked the
marrow is very sweet to eat. He desired one fish to grow into a hundred
fish and the bones of one wild pig to become a whole forest of bones.
And he tried to tell these things to the tribe—to say that perhaps it
was the Spirit of Tall which would come in the night and make many fish
out of one and a forest of bones from one young boar. The Cave People
came and watched him at his labors and chattered and gesticulated and
wondered.
And in the morning they gathered about to eat of the many fish which
Strong Arm hoped to find in the earth in his cave, and to crack the
bones and partake of the marrow. But there were only the fish and the
bones which Strong Arm had planted and he sat down upon his haunches and
wept bitterly. The Cave People were disappointed, and Big Foot mocked
him.
Perhaps Strong Arm was one of the first experimenters. He did not give
up altogether. Occasionally the thought of many little tubers grown from
one big tuber, would seize hold of him, and one day he buried a yellow
yam, which resembled our sweet potatoes, and turned up the ground the
next day only to find that it had not become a whole dinner of sweet
potatoes. He was not sure that Tall, the dead man, or the Spirit of Tall
had anything to do with these things. Tall had not returned again to
Strong Arm in his dreams. It was all very strange. Strong Arm did not
understand. Everything was mysterious and confused.
Another time he buried several tubers. The day following he dug them up,
but he forgot one or two of these and when, after some time, he jammed
about in the soil again, he found a whole armful of tubers. The miracle
had come back again. And Tall, or the Spirit of the dead man, had not
returned to make possible the wonder. The miracle was stranger than
ever.
Almost Strong Arm evolved an idea, an idea that tubers (or potatoes)
planted in the earth in the sun, and left for a whole tribe of suns,
might in some mysterious manner beyond his understanding become the
mother of many potatoes.
* * * * *
Then the Hairy Folk descended from the ridge, upon the Cave People. They
came with long spears in their hands and cries of death in their fuzzy
throats, and Strong Arm and the Cave People gave them to battle. Many
were killed and Big Foot roasted the body of one of the enemy upon the
coals and the Cave People ate the Hairy Man with much zest and relish.
And the stomachs of the Cave People were distended with the feast and
Strong Arm strutted and danced about the fire with those who had
accomplished the victory. And he forgot all about the idea he had almost
achieved, about the planting of potatoes and the making of more sweet
yams.
So the discovery, that was only half a discovery, was lost to the tribe
for many years. Doubtless if you had reminded him of it and he could
have spoken to you in a language you would understand, Strong Arm would
have replied that there were the Hairy Folk and the Dart Throwers to be
annihilated, the children of the tribe to be protected and food to be
provided and that he had ceased to think of such foolish things as the
sticking of fat tubers in the ground in the hope of making them the
mothers of many little potatoes, and anyway, these were strange things
past all the ability of any man to understand.
[Illustration]
IX
THE FIRST POT
Sometime before the Cave People discovered the use of the bow and arrow,
they had learned to make clay pots or bowls. For many years the tribe
lived in the tropical lands where the bread fruit ripened nearly the
whole year round, and where nuts were plentiful and tubers and sweet
yams were often to be found; where there were more nests than there were
trees in the forests, filled with treasures of fresh eggs; and there
were fowl and fish. As much as the horde loved to eat the wild duck or
the cocoanut, or even the wild honey, one and all knew that when the hot
sun beat down upon bare brown skins in the heat of the day during the
summer there was nothing in all the valley so sweet as a drink of water.
One could go without food for many suns, but if one day passed without
fresh water for the members of the group, fevers came upon them, the
strange fevers that caused them to do many foolish things.
At first no member of the tribe willingly journeyed far from the source
of fresh water, for they had nothing with which to carry water from one
place to another. Then they used cocoanut shells, and sometimes the
shells that lay upon the banks of the great river. But these held little
and were easily upset.
Then some one discovered that the hollow joints of the giant bamboo were
more easy to carry and held more water, and these became the first water
jugs of the clan.
Later, when it became the fashion for men and women to decorate
themselves with the skins of the animals they had slain, they found that
there are many uses which hides may serve.
The Cave People wore no clothes, but bound over their shoulders they
bore great weights of skins and hides, of heads and tails, of bones and
teeth, as a mark of their skill and bravery in the hunt. Great teeth
cunningly fastened together made necklaces that spoke every day more
loudly than a man’s voice of what that man had done.
But as pride grew in these emblems of prowess, little by little the
people of the tribe began to use these hides for other things. They
found that, with holes punched along the edges, through which a thong
might be drawn, as a gathering string about a handbag, these skins made
water bags that one could carry on a far journey, taking with him drink
for a whole day. But it was only when the sun beat down like the flames
of the fire that they thought much on these things. Then thoughts of
water and the milk of the cocoanut were never long absent.
It was at the time of the year when the scorching rays of the summer sun
had licked dry all the little brooks and most of the springs that
Laughing Boy and Web Toe, he who could outswim the fastest fishes,
planned an excursion over the hills in search of wild honey.
They were 14 years old and stood straight and brown and almost as tall
as the men of the tribe, but they had not yet learned to have care for
all the dangers that lurked in the unknown ways, as older men.
They were proud of the wild skins that lay hot and heavy on their
shoulders and the teeth that made chains about their throats. They were
never done showing the trophies they had gathered in the hunt to their
young companions. And they boasted much, for they were more strong than
the other boys of the clan.
Laughing Boy was proud of his water bag which, when the thong was
tightly drawn and the bag was filled with water, spilled scarcely a
single drop, while Web Toe beat much of the time upon his drum or
tom-tom which he believed made the most beautiful music in the world.
This tom-tom he had made by stretching the soft skin of some small
animal over a willow branch bent and fastened in a circle.
The older members of the tribe were stretched in the cooling shade near
the river bank, or sleeping the sleep that comes from much eating in the
cool of the caves. But the children and the youths romped about, vyeing
with each other in games of sport and in feats of strength. Among these
Web Toe and Laughing Boy were easily the victors, throwing their
boomerangs and their stone weapons further and with greater accuracy
than any of the others.
Laughing Boy had now smeared his whole chest with the deep vermilion
juice of “the Make Brave” plant and Web Toe had gouged holes in both
ears, from which hung half a dozen shells and cougar teeth and they
strutted about in the glory of their strength and budding manhood.
But at last they stole away from the others and softly made their way
through the thicket and on up and over the hill to the high places,
where the dry grass crackled and rustled beneath their scurrying feet.
Laughing and chattering they ran, flinging care and caution to the
winds, racing to see which would be the quicker to reach this point or
that, and again speeding on to make the giant banyan trees.
Here they paused to rest and to laugh softly, and the cunning of all
wood creatures came back to their straggling senses and they proceeded
cautiously, chattering more softly and laughing more quietly.
Laughing Boy carried his stone weapon and his water bag, which bulged
with ample fullness, while Web Foot brandished his tom-tom in one hand
and his stone sling in the other. Only now he made not a sound with his
beloved music box. It was a time to avoid the creatures of the forest,
though all were sleepy and lazy from abundant food and the warmth of the
sun.
They jabbered of the “sweet, sweet,” meaning wild honey, which they
meant to take back to the tribe and with which they intended to show the
other youths how much more clever and courageous they were than the
other boys in the clan.
With every gay and confident step as they advanced up the small plateau
the land grew more parched. Laughing Boy, who saw things that escaped
the eyes of Web Toe pointed to little hollows now and then which had
been dried by the sun, and when Web Toe, soon grown thirsty, sought to
take his bag for a drink, Laughing Boy shook his head. “No,” he said,
and pointed to the sun high overhead. He meant to save the water for the
journey caveward.
Berries they ate and nuts gathered hastily on the way, and when they
neared the tall cocoanut palms both boys, forgetting the dangers that
might beset them, dashed their heavy weapons to the ground and rushed
forward. In a few moments both were encircling the straight, tall trunks
of the trees with their arms and, climbing up them in a sort of walk,
their toes pressed close and almost clinging to the bark. Soon the great
nuts were tumbling to the ground and the boys slid back to refresh
themselves with the sweet of cocoanut milk.
But the thicket parted and an angry and suspicious black she-bear
lumbered toward them with two curious, tumbling black cubs at her heels.
It was no time to dispute for the possession of their weapons. It was
not the time to pause for a drink of cocoanut milk, and so, with a
pretense at nonchalance, as though they had seen nothing and had no
concern in the two rollicking cubs, Laughing Boy and Web Toe glided
toward the thicket. They knew that females of every species are eager to
contest the right of all ways when accompanied by their young. And their
courage lay with their stone weapons.
The black bear sniffed angrily and slowly followed the boys. Her little
red eyes rolled wickedly. The two curious cubs dashed on ahead to learn
what manner of beast these new animals were. And mother bruin quickened
her pace.
[Illustration]
Her heart was running over with fears for her young and she considered
that particular part of the woods her own domain. A deep humming filled
the ears of the boys as they broke into a run and Laughing Boy cried
softly, “sweet, sweet,” for he smelled wild honey.
The cubs ran still faster for they remembered the feasts they had
enjoyed when, guided by their mother, they had last visited the wood.
With the old bear close behind, Laughing Boy flung himself out and
upward, grasping the tough vines of the “oo-oee” in his hands and
pulling himself up on a large stone slab, where he lay panting for
breath.
Web Toe scrambled up a slim pine and wedged himself between two slender
forked limbs. There he huddled, peering about in fear of new dangers.
But he saw nothing and, presently, grown bolder he looked down at the
bear which stood on hind legs gazing angrily up at him. Now and then she
would run away and dash back, jolting the tree and setting the branches
aquiver.
Web Toe forgot all caution and jeered down at the enemy. He pulled his
tom-tom around and over his shoulder and beat it triumphantly with his
fists while the black bear tried to climb the tree and failed, because
it was slender of trunk.
Laughing Boy lay on the smooth boulder, flat upon his belly, making no
sound. Not a muscle betrayed him. Only his eyes moved following the
movements of the black bear. Apparently she had forgotten all about him.
He wanted to call out to Web Toe to be silent. Web Toe seemed to think
the matter was a joke, but Laughing Boy knew better. It was true he and
Web Toe were at the moment safely out of reach of the enemy’s claws, but
if she remained on watch how would they get down to earth again?
All that afternoon Web Toe was compelled to cling to the fork of the
pine tree. Soon he grew quiet, for he remembered that safety lies in
silence. He folded his arms about a branch and made himself as flat and
inconspicuous as he could.
The cubs curled themselves up at their mother’s feet and went to sleep
and, at length, close to the pine tree, she also seemed to doze.
It might have been possible for Laughing Boy to slide down the opposite
side of the boulder and steal away unnoticed. Who can say? It may have
been a fear of the long journey back to the cave people alone that
deterred him. Anyway, he clung to the rock and waited. A long drink from
his water bag relieved his thirst and he, too, fell asleep. But there
was no drinking for poor Web Toe. He had only his marvelous tom-tom in
place of a water bag, and his lips grew parched and he longed to scream
from fear and thirst.
After a long time darkness came and at last the moon arose, and still
the two boys neither moved nor spoke. The cubs awoke and stretched
themselves and moved about, and at last the black bear arose also and
led them away to some hidden spring known only to herself.
Then, very cautiously, Web Toe slid to the ground and called to Laughing
Boy, who joined him, and together, with great fear in their hearts, they
turned their faces homeward.
And all that fearful, weary way Web Toe thought of new dangers and of
cool springs and Laughing Boy’s emptied water bag. Never again would he
go honey-hunting or any other sort of hunting in the dry season without
water at his side. And when at last they reached the dwelling place of
the tribe Web Toe ran to the spring and threw himself into the water and
drank until he was near water-logged.
And so Web Toe became the great waterman of the tribe—another great
waterman, who spoke always words of warning of the terrible things that
may befall boys and girls and men and women, who journey far from the
spring without a bag of water.
Stories he told the people of the tribe on his return with Laughing Boy
of how, sick of thirst, he had faced the black bear and driven her
before him. But he had nothing to prove his words, for Laughing Boy
returned also empty-handed.
It was adventures like this that taught the Cave People and all the
other tribes to travel close to the water’s edge. And so it was that
when the Foolish One made the first clay pot, the people praised him and
called him Wise.
The clay pot was the accident of a fool. Many great discoveries have
been the accidents of other fools. For wise people do always everything
as nearly as possible as their fathers have done and new things are only
learned through departures into new ways.
The Foolish One had discovered the use of fire by playing with a burning
branch ignited by the lightning in the forest. A fool bestrode the first
wild horse and rode upon its back. Nearly always it was the fools who
did things first. Wise Men were too wise—they had seen too many fools
die of their folly.
The fingers of the Foolish One were never idle. He made many things and
he pulled as many to pieces again. The people of the tribe had grown
very skillful in weaving baskets from tough grasses. They even made hats
to keep out the sun and later they wove willows into rude roofs, which
they patched with clay from the river banks to keep out the rain.
The baskets which they made were almost water-tight and the Foolish One
made many baskets. Each time he worked harder and wove these baskets
more tightly, but they all leaked when he filled them with water from
the spring.
One day he made a basket shaped like a bowl and lined it with clay; then
he wove the grasses upward like the neck of a large bottle, dipping his
fingers inside to plaster it with more clay, for he wanted to surprise
the folk with a basket that would carry water without leaking. But when
all was done he forgot his plans and went swimming in a pool, and when
next he saw the basket he tossed it into the fire, so sure was he that
it would leak as all baskets leaked.
And there, in the red flames, beheld by all the members of the tribe,
lay the marvelous basket with its clay lining. And soon the grasses of
the basket burned away and when the fire died down the Foolish One saw
the clay lining lying among the coals. It was round and firm and almost
perfect in shape. He peered into it and running to the river, filled it
with water. And, marvel of marvels! the clay had grown hard in the fire
and the first jug the tribe had ever made or seen or dreamed of, held
water, from which there leaked not one single drop.
For a long time the Cave People made their jugs by lining baskets with
clay and burning off the grasses, leaving the jugs unmarred, till they
learned newer and better ways of making pottery.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
X
_The_ ARROW THROWERS
For many years the Bow and Arrow Folks had been the most ferocious as
well as the most skillful of all the tribes that dwelt in the heart of
the luxuriant lands along the banks of the Father of Rivers. Every other
tribe had long since learned to hate and fear them beyond any other
living creatures.
The Bow and Arrow Folks might wander whithersoever they wished, might
drive the Hairy Folk and the Tree Dwellers and the Cave People from the
places that had known them, might bring death and destruction in their
train, provided only that they traveled and fought in numbers and bore
wide quivers filled with very many of their magical stinging darts.