The origins of invention; a study of industry among primitive peoples

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I J

THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES,

. Edited by HAVELOCK ELLIS.

THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION

i.M JEWELLER URILLIM: TUK<iUulit,

THE ORIGINS

OF INVENTION:

A STUDY OF INDUSTRY AMONG
PRIMITIVE PEOPLES.

>

BY

OTIS T. MASON, A.M., Ph.D.,

Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States National
Museum^ Sniithsonia^f, Institution^ Washington, U,S,A.

• • •

• • •

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, LTD., PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,

153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

1895.

• • •

• • •

« •
ft •

PREFACE.

•0-

At the celebration of the centenary of the American patent
system in Washington (1891), I read a paper on the " Birth
of Invention." The present volume is an expansion and
illustration of the principles laid down in that paper. The
history of the development of the inventive faculty is the
history of humanity. In other respects we may resemble
our friends the brutes, but here we part company intellec-
tually, subdue and enslave them, and have dominion over
the earth.

The term invention applies to four different yet related
groups of phenomena : —

1. The things and institutions invented.

2. The mental acts involved.

3. The lewards and benefits of these acts.

4. The powers and materials of nature invoked.

I hold that all industries, arts, languages, institutions, and
philosophies are inventions. The history of the mental acts
is the account of an evolutionary series, beginning with
taking notice and following examples, and ending with the
highest co-operation in a great industrial establishment,
with a symphony, with the writing of a dictionary, or with
the framing of a government. The benefit or reward has

8 PREFACE.

also followed by analogy the processes of creation in Nature,
from a single advantage accruing only to the inventor, up to
a world-blessing conception.

As to the resources and powers of nature invoked, these
have come into the service of man according to the law of
ever-increasing complexity of structure for the performance
of a greater variety of functions. The order of commanding
kinetic energy has been the employment of —

1 . Man-power in every pursuit.

2. Fire as an agent, in cooking, pottery, metallurgy, &c.

3. The power of a spring as in a bow or trap.

4. Beast-power, for burden and traction.

5. Wind-power, on sails, and mills, and in draught.

6. Water-power, as a conveyance, and a motor, and gravity
or weight generally.

7. Steam-power, utilisation of an expanding gas.

8. Chemical power, in the arts of the civilised.

9. Electric power, motors, message-bearers, in mechanics
and illumination.

10. Light as a mechanical servant, only beginning to be
domesticated.

With Professor Payne I hold that the course of civilisa-
tion has been from naturalism to artificialism. And upon
the lines of Mr. Spencer's division of activity into regulative
and operative categories, it is the regulative side that
exhibits the greatest differentiation and improvement. For
instance, in simple tools, consisting of a working part and a
manual part, it is the latter that has undergone enormous
differentiations in applying the variety of kinetic energies.

I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Tylor,
General Pitt Rivers, and Sir John Lubbock, without whose
aid no pne coukl write upon primitive technological subjects ;

PREFACE. 9

to the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Ethnology
at Washington for a thousand favours ; to Mr. E. F. im
Thurn, Mr. Man, and other modern travellers and ethnolo-
gists who, under the inspiration of the British " Notes and
Queries," have vastly improved the material upon which
studies are founded. I have been greatly aided by Professor
Payne^s History of America^ and Mr. Henry Balfour's studies
in the evolution of art, by M. Adrien de Mortillet's writings,
and by the investigations of Mr. J. D. McGuire, Dr. Walter
Hough, Professor Holmes, and Mr. F. H. Gushing.

O. T. M.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAUK

Introduction 13

CHAPTER II.
T001.S AND Mechanical Devices 33

CHAPTER III.
Invention and Uses of Fire 84

CHAPTER IV.
Stone-working 121

CHAPTER V.

Xn£ aOIIEiCS /\iv 1 ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ^33

CHAPTER VI.

Primitive Uses of Plants 183

CHAPTER VII.
The Textile Industry 224

CHAPTER VIII.
War on the Animal Kingdom 258

IT

12 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

PAGE

Capture and Domestication of Animals 291

CHAPTER X.
Travel and Transportation 325

CHAPTER XI.
The Art of War 366

CHAPTER XII.
Conclusions 410

/

CHAPTER T.

INTRODUCTION.

** Etonim omnes arles, quae ad human itatem pertinent, halyent quoddam
commune vinculum et quasi cognatione quadam inter se continentur." —
Cicero, pro A. Licinio Archia Poeta, section i.

In this volume I desire to trace some of our modern
industries to their origins, and to show how the genius of
man, working upon and influenced by the resources and
the forces of nature, learned its first lessons in the art of
inventing. If the reader were to visit one of our great
laboratories or mechanical establishments, he would see an
army of skilled and intelligent men working together
purposely to bring about larger results with less expenditure
of effort. No one of these men would dream of doing all
this work alone. A few years ago it would not have been
possible for any number of men even to undertake it.
There has been orderly procession, therefore, in the task
to be done, and there has been growing complexity of
organisation in the agency to be employed. In short, there
is a close analogy between the natural history of the
kingdoms of nature and the unfolding of the arts of life.
The methods of studying the one may be successfully
employed in a search for the true history of the other.

^The term "invention" is here used in its plain, logical
sense of finding out originally how to perform any specific
action by some new implement, or improvement, or
substance, or method. Fundamentally, it is a change in
some one or all of these.

»3

14 Tjl^ ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

From the point of view here assumed, every change in
human activity^ made designedly and systematically, appears
to be 2^n invention. Not only mechanical devices, whose
working models might have been stored in the vaults of
prehistoric patent offices and the relics of which fill our
museums, were inventions ; but the processes of life,
language, fine art, social structures and functions, philo-
sophies, formulated creeds and cults, — all these involve over
and over again the same activities of mind.

" Institutions," says Emerson, " are not aboriginal, every
one of them was once the act of a single man, every law
and usage was a man^s expedient to meet a particular
case." *

The foreshadowing of this faculty of finding out how is
seen in the animal world. In certain exigencies even the
invertebrates seem to have concentrated their intellectual
activity upon methods of safety or escape. The conduct
of one of these creatures in such emergencies is most
instructive. First, it .discovers a necessity, then follows
a short j)eriod of confusion, finally the creature buckles
down to hard thinking and experiment. The persistence
of these humble inventors is often remarkable. Having
conceived that a way of escape lies in a certain direction,
it yields only to exhaustion or death. Sir Samuel Baker
gives a picture of an immense elephant shaking a heglik-
tree three feet in diameter to secure the fruit. ** The
elephant butted his forehead against the trUnk, the large
tree quivered in every branch." ^ The creature had made
a discovery and the shaking of the tree by the momentum
of his body opened a riew world of food supply. Had he
gone further and made up a cushion to place between the
tree and his head, that would have been an invention of
the higher order rarely seen in the animal world.

This act of inventing involves the four causes of Aristotle,

' Emerson, Essay on Politics.

^ Ismailia^ New York, 1875, P* 230. See also Rep» Brit Ass., 1893,
p. 86r.

r

INTRODUCTION. *'v IS

namely, the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final
' cause. Or, to be more explicit, every invention is made

out of something, into some predetermined form, by means
of certain apparatus and . agencies, and to achieve some
definite result. The ^hange may be in any one of these.
The inventor excogitates an alteration of causes or of
movements. In primitive life and in the most cultured
this is equally true ; only, in the latter, machinery performs
the motions which in savagery must be effected by the
human body.

Again, the term invention involves three sets of phe-
nomena — the mental acts of inventing, of thinking out how ;
the things invented, usually called inventions ; and the
rejjrards bestowed on the inventor, nowadays called patents,
but granted in some form during all the ages. In this
work frequent allusion will be made to the growing intricacy
of thought developed and demanded by this process through
all history, terminating in the laboratories of invention
with their cooperating experts, learned in every branch
of .science and mechanics ; but commencing with the relief
of discomfort through a happy thought, by means of some^
slight modification or new use of a natural object.

Very similar to this cooperative invention in the laboratory
or great mechanical establishment, is the united effort of
a tribe, a community, a nation, a face, an age, the whole
human species. The results of united effort, along the lines
of activity, constitute the genius of each one of these. We
speak of the genius of a man, meaning simply what he has
invented, or of an age, having in mind all that it has done
originally or found how to do in a new and striking manner.
The unfolding of the genius of the ages has been the
evolution of invention from the beginning.

The elaboration of rewards bestowed upon inventors from

age to age should not be neglected. In this as in the other

series of phenomena there has been increasing complexity

\ and a sort of evolution. The public recognition and reward

of invention may itself be said to have been invented. At

\

\

I

1 6 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

first the public accorded really nothing. The man seized
his own patent. His better bow or fish-hook got him more
food, made him stronger, more acute, taught him that
ingenuity is better than force, secured him admiration,
respect, fear, obedience, homage, a larger number of wives,
[ 1 a naore numerous following. The comforts, emoluments,

distinctions, and power of able men were their first patents.
Infringement upon such monopolies became dangerous and
further originality was discouraged. Later in history, the
tribe absorbed the benefit, then the state. Empty emolu-
ments and public honours took the place of personal comfort.
The inventor was crowned, or knighted, or medalled, or
mentioned in the public fHes, The history of the modern
patent system would involve all of these.

" The education of the Indian," writes Morelet, " com-
j| menced early. When ten or twelve years of age, a machete

ij is put in his hands and a load, proportioned to his years,

upon his shoulders, and he is made to accompany his father
in his excursions or his labours. He is taught to find his
way in the most obscure forests through means of the
faintest indications. His ear is practised in quickly detect-
ing the approach of wild animals, and his eye in discovering
the venemous reptiles that may lie in his path. He is
taught to distinguish the vines, the juices of which have
the power of stupefying fishes so that they may be caught
by hand, as also those that are useful for their flexibility or
for furnishing water to the wayfarer. He soon comes to
recognise the Leche Maria^ the precious balm with which
he can heal his wounds, and the guaco^ which neutralises
the venom of serpents. He finds out the shady dells where
the cacao flourishes, and the sunny eminences where the
bees deposit their honey. He learns or is taught all these
things early, and then his education is complete." ^

But'.the chief object in view in this work is to follow out
the lines of evolution or elaboration in the things invented.
The shelter is the ancestor of the palace, the skin robe of

» Morelet, Travels in Yucatan^ N^w York, 1871, p. 129.

1

\

INTRODUCTION. 1 7

the elaborate costume, the aboriginal roast of the costly
dinner, the digging-stick of the steam plough, the carrying-
strap of the burden trains and ships, and so on to the end
of all the products of human activity in every direction.
To trace out what constitutes an invention in this last sense
is the history of original thought. What is really proposed
is a study of those simple tools and processes out of which
modern industrial life has grown. The finding out that a
stone is hard and often sharp was a discovery, and the act
lies within the capacity of very lowly creatures. But the
slightest modification of that stone for industrial purposes
was an invention, it was a step in that line of artificiality '
which constitutes the progress of man. From this point of
view, an invention, at first, was a slightly modified natural
object or process. Every elaborative series exhibited in a
museum should commence with such a specimen.
'f^ This barely modified natural object is susceptible of
further changes, of added parts, of more complicated
structure, of more diversified functions, passing in time
from the simple to the complex, from the monorganic to
the polyorganic. Exactly as one sees in the natural world
in geologic time plant and animal forms becoming more
and more highly organised, so in the constructions pro-
ceeding from men's minds and hands there has been a
corresponding development and increased complexity and
multiplied functions.^ In fact, the history of industry is the
story of the greater diversity of materials used, of the more
complicated thought in the mind of the inventors, of the
perfection of tools and processes, which take the place of
hands and feet and brain, and, lastly, of the final causes of
the products of men's brains and hands. The play of these
diversified motives and materials upon one another is one of
the most interesting objects of human thought.

' " A change which has completely^ transformed human society, and to
which the principal features which distinguish civilisation from savagery
are traceable — the substitution of an artificial for a natural basis of
subsistence " (Payne, History of Americay New York, 1892, vol. i. p. 303).

2

1 8 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Under the leadership of Gustav Klemtn, the Germans
have given to this theme the name of Culturgeschichtc^ and
to its development his successors have devoted most serious
consideration.

By analogy with the natural world those invented things
or processes, those mental efforts involved in the act of
inventing, those rewards of invention which obtained in
the childhood of the race, also survive into the present, and
may be seen in operation in every person ^s life ; they are
like those protophytes and protozoans, unicellular creatures
which were once the only living things, which constitute
now the majority of the life of the globe and which enter
into the constitution of every higher organism in great
numbers.

Necessity is commonly said to be the mother of invention.
That is, all changes in human action are stimulated by
man's needs. Now there are two classes of these, namely,
those that act from within the individual, and those that
affect him from without.

Of the former, hunger is the loudest. By hunger is
meant the desire for food, or drink, or whatever enters the
alimentary canal. The sense of fatigue and the desire for
rest ; the pain of monotony and the desire for change ; the
reproductive sense and many more, belong to these sub-
jective stimuli.

The desire for warmth or cool shelter, or refuge from the
storm, the sense of danger in the presence of savage beasts
or men, in short, the discomforts which are produced by the
want of harmony between a man and his environment
constitute the second class of stimuli.

In the more 1 )wly organised creatures, dwelling in the
water, this disharmony is feeblest. The light, the tempera-
ture, the movements*, the specific gravity even, are almost
unchanging. In plants, which draw their nourishment
from one spot, it is more varied. By an ascending scale
terrestrial animals rise as they are wrought upon by the
greater variety of stimuli.

INTRODUCTION. 1 9

Exactly as the inventive faculty, the things invented, and
the rewards have passed through interesting evolutions, in
which also the old ever survives . into the new, so in the
matter of stimuli there has been a parallel history. The
pains of hunger are not the same in savagery and civilisa-
tion. The desire for house and clothing, and conveniences
and art-products, and society and literature, and the ex-
planation of things are childish in the one case, most
exalted in the other. The evolution of human wants,
therefore, is a part of the history of invention.

Just as there is an intimate relation between animals and
plants on the one hand, and terrestrial phenomena and
resources on the other, giving rise to phytogeography and
zoogeography, so in the natural history of inventions there
is the same relation never to be neglected. This corre-
spondence or harmony between arts and industries and all
that goes to make up environment enables the ethnologist to
comprehend the proprieties of each region, and often to
decide whether an art is indigenous or exotic. The study
of this relationship between man^s activities and the effect
of his surroundings we may call technogeography, and the
necessity of its careful study will appear at every point!

Nothing is more common than the assertion that men do
not purposely invent in the lower civilisations, that they
simply follow the leading strings and the mandates of
Nature. The savage, it is said, does not invent, he simply
borrows his clothing from the animals, his house from the
trees and caverns, his food from many sources. He is an
out-and-out imitator.

Now, nothing will be said here against Nature and her
resources, her training school, and her wonderful teachers.
Nor will it be denied that most men and women borrow
everything and that all men and women follow suit in much
that they do. This imitative process always supposes the
existence of the thing to be imitated ; the latter does not
account for the origin of the process.
, Furthermore, the ' whole amount of human progress

20 THH ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

is undoubtedly to bi? accredited to human intelligence and
volition. All Nature is clay in the hands of the potter.
The suggestions of her three kingdoms are only the patterns
hanging in the shop of the cabinet-maker or the modeller.
The artificer and creator is man himself. Whatever may
be one^s theory regarding the manner, the place, the time
of man^s advent upon this planet, all agree that he was at
first a houseless, unclothed being, without skill or ex-
perience, and that by the exercise of his faculties he has
become the clothed philosopher. There is a sense in which
the race may be said to have invented itself, proceeding
against Nature often, with Nature often ; but always from
naturalism to artificiality. Men were placed on earth to
dress and keep it, to possess and subdue it. Through this
wonderful faculty of invention the race has fulfilled its
mission.

An objection to the opinion that physical nature is the
most important element in civilisation is the well-known
fact that the latter has progressed most rapidly, not in
those favoured spots where food and raiments and shelter
could be procured with the least effort, but in those regions
where the quest for these things afforded the best school for
the training of every faculty of the mind, where there were
the greatest stimuli to exertion. In those places where
Nature is too lavish the tribes of men have led a languid
existence.

By laying too much stress upon the notion that the
human race has borrowed all its plans and methods from
Nature, one is apt to forget that the best of instruction has
no effect on dull pupils, as every pedagogue will testify.
The forms and movements of all things terrestrial were
lying before the senses of animated nature for millenniums
before our race arrived. How very few of them aroused
the apperception of the brute, and stimulated him to those
never-ceasing changes which constitute the life of progress-
The profound teaching of Nature fell upon those who
having ears, heard not.

IXTRODITCTION. 21

One is perpetually hearing sociologists saying that men
do not invent customs, but fall into them. Grant that the
ninety and nine do follow suit, and in addition grant that
each one of us follows his leader all but the thousandth
time. It is the one act in a hundred or a thousand that
each one originates, which constitutes the progress of the
world. Again, we read that peoples do not invent civilisa-
tion, but borrow it ; that one man left to himself would die,
and that no people ever arose by itself. Borrow from
whom ? Where did the first lender get his stock ?

It is inconceivable. It would be ungrateful to the
ingenious minds that have brought a whole species of
ignorant and inexperienced creatures to know and to
conquer the world in an incredibly brief time. If we ignore
or deny the existence of this adventurous spirit of climbing
for the sake of being higher, of learning for the sake of
knowing, of inventing for the sake of inventing, then,
indeed, would aeons on aeons have been necessary for the
evolution of our species, and man would have had to start
farther back than Tertiary times to have drifted by mere
imitation to achieve so much.

It is difficult to imagine the motives which actuate
ethnologists in rendering their applause so grudgingly to
this genius of invention. Mr. Wake says : ** The in-
genuity displayed by the Australians in overcoming the
many difficulties they have to contend against in dealing
with the hard conditions of nature is often, no doubt, very
great. Great ingenuity is undoubtedly shown in the native
weapons, one of which, the boomerang, would appear to be
unknown, in principle at least, by any other race. It must
be noted, however, that we do not know the progressive
stages through which the boomerang has arrived at its
present perfection, and that it may have been an accidental
recognition of an operation of Nature.*' * Now, is not
that too bad? The boomerang arriving at its present
perfection ! Accidental recognition of an operation of

' C. S. Wake,y. Anthrop, Inst.y London, 1872, vol. i. p. 75.

2« ' THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Nature ! Was it not just such a history, of a humbler
sort, as that of the rifle, the locomotive, the alphabet, the
electric light ? Recognition of the operations of Nature
constitutes the genius of invention. The Australian or
humble people just like him commenced this wonderful
process. Those cunning little creatures, as Emerson called
them, invented the boomerang. And there is not a patent
office in the world that would refuse to grant them letters
for the exclusive use thereof for seventeen years.

The civilised man passes his whole life in the midst of
wheels and cranks and engines of iron. His eyes are on
them every day. Now and then a new thought occurs to
him in their motion. An improvement which would facilitate
their action and lessen his pains or expense. That is called
invention, for which he seeks a patent. The savage man
passes his life away from wheels. He never saw a wheel
until the new-comer showed it to him. But there are
around him all sorts of suggestive things that take the
place of wheels. He sees how he could improve them so as
to facilitate their action, and so as to lessen his labour and
multiply his gains. He makes the change. Is not that an
invention also ?

It surely ought not to fill this magnificent age with envy
to admit that intimations at least of our times were heard
long ago. The monorganic form of a tool from which a
machine is a polyorganic evolution or elaboration ought,
according to the nature of things, as they are now under-
stood, to have come first. Furthermore, these old forms
ought to have survived and do survive here and there, just
as preglacial genera of butterflies may be seen even now
flitting about Mount Washington, in New Hampshire. In
the crude art of the French caves is found the prophecy of
a people who in this last day should set the fashions of the
Western world.

According to Le Bon, '' The higher races have never been
influenced by a foreign civilisation more rapidly than the
lower races ; and if they have sometimes adopted creeds y^

INTRODUCTION. 23

institutions, languages, and arts, different from those of their
ancestors, it was not till they had slowly and profoundly
transformed them and brought them into relation with their
mental constitution." ' Compare this with oft-repeated
assertions that no race or people has ever raised itself to any
higher culture. The race or people that did not lay at least
one dressed stone on this stately edifice can not possibly
have survived.

Schweinfurth says : " A people, as long as they are on the
lowest steps of their development, are far better characterised
by their industrial products than they are either by their
habits or by their own representations, which are often in-
correctly interpreted by others." * This is entirely in accord
with what the present writer has said about the double
history of the race, that written in words and that written
in things and actions. The former is circumscribed in time
and place and intelligibility ; the latter is universal, like
the objects upon which it is based.

Again : " It is among the most secluded inhabitants, indeed
among the rudest tribes, who are partly still addicted to
cannibalism, aye, in the very heart of Africa, whither not
even the use of cotton stuffs and hardly that of glass beads
has penetrated, where we find the indigenous mechanical
instinct, the delight in the production of works of art for
the embellishment and convenience of life, the delight in
self-acquired property best preserved." 3

Captain Spicer, a whaler, who mingled with the Eskimo,
told the writer that they often make invention a part of
their sport. They go out to certain difficult places, and,
having imagined themselves in certain straits, they compare
notes as to what each one would do. They actually make
experiments, setting one another problems in invention.

^ Le Bon, Pop, Sc, Month., New York, 1893, ^*<^^' ''l*^* P* 342.

* Schweinfurth, Heari of Africa^ vol. i. p. 257. Quoted in Artes
Africanae^ London, 1875, P* ^'

^ Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae, London, 1875, p. ix. See also Man,
Atidaman Islanders, London, p. 26.

24 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

There is another error, equally illogical, into which a
great many writers have fallen, of supposing that the ancients
and prehistoric peoples were possessed of arts and mechanical
appliances far in advance of aught we have nowadays. These
are called " lost arts," and it is averred that they are now
beyond the sagacity of man.

The answer to this argument is in the words of the wise
man, " To everything there is a season, and a time for every
purpose under heaven.'* The thing that hath been is the
thing that may be, if it is desirable. The reason why arts
are lost is that they have become antiquated by others
higher in the scale, or because they were practised by a
limited number who moved in a side current, whose secret
died with them.

Sir John Lubbock quotes Mr. Wallace as saying that man
is no longer influenced by " natural selection, and that his
body has become stationary." ' This is a mooted question ;
the oldest human skulls yet found are capacious enough,
and there are no data at hand to show whether or not the
brain is growing. But the work which this brain has to
perform in making inventions has been growing, and there-
fore no one will doubt that it has increased in agility and
knack. The brain may acquire knack as well as the hand.
At first it had none of this quality, and had to peg away
laboriously for hours and even days to comprehend and
perform indifferently what it now does with celerity and
ease.

In the higher walks of invention there is a perpetual
rivalry between the mechanic and his work, between the
scientist and his apparatus. In the lower levels of
progress this emulation is often between the savage man
and the material in which he works, or the tool with which
he achieves his result. If one were to mark the history of
sculpture he would notice at once a constant increase in the
intractability of the material. This increase would also
be coupled with a parallel improvement in the means of

' Lubbock, Prehistoric Times^ New York, 1872, p. 591.

INTRODUCTION. 25

overcoming the resistance. Each success would embolden
the sculptor to venture upon still finer rocks. As long as
there were one mineral in sight that he could not work,
this would be a standing menace to his ambition. The
handier he became in mastering the stone that he had
already attacked, the more eager would he be to find more
difficult material to master.

Now these minerals are not scattered evenly over the
earth. There is no flinty rock in the West Indies, but there
is abundance of volcanic material and of granular rocks.
What reckless waste of energy to spend one moment in
trying to achieve therein such results as the chipped stone
objects in use where quartz or flint abounded ! The ancient
Arawak wasted no time along that line, but from his rocks,
that lent themselves peculiarly to the pecking and polishing
process, elaborated the most beautiful stone implements in
the world. There is abundance of evidence upon this
matter. The ivory art of the Eskimo, the black slate art
of the Haida, the red catlinite art of the Sioux, the jade art
of China, the beautiful flint art of Western Europe in pre-
historic times are in point, and, without doubt, it was in a
certain sense the beautiful marbles of Greece and Italy that
set up that duel between the man and his material which
resulted in the grandest sculpture of the world. In fact,
when national glory itself declined, the world still turned to
these spots for artists, and sent thither its sons to breathe
the divine afflatus.

A great deal that has been written about primitive
industries and inventions is wide of the mark, because the
writer has failed to take into account what may be called
the knack of the age, or the tribe, or the particular method.
He has described it as clumsy, and said that he could not for
the life of him imagine how people could get along with
such appliances. But they did. You will see a professional
ethnologist sweating for hours to get a spark of fire with
two sticks. The savage will do it for him in as many seconds.
By and by the former acquires the knack, and then his

26 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

trouble vanishes. Lafitau says the polishing of a stone axe
requires generations to complete. Mr. Joseph D. McGuire
fabricates a grooved jade axe from an entirely rough spall in
less than a hundred hours. Every one who reads this will
recall examples of this deftness ; not only among jugglers and
turners, but in the shop, on the farmy about the household
there is always some one who has the knack of doing the
thing.

'* The (lean was famous in his time,
And had a kind o^ knack of rhyme,"

says Swift, and there is no doubt that this is the quality
which in the higher pursuits of life we call genius. Now
this quick perception and dexterity of execution are not
traits of higher civilisation alone ; the savage and the bar-
barian possess them as well. Indeed, it is sometimes said that
the substitution of unerring machinery has taken away the
cunning from the human hand. The case is not nearly so
bad as that, however. No change of apparatus can deprive
the human race of geniuses, for the man of knack will be
found excelling in the handling of the new machines. Now
I have dwelt on this word in order to account for the earliest
differentiation of trades. Doubtless in pristine civilisation
every man had a multitude of functions, and every woman
was mistress of all trades. But travellers tell us that,
among the Eskimo, the Plains Indians, the fishing tribes,
the Polynesian navigators, the Australian bushrangers, the
man of knack takes the lead, is sent ahead freed from all
burdens to spy out and slay the musk ox or other game,
while the rest of the gang, men and women, come lumbering
along with the conservative luggage. The bow-makers, the
arrow-makers, the skin-dressers, the basket-weavers, the
potters of the tribe, exalting their occupation and exalted
by it in turn, find in this social differentiation the greatest
opportunity and encouragement. The great procession of
humanity drags along, too much encumbered with many
cares to acquire excellence in any one occupation.

INTRODUCTION. 2^

One of the greatest hindrances to more rapid progress
among savages through the multiplication of inventions is
their communistic system, their tribal intelligence and volition.
House-building, canoe-building, hunting, fishing in common,
borrowing indefinitely, parasitism are great impediments to
personal ambition. When Turner told a Samoan about the
poor in London, he replied, " How is it ? No food ! No
friends ! No house to live in ! Where did he grow ? Are
there no houses belonging to his friends ? " ' But this very
Samoan and many of his ingenious ancestors had been kept
behind in the march of civilisation to support those who
would not work.

In tracing the progress of invention or culture through
modern aborigines and lowly tribes in the past, it is not
necessary to make the description of monstrosities and of
the deeds of human monsters the chief aim. These are
atavistic, and ejchibit the elements of destruction and decay.
The people practising such things are in the suburbs of the
world, passing away in the very nature of things. It is not
out of such bloody conduct our present civilisation issued,
but its progress was away from such things. Our culture is
the offspring of parents whom it resembles. A people that
practices infanticide and brutality to women has signed its
death warrant. No cultured race ever arose out of such
savagery as that. Among the most seemingly brutally
savages there is a higher, purer society, the party of
progress.

Mr. Wittich, who lived fifteen years among the Apaches,
and had their confidence, says that no traveller has any
chance in the world of seeing the best life of that people.
The same is true there as would be true in any city of
Europe. Let the Emperor of China announce that he will
ride through London, and from the top of the omnibus let
him take photographs and dictate to his stenographer his
conceptions of the motley rabble around him. That would
not be a history of the greatest social unit the world has
' Cf, Turner, Samoa, London, 1884, p. 160.

28 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

ever seen. No more is the statement of a cursory visitor an
authentic account of a savage tribe ; he passes only through
the rabble, and misinterprets what he sees*. Furthermore,
we are not concerned here with the unoriginal moments of
any man*s life, nor with the stupid procession that never
had a thought of their own, nor even with whole tribes or
races of man after they have lost the divine genius of
devising. The people that ceases to invent ceases to grow.
Our concern is with the happiest moments of each, when he
is in true sense a creator, with the cleverest thoughts of the
best, and with the most beneficent contributions made espe-
cially by the lowest tribes to the general resources of the
race. This will surely be a delightful quest, to ascertain
how the world has improved under the guidance of the best
and freshest minds.

The inventor in our own day is one who is from some motive
seized with the notion of improvement. In the develop-
ment of life on the globe, only those species and individuals
survive which are best adapted to ever-changing environ-
ment. The progress of culture on the earth has followed
the same law. The melancholy record of tribes and nations
that have disappeared in historic times suffices to establish
that. Sa that, in tracing forward or backward the inven-
tions of mankind, we are always somewhere near the party
of true success.

The progress of the world has been always toward grand
results. It does seem, therefore, that an unseen hand has
been holding a candle in the darkness to guide the successful
races upward and onward. Also it seems that when a
people got beyond the enlightening ray of this world-
inviting beacon, they sooner or later declined and dis-
appeared. A nation or an individual, in this regard, stands
to this spirit of progress very much as the old-world people
did to the oceanic currents. Columbus discovered a new
world only when he was in the stream.

In the prosecution of this inquiry there are several kinds
of witnesses to be interrogated: (i) the relics of bygone

INTRODUCTION. 29

ages and peoples ; (2) the operations of modern savages ;
(3) the publications of historians and travellers who were
acquainted with savage tribes long ago ; (4) the languages
of cultured and uncultured races ; (5) the makeshifts and
contrivances of children and of the folk who never receive
letters patent upon their devices.

Fortunately, [in the life of our species the testimony of all .
these witnesses together affords a kind of ** House that Jack
built." The last verse, that is, the present industrial
condition of human knowledge and industry, contains
practically all that is in the poem. In any great modern
city, and about its suburbs, it would be possible to get a
tolerably accurate view of mankind in all ages.

The perusal of such a work as Mitchell's Past in the
Present is enough to convince one of this assertion.*
Indeed, a good patent attorney would go further, and
point out to you in some intricate machine survivals of all
the ancestral traits that have entered into iD

In the more remote parts of Iceland, many articles of
bone and stone are still in use, which in more accessible
districts, have been replaced by metal or earthenware. Mr.
Anderson saw a wheelbarrow with a stone wheel, a steel-
yard with a stone weight, a hammer with a stone head,
and a net with bone sinkers. At the same farm a quern
was in use, also horn stirrups, harness fastenings of bone,
to say nothing of bone pins and bone dice. The County
Council of the district meets in a spacious cave in the lava.^
[if the pristine artist or invention be represented by the
letter a^ then in the next epoch or improvement, going
upward, this same implement or process or artisan will still
survive, slightly modified, and may be represented by a\

There will be in the second epoch also new men and
methods and appliances, for which the letter b may stand,
and the symbol of the whole artisan class, or the total of
processes or the aggregate of devices will be a + b. In the

' Arthur Mitchell, The Past in the Present, New York, 1881, Harpers.
" Tempest Anderson,/. Soc, Arts, London, 1892, vol. xl. p. 400.

/

30 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION,

third epoch it will be a" -h d' + c ; and in the fourth
a'" + d" + c' + dj and so on. It has indeed been said that
the latest of great modern inventors are an epitome of the
genius of the world.

It is a fact, then, that our modern activities, with their
results and methods and appliances, are the descendants of
a long line of ancestors, that become more and more obscure
and humble as we trace them backward. This being true, it
is with the greater difficulty that the evidences of their
existence and standing are brought together. As in other
genealogies, names are dropped out or transposed, and the
continuity of history is interrupted^ In the case of inven-
tions there is another method of checking off paternity
which must not be neglected, namely, the study of peoples
now living. For example, the wheeled vehicle exists as a
native product in China, but not in Corea. The Coreans
are for that reason behind the Chinese in this particular,
and certainly represent a pre-Chinese civilisation. These
have art -products unknown to the Manchu, and that
relegates the latter to an elder day, other things being
equal. Of course, in any case, before making such an
assertion search should be made for evidences of degradation
from higher standards.

In making up our minds concerning the status of an
ancient people from certain things in their graves com-
pared with similar things in possession of a modern tribe,
it is also quite necessary to examine the tenure of the modern
tribes by which they hold the things in evidence. There
are at least three forms of ownership involved. The
specimen of which we are speaking may be the product of
a native art of a people in a rising scale. Or they may
practice this art now while declining in culture. Or
they may have borrowed it out and out, as the Navajo s
have borrowed weaving, still living in wretched hogans,
and held back from the wild savagery of their cousins, the
Apaches, by the possession of sheep which they borrowed
from the Spaniards.

INTRODUCTION. 3I

The pioneers in culture-history, such as Klemm and
Waitz, Tylor and Lubbock, and more that could be
mentioned, gathered with their best judgment into the
works that have been our text-books, and with the greatest
possible diligence, what travellers, explorers, missionaries,
and settlers have said about native races. But the more
careful observation of those who have looked deeper into
these matters, have set aside much said by witnesses upon
whom these great ethnologists have relied. If any one
will take the pains to study the publications of the United
States Bureau of Ethnology or the work of Mr. Man in
response to the British Notes and Queries^ he will see that
half the labour is expended in correcting errors and dis-
paraging misconceptions.

The Mediterranean race is the most mechanical of all, the
blue-eyed and the brown-eyed variety must each settle for
itself which shall bear the palm. The Semite is much less
so. The Mongolian is, perhaps, more ingenious with his
hands. The Africans and Papuans are more mechanical
than the brown Polynesians ; the Eskimo than the red
Indians ; and the Australians are the least clever of all.
In each several division of humanity there are smaller
centres of invention, owing both to natural ingenuity and to
natural resources. In the higher walks of language, art,
social structures, literature, science and philosophy, the
peoples of Europe and Asia will need a new distribution for
each classific concept. The Hebrew has never been excelled
for sublime conceptions on religious topics, the Egyptian
invented chronicles, the Greek perfected harmony and
portraiture in art, the Romans laid the foundations for
jurisprudence.

The regretful element in a study of this sort is that one
must despair of seeing these older inventors at work in their
descendants. The majority of human races had nearly quitted
original research when they were discovered. Many, very
many of them showed signs of undoubted decay. All of
them were living on the ruins of civilisations superior to

32 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

their own, or were in the possession of institutions and arts
that they could not have devised. The wiser, younger,
progressive stocks absorbed all the happy suggestions they
had to offer, and left them to muse and to die among the
ruins of ancestral genius. In a great modern factory old
machines are at once sent to the scrap pile as soon as a
new patent is issued, and whole chapters in the history of
ingenuity have been torn up on the uprearing of a new and
more advanced culture.

CHAPTER II.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DKVICES.

** What a plastic little creature man is ! so shifty, so adaptive ! his body
a chest of tools, and he making himself comfortable in every climate, in.
every condition." — Emerson.

Among inventions, the class of objects that are not an end
in themselves, but which are used as means to ends, occupy
a very prominent place. They are covered by such terms
as " tools," " implements," " machines.*'

Many of these are the apparatus of special crafts, and
should be considered among the inventions belonging to
those crafts. But a great many of them have come down
from remote antiquity, and belong to workmen of every
trade.

The tool chest of the Andamanese, according to Man,
would contain a stone anvil, stone hammers, chips, and
cooking stones ; one or more Cyrena shells for preparing
arrow-shafts, for sharpening knives of cane and bamboo ;
and boar's tusks, for carving spoons, for knives in cutting
thatch or meat, for scrapers in separating bast and bark in
cord-making, for carving, and even for planes.

You would also find Area shells for pot-making, Pinna
shells for receptacles, and food plates and Nautilus shells for
drinking-cups. The bamboo spear shafts, water holders,
food receptacles, knives, netting-needles, tongs, &c., would
call attention to the usefulness of that plant. Paint brushes
from the drupe of the Pandanus Andamanensium * should
not be overlooked.

' £. H. Man, Atidaman Islanders y London, 18S3, P* ^S^*

3 33

34 1*HE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Under the head of general appliances for industrial
processes may be included tools^ mechanical powers^ metric
apparatusy natural forces^ and machinery, M. Adrien de
Mortillet has made a classification of simple tools which
is adopted here, with additions and modifications.'

I. For Cutting. Edge Tools.
Working —

I. By Pressure.

Knives.

Double -edge tools, shears.

Planes.

Axes.

2. By Shock. J Adzes.

I Chisels, gouges.

3. By Friction. Saws.

II. For Abrasion and Smoothing.
PVorking —

1. By Pressure and [ Scrapers, gravers, rasps, files, sandpapers, polishers,

Friction. \ smoothers, burnishers, whetstones, grindstones.

2. By Shock. Bush-hammers.

In wood-working fire is an efficient element in abrasion.

III. For Fracturing, Crushing, Pounding.

Working —

1. By Pressure. Chipping and flaking implements.

2. By Shock. Hammers, pestles.

3. By Friction. Grinding apparatus, mills.

IV. For Perforating.

IVorking-

Needles, prickers, awls, drills of all
kinds.

I. By Pressure and Friction.

2. By Shock. Punches, picks.

V. For Grasping and Joining.

1. Tongs, pincers, vices, clamps, wedges.

2. Nails, lashings, glues.

' Rev, MenstteiU de f Ecole ifAtUhrop., Paris.

35

Before entering more minutely upon the study of tools, a
few words should be said concerning the composition of
tools, their working parts and haftiiigs. It is true that
millions of ancient objects, in stone especially, lying in
museums and cabinets have now no handles. But it is fair
to assume that the great majority of them were once so
furnished. Indeed, in their manu-
facture the artificer spent as much
time and pains in getting them
ready to be hafled as he did in
finishing the working portions.
The best guide in furnishing anew
these objects with hand -attach-
ments is the study of modern
savagery.

These are to be studied both
in their adaptation to the hand
and in the method of their being
fixed to the working part. The
former, for convenience, may be
called the grip, or handle ; the
latter, the attachment. The grip
of an implement may be made to
fit one hand or two, and to be

held close to the object ivrought

upon, or at some distance. It is V^^lfTT^'

really this part that at last becomes \"i: '■-IJa^'er gf Caiifornian
, . Indian. Grip, a long stnp of

a machme. otter Skin bound aigund.

Many savages still use only the
rudest kind of grip, merely smoothing the rough surface of
the material or wrapping something about it, so as not to
hurt the hand, but this is not true of all tribes.

The Eskimo men and women carve, from walrus ivory,
musk-ox horn, and wood, the daintiest handles for their
scrapers and other implements. They fit so exactly that
the white man, with his much larger hands, is unable to
use them. No modern sword grip is more convenient or
more tastefully carved.

36 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The Indians of the West Coast are not so particular, and
yet on many of their tools there are grooves for the fingers.
But a singular departure from this idea of convenience is to
be seen on South American and Polynesian weapons, where
for the sake of decoration the maker has carved a ridge that
would be in the way of the hand*

But the great majority of haftings, shafts, handles,
hilts, or grips of aboriginal implements were of some
material separate from that of the working part, and at-
tached thereto artificially. The form of this separate handle
depended precisely upon the work to be done. The saga-
cious mind of the savage mechanic has nowhere worked to
more perfect advantage. The economy of material and of
form to acquire the greatest result with the least effort has
been thoroughly explored. After the bare necessities of the
case have been met, tribal genius, imagination, and good
judgment have had full play.

To make a list of forms of aboriginal haftings it would be
necessary to write a catalogue of the varieties of tools
enumerated in the table at the beginning of this chapter. If
one would examine the stock in a modern hardware or
furnishing store, he would have to look over a great many
kinds of tools before he could find a style of simple handle
unknown to savages. He might begin with a cylindrical rod,
and end with the handiest device from the Patent Oflfice.
There probably never was a more effective grip on a tool
than the form used by the Eskimo women for their scrapers
nor those on the Malay daggers or kris. A classification of
haftings as to shape would commence with a mere stick or
withe or fork of a sapling, and pass through a series of im-
provements ending with one in which the hand would be
covered so that every finger and every muscle would have
full play in every direction for pushing or pulling or rotary
motion. This subject has never been worked out by a
trained anthropologist.'

' Rau, '* Chapter on Hafting in Alx)rig. Stone Implements," &c.
Smithson Cont. to Knomledge, Murdoch, Ninth An. Rep. Bur. EthnoL,
many figures ; Mason, Rep. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1889, many figures.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 37

The methods of attaching the handle to the working part
are more ingenious than the grip itself. The following are
the principal types : —

1. Doubling a pliant hoop or sapling of wood about the
working part.

2. Fastening the working part to a shoulder on the handle
or to a forked stick.

3. Inserting the working part into a hole or groove or
mortise in the handle.

4. Inserting the handle into or through the working part.

5. Binding the working part into a sling, which either
encircles or covers it.

6. Seizing.

7. Gluing.

8. Rivetting.

In almost every section of North America occurs the
"grooved axe/* and there grow a great many varieties of,
wood, like ash or hickory, whose saplings will bend double
without breaking and will easily split. The Indians were
accustomed to take a piece of one of these saplings about sijc
feet long and split it, so that in bending about the groove of
the axe or adze or hammer, it would neatly fit. The hafting
was completed by securely seizing the sides together near
the working piece and at the grip. The method of this
seizing will be presently explained. This style might have
been seen in the United States anywhere between the two
oceans.

In Matthews^s "Mountain Chant" two young Navajos are
sent out to chop poles for their tent. They had grooved
stone axes, and for handles they bent flexible twigs of oak
and tied them with fibres of yucca — that is, they doubled
the twigs, inserted the grooved axe-head in the bend, and
made all fast with yucca fibre.'

It is interesting to note in this account the transformation
of a myth. While the story holds on to the oak withe it
adopts the yucca binding. The Navajo moved southward

' Matthews, Fifth An, Rep, Bur, Ethttol,, p. 388.

38 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

into Arizona from Canada, and carried the memory of the
oak while forgetting the old-time lashing of raw-hide.

Fitting a forked stick to the working part was thus ac-
complished. A young tree was selected from which a limb
jutted out at the proper angle, having also the right size for
the hand. The limb was split off with a goodly piece of the
trunk attached, and this was trimmed to a shape so as to fit
on the working part, which might be slightly let in, or laid
flat with a shoulder on the haft. This process of onlaying
and partly inlaying adapts itself to every type of handle
used in savagery. The Eskimo even take old plane bits
and iron axe-heads procured from whalers and so haft them.
The boat-builders of the West Coast and the inhabitants of
Australasia of every race make most varied and ingenious
uses of the method. It has very great advantage to a
savage whose grindstones are frequently of difficult access.
• The lashing or seizing can be readily done up and undone
and the stone or metal working part quickly removed,
sharpened, and replaced. The many ways of holding the
parts together will quickly be explained.

Inserting the working part into the handle may be a
much older and more primitive process. In the Swiss Lake
dwellings are found good-sized blocks of antler, into the
spongy end of which the poll of a small celt was driven.
This block of antler was afterwards itself used as a handle, or
again was inserted into another piece to serve therefor.
The very same process is in vogue in America in our day
wherever the antler or suitable material may be found.
The tough exterior of antler and bone, and their spongy
interior would almost suggest themselves to the most
ignorant savage. While for small tools such as per-
forators, the rustic and the savage alike know that pith is
soft and that the wood of some plants is very tough. This
process may be seen in all stages of development among the
working tools of Eskimo and Indians. Arrow heads, awl
points, bone prickers and perforators, even scrapers and adze-
chisels, may be found in abundance with their working part

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES.

let in or driven into the handle. The parts
are further secured by wrapping and by
cement.

The Bongo method of hafting an axe — and
this seems to have been the universal practice
in true Africa — is to select a piece of wood
that has a knot or gnarled place at one end
and to drive the tang of the hoe or axe into
a perforation through the knob. Fastened
in this manner the wedge-shaped tang sticks
more firmly in the handle at every stroke.
On the other hand, spears and even many
garden tools are furnished with a conical
socket, into which the shaft is driven more
firmly at every thrust.'

Says Kalm, the hatchets of the Delaware
Indians were made of stone in shape of a
wedge, with a groove around the blunt end.
To haft it they split a stick at one end and
put the stone between it ; they then tied the
two split ends together. Some of these
hatchets were not grooved, and these they
held only in the hand.'

This is, in fact, a rude variation of the
withe style of hafting. The blade is really
inserted, however. There is a poor specimen
of this kind of work in the United States
National Museum from the Pueblos of New-
Mexico.

Lafitau describes a process which does not
exist in modern savagery. 1 have found this
writer's imagination or credulity playing tricks I
with his statements more than once and am '

■ Schweinfunh, Jrles Afriianae, Lomion, 1871, pi. vi.
fifis- 4. 5-

' Compare Kalm, Traitls, SiC, London, 1771, vol. ii.
P- 37.

40 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

inclined to think the following method of insertion extremely
rare.

** Choose a young tree," says Lafitau, ** to split it with a
single blow and insert the stone ; the tree grows and in-
corporates it in such a manner that it is with difficulty and
rarely withdrawn." '

A few examples occur in which the end of a stick is split,
a ferrule or seizing stopping the rift at the point desired.
The inside of the jaws were then trimmed out, the pole in-
serted and the outer ends tightly bound with green withe or
raw-hide.

Inserting the handle into a perforation or a socket in the
working part was not a common practice before the age of
metals. Africa now affords the best illustrations of this
process in rude metallurgy. But the Eskimo harpoon-
maker knew how to mortise holes in his ivory working
parts and to make the handle fit therein. Similar devices
are not common among other races. The stone workers of
Europe, however, were ingenious enough to drill stone axe
heads and furnish them with handles.^

There is a " doughnut "-shaped stone found in both
Americas, in Australasia, and in Europe whose function is
not clearly made out. Sometimes it is called a digging-stick
weight, and again a club head. But the handle passes
through the stone and is held in place by an abundance of
cement.3

The modern hammer, hatchet, adze, axe, and so forth have
all good handles of hickory, but the ancient maker of stone
implements fixed his edged and striking tools to handles in
some other way. Though most beautiful perforated axes of
stone were produced in the European stone age, they are too
pretty for use. The working part with an eye for hafting
came with metals.

The modern 'flail, the mediaeval " morning star," are of a

* Lafitau, Manrs des Sauv, Amer., vol. ii. p. iii.
^ Evans, And, Stone Implements^ chaps, viii. and ix.
3 Figured in Whymper's Andes of the Equator ^

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 4I

class whose method of hafting is well known in aboriginal
workshops. I speak of the sling hafting. The Indians of
the Plains sew up a round stone in green raw-hide, and
attach the projecting portions to a stiff handle. The same
tribes strengthen the attachment of their great stone mauls
in a similar way. Indeed, the withe seems to furnish the
rigidity and grip, while the raw-hide does the work of
attachment. The long lines of the bolas and the sling are
extensions of this method of having a flexible portion
between the grip and the working part.

But the savage man^s unfailing friend in holding together
the parts of his tools is a seizing of some sort. It is so easy,
so effective, so readily repaired, and it makes the handle
stronger instead of weaker. Hence the Polynesian gentle-
man, when he goes out to visit or sits in the shade of his
own vine and fig-tree, takes along a good quantity of cocoa
fibre and braids it into sennit. If the reader never saw a
roll of sennit, it will pay him to visit the nearest ethno-
logical museum for this sole purpose. The uniformity of
the strands, the evenness of the braid, the incomparable
winding on the roll or spool, as one might call it, constitute
one of the fine arts of Oceanica. But prettier still are the
regular, geometrical wrappings of this sennit when it is
designed to hold an adze blade and handle in close union.
While speaking of this combining substance, it may as well
be said that in the building of houses the framework is held
together entirely by the braided sennit. The strakes of a
boat are united by its means. In short, whatsoever is
wrapped for amusement or seriously, and whatsoever is
nailed or screwed or pegged or glued in other lands, is in
this region united by means of this textile.

The peoples of the world who live north of the tree
line, and many who dwell in more temperate zones, have
discovered the virtue of raw-hide. The Eskimo spends
many hours in cutting out miles of raw-hide string, or
babiche, of all degrees and sizes. This he uses in holding
together not only the parts of his implements, but in

42

THE ORIGINS C

sinew is taken

manubctures of every kind. It is a marvellous substance.
Prost that will snap steel nails like glass has no efTect upon
it. When it is put on green and allowed to dry, it shrinks
nearly one half, binding the parts immovably.

Further south, as well as in the Arctic region, the tough
n the leg of the deer. It is shredded as
fine as silk, spun into yarn, and then
twisted or braided into cord. This has
no end of uses, not only in tool making,
but in all arts where the greatest possi-
ble toughness and pliability are de-
manded. It serves to make a secure
ferrule on the awl handle, to strengthen
the bow, to hold feather and head on
the arrow. It has an economic use for
every day in the year.

All aborigines found out the art oi
uniting the parts of tools by means of
strings, made of the best .textile . the
country afforded. Whatever deficiency
they suffered in their materials or rude
tools was met by string of some kind.
The Fuegians are very clever in the
manufacture of harpoons with long
shafts. The barbed heads of bone are
securely attached by string, and the
Eskimo unites thus the many parts of
'N'(mheni^"^iiforaui his harpoon SO ingeniously that if one
showinghowthe"leaf. be broken the pieces cannot be lost,
shaped blades were _,, , ,

mounte<l in pilch. The poorest savages can make glue

of some sort, and — which cannot be too
often repeated in view of the frequent scandals heaped upon
them — they will in Australia, or in Guiana, or in North
America, tell you the best formula for glue that can be
made on that spot. The coast tribes and the Shoshonean
tribes of Western America produce excellent animal glue for
holding together the fibre of the sinew backing of the bow.

Fig. 3. — Hupa Da^er,

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 43

The Eskimo makes cement of blood. The Utes and the
Apaches, the Mohaves and the Pimas, always carry a stick,
on the end of which is a mass of pitch or mezquit gum
ready to heat and cement their arrow heads.

** The Hurons," writes Sagard, " with small, sharp stones
extracted blood from their arms to be used to mend and
glue together their broken clay pipes or pipe-bowls ijnppes
oil petunoirs\ which is a very good device, all the more
admirable, since the pieces so mended are stronger than
they were before." '

For cements the Panamint Indians, of South-western
California, used a glue made by boiling the horns of the
mountain sheep, pitch gathered from the Nevada nut pine
{Pinus monophyUa\ and a gum found upon the creosote
bush {Larrea Mexicand), In its crude form the larrea
gum occurs in the shape of small, reddish, amber-coloured
masses on the twigs of the shrub, and is deposited there by
a minute scale insect {Carterta larrea). The crude gum is
mixed with pulverised rock, and thoroughly pounded. The
product, heated before applying, was used to fasten stone
arrow-heads in their shafts.^

The karamanni wax or pitch is prepared as follows : the
basis is a resin drawn by tapping from a tree (Siphonia
hacculiferd)^ and is mixed with beeswax to make it more
pliable, and with finely powdered charcoal to make it black.
While in a semi-liquid state it is run into a hollow bamboo,
or allowed to harden in the bottom of a buckpot. It is used
as pitch to fill up crevices in woodwork, as, for instance, in
boat-building, to fix the heads of arrows in their shafts, and
in similar work.3

Quite similar in tenacity is the ** black boy gum '' of the
Australians, used in great profusion in the manufacture of
their implements.

Rivetting together the parts of a tool is by no means

* Sagard, Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, 1636, vol. 1. p. 189.

~ Coville, Am. Anthropologist^ 1892, vol. v. p. 361.

3 Im Thum, Indians of British Guiana^ London, 1883, p. 315.

44 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

unknown to sav^es. The same process is also applied to
other sorts of joining. Metallic rivets were not employed,
but little trenails or trunnels of bone or wood or antler. In
some of the woman's knives brought home from Greenland
the parts are united by means of little pegs or trenails of
antler. The parts of harpoons are also
thus joined. After the use of metal be-
came common among these people, they
! came to be very expert at rivetting their
I knife-blades of various kinds upon the
handles.

And now it will be possible to follow the
:ommon tools of savagery in the order laid
down in the classification above.

The jack-knife, the drawing-knife, and
implements of that class are indispensable
to the lowest grade of mechanic. When
only stone is available, he fabricates his
knife of stone; under other conditions, of
the teeth of sharks and beaver, or of shells.
But nothing demonstrates his absolute
dependence upon the knife so convincingly
as his willingness to throw the stone blade
away and substitute one of metal at his
first contact with a higher race. He will
hold on to his clan system and his myths,
but the stone knife must go. For working
in ivory, horn, antler, bone, wood, in short,

^.V't^T.^w"'''"* in any substance that may be whittled, the
Knife, California, , ., -^. , . . . t^

the hend held in knife IS the standard tool. For cutting
place by lashing softer bodies, as food, the knife is equally
and pitch. ■> j

m vogue.
All American aborigines made knives of stone, chipped
or ground, as the occasion or the natural resource de-
manded.

The African used his assegai for many purposes of the
same sort, while throughout the Eastern Archipelago

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 45

bamboo knives are in vogue, made while the stalk is green,
and thus dried and charred to give them edge.

The Eskimo and Indians in whittling cut toward the
body, and frequently make the handle of the knife long and
curved so that the end will fit on the muscle of the forearm,
to give a stronger grip and leverage. The modern curved
knife only takes the place of one with stone blade, and it
may now be seen throughout the whole intercontinental
area from Lapland to Labrador.

The Polynesians had no other knife than a piece of
bamboo cane. The serrated edge of the tool was formed
in the extreme outer rind of the bamboo, and when the
material has been recently split this edge is very sharp.
And Ellis expresses his astonishment at the facility with
which a large hog could be cut up with no other in-
strument.^

The readiness with which the peculiar structure of the
cane and the bamboo has been seized upon everywhere for
domestic knives, assists in the interpretation of the oft-
repeated maxim that similar inventions spring from like
environments and stress.

The shears of savages do not work like those of the
civilised. There is not a pair of cutting edges, one working
along the other. There is only one cutting edge, and the
other piece is held at right angles. Indeed, there is no cloth
or ribbon to be cut, only skins and human hair. The savage
mother holds a bit of wood or leather against the child's
head and haggles off the ends of the hair with a sharp stone,
or a shell. The finishing touches are given with a fire
brand. This practice was common among all American
tribes.

For cutting the skins of animals the modern shears were
preceded by the woman^s knife,' called «/», among the
Eskimo. This consisted formerly of a blade of chert inserted

' Polyttes* Researches^ vol. iv. p. 346.

=* Mason, " The Ulu or Woman's Knife," Rep. U. 5. Nat, Mus., 1890,
pp. 411-416.'

46 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

into a handle of ivory or wood, and glued fast. But even
conservative Eskimo women obeyed the law of utility, and
substituted iron blades on the advent of the whalers. All
other women in the primitive world used similar shears,
cutting skin as the modern saddler does, who has not a pair
of shears in his shop.

The Algonkian Indians of North America secured splints
of elm, birch, ash, and other hard woods of uniform thick-
ness, by beating a log until the annual layers were loosened.

Fig. 5. — The "Woman's Knife," showing primilive form of grip.

They were then peeled off, scraped, and dressed into ribbons
of the same width and woven into basketry.

For the jack-plane and the smoothing -plane, savagery has
no mechanical substitute. There the set gauge to deter-
mine the thickness of the shaving is the thumb, which, in
lieu of a better one, does tolerably well. The drawing-
knife, the spokeshave, and such refined modern cutting
tools, are all the lineal descendants of the primitive jack-
knife, or curved knife, indeed, of the flake of flint or other
hard stone struck off and used at the cutting edge. Lucien
Turner, however, collected genuine little spokeshaves, with
blades of chert, for dressing whalebone.'

The mechanic's edge tools in civilisation are axes, adzes,
' Cullccliuns of the United Slate;; National MuMium.

//

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 47

and chisels of some sort. In general terms these work
across the grain, with the grain, and into the grain.
The lines are very feebly drawn in savagery. The very same
stone blade is inserted into an antler and mounted on a
helve for an axe, attached to a forked handle for an adze,
and bound to the shouldered end of a straight handle
for a chisel. The axe of savagery is a laborious tool,
requiring great force and doing little execution. The adze
is better, and in the culture areas where great trees abound
near water, no aboriginal work is more attractive than the
canoes tooled down with stone adzes. The chisel of savagery
was seldom struck with a mallet. It was shoved from the
workman after the manner of the modern trimming-chisel,
and employed chiefly in connection with fire, as in hollowing
out canoes. The invention of the tenon and mortise, the
peculiar creation of the chisel, belongs to a culture-status in
which domestic animals and extended commerce enter.
Both in the East and the West Indies excellent adze and
chisel blades were made of the great clam shells.

The Munbuttoo have an adze of iron which strongly calls
to mind the socketted bronze celts of Scandinavia. A fork
of a sapling serves for handle, one limb remaining long for
the hands, the other cut short and inserted into the conical
socket of the blade. " With this tool," says Schweinfurth,
** Monbuttoo rough-hew their wooden vessels, subsequently
smoothing and carving them more finely with a one-edged
knife." '

The inhabitants of the Nubian part of the Nile valley use
this mattock-like tool almost exclusively for all kinds of
woodwork, while a real hatchet is never employed.

Saws are used by workmen in civilisation for cross-cutting
and for ripping. The savage does not use the saw for the
latter purpose. He gets out puncheons and planks by means
of innumerable wedges distributed along a great log. Bone
and harder substances he rips by boring a series of holes

* Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae^ London, 1875, P* xxiii, fig. 11. In
Finland iron axes preserve the peculiar shape of the ancient bronze blades.

48 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

through the substance in a straight line, and then breaking
the pieces asunder with a blow. The rip-saw is in full force
in China, Japan, and Corea. In ancient Egypt bronze saws
were used, but the ripping was done single-handed.'

The cross-cut saw, on the contrary, is one of the oldest
tools. There is no tribe of men who do not know how to
haggle off a piece of wood by sawing with a jagged stone.
This same method is used in separat-
ing antler, horn, ivory, and other in-
I dust rial substances. The archieologists
L find among their collections blades of
I hard material serrated, and appearing
to have been designed for saws. They
will do the work excellently, and they
seem to suit no other purpose. This
tool must not be confounded with the
stone-cutter's method of sawing stone and
other hard substances by using sand and

Moreover, the ancient Mexicans and some
Polynesian islanders knew well how to make
by inserting bits of jagged stone and
the teeth of sharks in a groove in a handle
of wood or by sewing them with sennit upon
the side of a thinner piece. The Australian
Fig. 6.— Wedge saw-teeth are fastened to the handle with
made from antler the " black boy gum." '
of elk {Ctrvui n .. .. ^ ai ■ ^

Caiiadiiisis). But the most efficient saw m savagery was

a thin piece of stone, wood, or other soft
substance used in connection with sand, to be described in
the chapter on lithotechny.

The second class of common tools that have their ancestry

in savagery are those that are used for abrading and smoothing

surbces. When the potter has finished shaping a vessel, the

■ Wilkinson, Anct. Egyptians, New York, 1854, Haiper, vol. ii. p. 1 18,

eg. 1.

" Wood, Uticiv. Rcuis, Hartford, 1R70, vol. ii. p. 35, with fig. on p, 36.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 49

surface is corrugated and covered with finger prints. By the
use of bits of leather, or gourd, or stone, she scrapes away these
inequalities, and leaves the surface without a mark upon it.

The box-maker, the boat-builder, the fabricator of war
implements, the worker in bone and horn and ivory, take
away the inequalities from the surface of their industrial
products in two ways — by scraping and by grinding, as is
done to-day. The cabinet-maker with his wood rasps and his
steel scrapers has his counterpart in the savage worker with
scraping tools and grinding tools of stone. The Fijian war-
club maker, 5 the American boat-builder, the African metal-
worker, grind and scrape away a deal of their material in
bringing the article into shape. The North American Indians
use sandstone,«or fish skin, or grass ; the South Americans,
the^ palate jbones of certain fish, and the rough leaves of
trumpet wood, Cecropta peltata^ or of the Curalitta Ameri-
cana ; the Polynesians employ pumice and coral ; and each
location has its peculiar method of procedure.

When Europeans first opened trade with the South Sea
Islanders, steel fish-hooks were among the things pressed
upon the attention of the natives. But these last, or the
fish, we had better say, like the mother-of-pearl hooks better.
But the metal points were sharper, so nails and wire were in
great demand. Perceiving in the nails a close resemblance
to the scions from the root of the breadfruit tree, the fisher-
men actually planted some, expecting them to grow. There
were no files to be had, so the nails were formed into shape
and ground and bent by the use of stone. The introduction
of the file] wrought as much change in native art here as
it did in the New World.

All of these processes of breaking, boring, sawing, cutting,
grinding, and polishing are shown by Professor Putnam in
his paper on the manner in which bone fish-hooks were
made in the Little Miami Valley. A series of partly finished
examples were taken from a grave in the Madisonville
Cemetery, near Cincinnati.^

^ Aiu Rep. Peabody Mus.^ Cambridge, 1887, pp. 581-586, 11 figures*

50 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Engraving, or ornamentation answering to the graver's
art, was produced on softer substances by means of a blunt
pointed, hard tool, and the design traced out by a series of
creases on the surface. This is done on wood, bone, and
pottery. But most of the decoration of this class was
accomplished by scratching away the material with chips of
flint or other hard substances. The Eskimo used to rely
upon the hard tooth of the beaver, the Polynesian wrought
with sharks' teeth, and in other places hard shells and
gravers of flint were employed.

The Indians of Central America are expert in the
engraving and painting of calabashes. With a pointed
instrument they work out designs upon the surface of a dish
and give relief to the ornamentation by roughening the
intervals. In painting them the blue is made with indigo,
the red with anotto, and the black with indigo mixed with I

lemon juice. The colour is fixed by means of a greasy sub-
stance formed by boiling an insect called aje}

For giving a polish to surfaces, grass containing silex,
very smooth stones, ochres laid on buckskin strips, or the
hard hands were quite sufficient. Experiments lately made
in the United States National Museum demonstrate that the
objects mentioned are quite adequate to the result, with
patience and knack. The archaeologist is frequently puzzled
in studying prehistoric methods of working, because all
traces of chipping and sawing are obliterated by the
polisher. But, in a great collection of polished objects
like that of Commodore Douglas, in New York, or the
jade objects in the British Museum, it is hard to believe
that every one of them was first battered into its present
shape.

Akin to the burnishing and polishing of the surface
of different wares is the whole genus of greases, oils,
varnishes, and other devices for filling the grain of the
substance and giving a better shine. The idea of preserving

' Morelet, Trav, in Cent, Am,, New York, 187 1, p. 314. Juarros
mentions the aje among the drugs of Vera Paz, lib. i. c. 3.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. ^l

wood by the use of paint and oils hardly entered the
savage^s mind. The study of paint as a purely decorative
matter belongs to aesthetology. But the investigation of
surfacing would be deficient if it did not include inquiry
concerning paints and varnishes and burnishing powders.

The oil used by the Guiana Indians to anoint their bodies
and their weapons is prepared from the crab- wood tree
(Carapa gutanensts). At the proper season the nuts are
gathered, boiled and put away until half-rotten. They are
then shelled and kneaded into a coarse paste. Troughs of
bark, cut in form of a steel pen, are filled with the nut-
paste and fixed in a sunny place, slanting, and with the
point over a vessel. The oil oozes from the paste and drips
into the vessel below. Sweet-scented substances are added
to overcome the rancid odour. Palm oil is also obtained by
crushing and boiling the seed. The oil rises to the surface
and is skimmed off with pads of cotton.'

The calabashes of the Sandwich Islanders are dyed in the
following manner : When the fruit has grown to its full
size they empty it by placing it in the sun. The dried
contents are removed through an aperture made at the
stalk. In order to stain the shell, bruised herbs, ferru-
ginous earth and water are mixed and poured in until it is
full. They then draw with a piece of hard wood or stone
on the outside of the calabash, rhombs, stars, circles, waves,
&c. After the colouring matter has remained within three
or four days, they are put in an oven and baked. When
they are taken out, the figures appear in brown or black on
the outside, while those places where the outer skin had not
been broken retain their natural bright yellow colour. The
dye is emptied out and the calabash dried in the sun ; the
whole of the outside appears perfectly smooth and shining,
while the coloured figures remain indelible.'

It is difficult to find a better example of the specialisation
going on throughout all history of men in all grades,

^ Im Thuni, Indians of British Guiana^ London, 1883, p. 314.
' Ellis, Polynesian Researches y London, 1859, vol. iv. p. 372.

S2 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

operated upon by the resources at hand and yet developing
the local or tribal technique.

"The split-cane of the Rotang {Calamus secundiflorus) is
buried in the leaf-mould in the bottoms of brooks by the
Niam Niam until it becomes thoroughly blackened. This
dyed material, mixed with the splints of the natural colour,
is wrought into all sorts of geometric patterns." ' The
Indians of Washington State and Oregon have discovered
the very same fact, and use splints of root, or sprouts, or
straws, blackened in the same fashion. The Indian women
bury the split roots of the spruce in marshes to get the
dark-brown splints for basketry.

The Andamanese paint in water and in oil colours. White
clay mixed in water is daintily laid on the body as well as on
bows, baskets, buckets, trays, &c. This work is done by
women. Oil colours are made by mixing ochres with fat
of pig, turtle, iguana, dugong, oil of almond, &c. It is
applied to the person as ornament or otherwise."

Finally, the whetstone and the grindstone must find a
place in the tool-chest of the primitive man. And they are
abundant. Constant reports are sent to the Smithsonian
Institution of the finding of huge masses of sand-rock
whose surfaces show marks of constant use as grindstones.
When it is remembered that every edged tool of stone has
been many times ground, the number of these implements
reported will not appear astonishing. The whetstone is only
a portable grindstone, and those gathered in museums show
by their surfaces and grooves what a variety of uses they
have served.

Whetstones are found in shell-heaps, graves, and mounds
all over the earth, and they are of the best material the
locality affords. They are an 'empirical result of the highest
order. Among modern savages the whetstone is universal.
In its ancient forms the great variety of grooves and worn
places testify to the many kinds of implements to which

*• Cf,, Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae^ London, 1875, p. xii. figs. 12-14.
' Cy., Man, The AiKiamamse, p. 184.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICKS. ^^

they once gave point and edge. The Eskimo collections of
our museums abound in good hones. The Andamanese
wood-worker holds the blade of his adze over the inner side
of his left foot and renews the edge with his hone. Many
of the stone axes and hammers seen in collections show
marks of having also been used as grindstones.

An implement of the greatest importance in the early
history of mankind, universal in its use, found on ancient
camp sites everywhere, is the hammer stone. It will be
minutely studied in the chapter on stone-working. It
seems strange that with all the ingenuity that our race can
exercise it is yet necessary to abrade granite in the same
way that the ancient Egyptians are represented as doing it,
in the same way that primitive man did it, namely, by
pecking and battering away the surface a few grains at a
time.

But every man and woman in savagery needs a hammer,
each in their several industries. The Indian women of
North America with hammers of stone break dry wood for
fires, crush bones to extract the marrow, pound dried meat
into meal for pemmican, drive down pegs for setting the
tent, beat the hides of animals to make them pliable. In
this last operation they are imitated all over the tropical
world by their sisters who hammer cloth out of the bark of
trees.

The savage man uses his great hammers in driving
wedges, in breaking off stone in the quarry, in mining, and
as a pestle in pulverising various materials.

The North-west Coast Indians use a very graceful hammer,
which is grasped in the middle like a dumb-bell. The
pounding end is flattened out, while the other extremity
is usually ornamented by carving. Hafted hammers are
common in Eskimo land, in the canoe region of the Pacific
Coast and in the buffalo country, each region adopting a
characteristic method depending on the work to be done
and upon the natural resources.

Prehistoric hammers and hammer heads are among the

54 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

commonest objects in collections. Those that are used as
millstones or pestles are described in the proper place. The
object in each case, whether with paint or with foodstuffs,
is to crush and to pulverise without mixing any of the
detritus of the apparatus with the product. The stone-
chipping and flaking tools, developed in savagery and almost
lost in modern times, save by the glazier and the gun-flint
maker, will be described particularly in the chapter on stone
working.

The making of holes by means of a punch struck by
another body is the product of the metallic age. The
African smith is not only acquainted with the art of
engraving on the surface of his knives and assegais with
punches, but he also makes holes by the same process. The
other savages of the world do not perforate in this manner,
but employ such tools as the needle or awl, thrust through
soft substances ; the hand perforator, working like a reamer
or a gimlet, and the drill operated by a string in a re-
ciprocating motion.

There is no end to the sharp-pointed tools employed by
both sexes among lowly peoples. They use them for sewing
clothing, tents, utensils, for making basketry and other
textiles. They have little stilettoes or prickers of bone no
bigger than a needle, and others as strong as a marlinspike.
Each one is a device exactly adapted and studied out for its
work, so that the archaeologist, finding a similar implement
in some ancient dkhrts^ at once begins to set up in his mind
the industrial life of a departed people.

With the two palms a drill is rotated after the fashion of
the cook in mulling chocolate. It consists of two parts, a
shaft of wood, with a point of hard substance lashed to the
lower end. A beautiful specimen of this sort is in the
United States National Museum, with a delicate point of
the Alaskan jade. This would be capable of boring almost
any stone object.

From this form, having a point fastened at the end of a
shaft, have been invented the bow-drill, the two-handed

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 55

Strap-drill, the pump-drill, and the top-drill. The distribution
of these three forms of drills is discussed under the chapter on
fire. The same method of changing vertical or horizontal
motion into rotary motion would be available alike in
creating fire as in boring holes. Mr. Hough, who has
studied the fire problem thoroughly, is decidedly of the
opinion that the mechanical drill is older than the fire drill
— in short, that the heat developed in boring holes led up to
the creation of heat by this means.

The Samoan drill,' used in boring the pearl-shell shanks
of fish-hooks, is precisely the same as the pump-drill used by
the Pueblo Indians of the United States. In the Samoan
example the crossbar or handle does not seem to have been
perforated for the shaft.

The Hawaiians were acquainted with the rotary drill for
boring." In the island of Lombok Wallace saw the primitive
gunsmith at his work.

" An open shed with a couple of small mud forges were
the chief objects visible. The bellows consisted of two
bamboo cylinders, with pistons worked by hand, having a
loose stuffing of feathers thickly set round the piston, so as
to act as a valve. An oblong piece of iron on the ground
was the anvil, and a small vice was set on the projecting
root of a tree outside. The apparatus for boring the barrels
was a strong bamboo basket, spheroidal in shape, through
the bottom of which was stuck upright a pole about three
feet long, kept in its place by a few sticks tied across the top
with rattans. The bottom of the pole had an iron ferrule
and a hole in which four-cornered borers of hardened iron
can be fitted. The barrel to be bored is buried upright in
the ground, the borer is inserted into it, the top of the
vertical shaft is held by a cross-piece of bamboo with a hole
in it, and the basket is filled with stones to get the required
weight. Two boys turn the bamboo around. The barrels
are made in pieces about eighteen inches long, which are

* Minutely described in Turner's Samoa, London, 1884, p. 169.
-' Brigham, Cat, Bishop Altis., Honolulu, 1892, vol. ii. p. 31.

{6 TllE ORlOlfflS OF lHVEtJTtOM.

first bored small, then welded together upon a straight iron
rod."'

The last type of common tools whose evolution com-
menced with early man to be mentioned here is the series
of gripping implements. Tongs, pincers, vices, and all such
things are represented in the aboriginal tool chest. All
these devices are temporary expedients for holding two or
more objects firmly together until they can be made fast
ty sewing or lashing,
or they are designed
for holding on to hot
objects or small ob-
jects while they are
being wrought. The

words " vice," " tongs," " nippers" cover ;the three classes.

In the collection brought home by E. W. Nelson from
Alaska there is a very primitive vice just as effective for the
work in hand as one made with a screw would be. The
woodworker is about to make a dipper out of a thin spruce
board. He rolls one end of (he board into a cylinder after
thoroughly boiling it, leaving six inches of the other end
still free and unbent to be fashioned into a handle. To hold
the bent end fast and tight to the part of the board against
which it rests until it could be secured by sewing with
whalebone or tough fibre, two sticks a little longer than the
board is wide or the cup is deep are laid parallel to each
other, one without and one within the cylinder, and their
projecting ends tightly lashed together with fine, wet spruce
' Wallace, Malay Arckipe!., New ^'uik, 1S69, p. 179, with figure.

Tools and mechanical devices. 57

root. In drying the root contracts and holds the surfaces
together water-tight. A block of wood is then fastened in
one end of the cylinder with wooden pegs, and the dipper is
completed. Several pieces that are in the United States
National Museum have been made in the same fashion, and
doubtless with a vice as crude and effective as Mr. Nelson^s
specimen. The capability of raw-hide and sinew for shrink-
ing and holding things together so that they could not budge
was well known and constantly utilised all over North
America. These and other savages also knew that twisting
a cable shortened the length and served as a press.

The Bongo smith uses a smooth gneiss boulder for his
anvil, another smaller one for a hammer, with the cunning
hand of the operator for a handle. For pincers he splits the
end of a stick of green wood, seizes the hot mass between
the jaws, and holds them firmly together by an iron ring
slipped along the stick. The same tongs are mentioned by
Speke among the Wanyamuesi.'

In the enumeration of the chest of tools belonging to
savages we must not omit the teeth, which among seam-
stresses and other craft people could not be dispensed with.
Every osteologist has noticed how the teeth in the crania of
savages are worn to the socket, and we are frequently told
that this arises from the large quantity of sand in the food.
Basket-makers all the world over use their teeth in peeling
and cutting their strands or filaments, and the Eskimo boot-
maker uses her jaws for crimping irons. Whoever has seen
an Eskimo boot neatly puckered all around the edge of the
sole will not be surprised at the brevity of the good woman^s
teeth, when he comes across her skull in the museum.

An original and very simple press is found among the
Haida of Queen Charlotte Sound. Bancroft says, " After a
sufficient supply of solid food for the winter is secured, oil,
the great heat-producing element of all northern tribes, is
extracted from the additional catch, by boiling the fish in
wooden vessels, and skimming the grease from the water or

* Schweinfurth, Aries Africanae^ London, 1875, pi. v. fig. 8.

S^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

squeezing it from the refuse. The arms and breasts of the
women are the natural press in which the mass, wrapped in
mats, is hugged. The hollow stalks of an abundant seaweed
furnish the natural bottles in which the oil is preserved for
use as sauce, and into which nearly everything is dipped
before eating." ^

The subject of the knots used by savages would require a
book. The arrow-maker, to begin with, has great faith in
tucking the ends under. So has every implement user who
desires to separate the parts readily. The manipulator holds
his left thumb on the end of a string, and in wrapping simply
covers up this end. At the finish the last end is tucked
under and concealed so as seldom to get loose. The different
hitches and knots of the sailor are all well known to the
uncivilised. On Polynesian spears and nets will be observed
the whole series of ties that one would see on a ship.

The Arctic peoples have developed an entire series of
tools and implements that have been made to take special-
ised forms by reason of the snow and ice. They put
diminutive snow-shoes on the bottoms of the long staves
which they use for canes or alpenstocks. From huge plates
of bone taken from the scapula or the jawbone of the whale,
or from slabs which they split from driftwood, they construct
shovels, lining the cutting edge with thin plates of walrus
ivory. To the back a handle is securely lashed by means of
raw-hide. This is for removing the soft snow. But against
the hard ice and frozen snow they have also a remedy in the
form of a pick of walrus tusk. This may be lashed to a
straight handle to form a crowbar, or at an angle to con-
stitute a pickaxe. These are held to the handle by walrus
hide as tight as a tire on a wheel by wrapping when the
skin is green. The shrinking binds the parts so tightly
together that the whole tusk of a huge walrus is worn quite
out before the lashing comes loose.

They make tiny scoops and strainers for dipping the

* Bancroft, Native Races^ New York, 1874-76, vol. i. p. 163, quoting
many original authorities.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES, 59

broken ice from a seal hole, and paper-knife clothes whisks
to scrape the snow from clothing. The eyes are protected
by snow goggles, which are cups of wood with narrow slits
cut across the bottoms and inverted over the eyes. At once
these devices keep the annoying snowdrift out of the eyes,
and prevent the brilliant reflection of the snow from blinding
the hunter. They put under their boots ice creepers also
made of ivory, and precisely similar to those worn in Europe.
The trowel for cutting out blocks of snow and building up
the cunning, dome-shaped habitations must not be over-
looked.
Having to do his work with gloved hands, the Eskimo has

thought out an ingenious series of toggles, swivels, detachers,
" frogs," buttons, any one of which will do its work, and
some of them enable the hunter to make fast and cast
loose frozen lines after a whole day's drive. He also has an
ingenious wrench for winding up his sinew-backed bow."

It is time to turn to the primitive knowledge of mechanics.
By the mechanical powers is meant that series of devices
which enables one man to do the work of several by the
interchange of time and direction and momentum, namely,
the inclined plane, the wedge, the lever, the wheel and axle,

' Fur tools of the Eskimo, syslcmaticatty described, see Murdoch, Ninth
An. Hep. Bur. Elhnol., Washinglon, 1892, ji. 150-190, with many illnstra-

6o THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

the pulley^ and the screw. One does not expect to find all
of these full fledged in the lowest savagery, but the intima-
tions of them all are to be looked for among very primitive
folk. It is not true that any mechanical power has been
lost. The great engineering feats of the megalithic epoch
were performed with powers well known in our day, acting
through co-operation.

The screw, the pulley, and the wheel and axle, are known
to savages only in a very rudimentary way. Dr. Boas
represents a plug used by the Baffin Land Eskimo to thrust
into a spear wound on a seal to prevent the escape of blood.
A sort of " thread " is cut on this wooden plug, and if the
object be entirely a product of native thought, is the most
primitive example of the screw.^

The Eskimo also approached a knowledge of the power
of the screw in the tightening apparatus on the back of
their bows and in their wolf traps. They know that
tremendous power was accumulated by winding a cable
of sinew by means of a lever. A very ingenious device,
involving the lever of the third kind, and coming as near to
the screw as we shall be able to find in savagery, is the
cassava strainer of the Guiana Indians. After the roots are
ground or grated, the pulp is placed in a long woven bag or
cylinder, in which the warp and weft of tough splints run
spirally and diagonally, so that when the two ends are
forced together the cylinder becomes short and wide, and
when they are pulled apart, it becomes long and slender.
As soon as the squeezer is drawn into its shortest length
and filled with pulp, one end is suspended from a tree
overhead, and one end of a log of wood is thrust through
the lower loop of the squeezer, the other extremity of the
log resting on the ground. The woman then sits on the
log, and by her weight gradually elongates the bag and
squeezes the poisonous juice out of the mixture, the inter-
stices in the woven fabric of the press acting at the same
time as a sieve. These cassava squeezers are to be seen in

* Boas, Sixth An, Rep, Bur. Ethnol.^ Washington, p. 480, tig. 402.

TOOLS ANfl MECHANICAL DEVICES. 6l

most museums, together with the graters, which are nothing
more than flat blocks of wood into whose surfaces little bits
of flinty rock have been firmly set. The whole apparatus

is entirely aboriginal, and the basket work of the press
constructed with exceeding neatness and skill."

The pulley may exist, and did primarily exist, without
• C/. E. ijn Thuin, Iitdians fff Srilish Cuiam, London, 1883, p. 260 st^.

62 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

the wheel, in the form of the " dead-eye." Any line drawn
around a fixed object, as a tree, and pulled in one direction
for the purpose of moving an object in another direction,
involves the principle of the simple pulley. All savages
know this device, both for hoisting and for horizontal work.

The Eskimo have gone beyond that, and know how, by
means of a long line, to construct a compound pulley and
draw from the water the carcase of immense sea mammals.

The nearest approach to a pulley among the American
Indians is the woman^s device for drawing the skin covering
to the top of the tent poles. When the women are ready
to set up the teepee, they spread the covering out on the
ground. Three poles are thrust under the covering, their
small ends passing through the orifice and being loosely
fastened together. A raw-hide line is made fast to the
upper part of the tent, and passed over the juncture of
the poles, which are then stood upright. The tent is
hauled up to the top, the bottoms of the poles are spread
out, other poles are inserted, and the covering is stretched.
When about to strike, the same apparatus lets the cover
down.

** In Central Syria and Philistia, for raising water, a large
buffalo-skin is so attached to cords that, when let down into
the well, it opens and is instantly filled ; and being drawn
up, it closes so as to retain the water. The rope by which
it is hoisted to the top works over a wheel, and is drawn by
oxen, mules, or camels, that walk directly from the well
to the length of the rope and return, only to repeat the
operation until a sufficient quantity of water is raised." '
It is very easy to imagine this wheel to be either a sheave,
a roller, or a fixed beam, one becoming the other by the
law of eurematics. The origin of the wheel is not made
out. The precise mechanism of those we do see on
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Grecian chariots and waggons is
not clear to the minds of modern wheelwrights. The other
wheel, used as a mechanical convenience in changing the

' Thomson, The Land and the Book, New York, i88o, vol. i. p. 20.

TOOLS AND MKCHANICAL DEVICES. 63

direction of a force or as a mechanical power, is still more
difficult to follow up.

The roller is older than the wheel. One day, Mr. Henry
Elliott came near catching a company of men inventing the
roller. A crew of Eskimo rowed to a gravelly beach in one
of their skin canoes. The craft was heavily laden, and they
had either to get into cold water, to lift all the freight
ashore and then carry the boat so that the gravels would
not cut the very thin and delicate sealskin bottom, or they
had to set their wits to work. As on many another occasion
the inventive spirit predominated, and they placed a row
of inflated seal-skin floats in front of the umiak, and rolled
her high and dry up on the beach by this means. The very
recent adoption of the pneumatic tire on bicycles and racing
sulkies, after this explanation may leave the impression that
Solomon was not altogether wrong when he said, ** There is
no new thing under the sun."

Long before the roller was invented, the pole road
afforded an easy and slippery method of conveyance. Im
Thurn describes the portage of a boat in the interior of
Guiana. " We were obliged to carry our boat across the
portage, which is about a quarter of a mile long, up and
then down a very considerable hill. Our men laid rollers
all along the path, then harnessed themselves by a rope
attached to the bows of the boat, and drew her merrily over
in a very short time.^^ ' The same method is in vogue in
all mountainous countries for getting logs down to the level,
and Robinson Crusoe would not have been compelled to dig
canals if Daniel Defoe had been a South American Indian.

The windlass, the capstan, the winch, are modern appli-
ances to convert time and momentum. The ancient engi-
neers had rollers and chutes and greased ways. Even in
savagery they could remove very heavy logs to the seaside,
and stones weighing hundreds of tons were brought to the
places where they were to be set up. Co-operation in great

* Im Thiim, Among the Indians of British Guiana^ London, 1883,
p. 61.

TOOLS AND MKCHANfCAL DEVICES. 6^

labour took the place of invention ; but it must not be
forgotten that this working together was an invention in
social order of the highest value.

The inclined plane is found everywhere in ancient and
modern engineering. The Pacific Coast Indians, in erecting
their totem posts, and in laying up great crossbeams, use
skids, guys, shore poles, and the parbuckle, besides their
own main strength. In Africa, Corea, and in North-
western United States, the porters draw their loads up on
their backs by a strap which also act as a parbuckle.^

The lever and the wedge are well-known devices to
savages. It has been previously mentioned that with
wedges the California Indians felled trees, the British
Columbia Indians split out immense planks, the metallur-
gists broke off masses of ore, and the engineers lifted great
weights. The wedge was also understood in tightening the
lashing of haftings, and in working clamps for holding
objects together.

** I was interested,'' says Sir Samuel Baker, ** in the
mechanical contrivance of the Lobore for detaching the
heavy metal anklets, which, when hammered firmly to-
gether, appeared to be hopelessly fixed in the absence of a
file. The man from whose ankle the ring was to be
detached sat on the ground. A stick of hard, unyielding
wood was thrust through the ring, and both of its ends
rested on the ground. A man stood on one end, and a
stone was placed on the other end of this bottom stick. A
lever of tough wood rested on the top of this stone as a
fulcrum, one end passing through the ring. When the
long arm was pressed down, it opened the jaws of the
manacle, and released the man's foot.^

That system of counting and weighing and measuring,
which lies at the basis of all tool-using, now demands our
serious attention. To begin with, the sense of number
is universal, and is found in a rudimentary state among the

* Mason, ** Human Beast of Burden," Rep, U. S. N, Museum , fig. 42.
^ Ismdilia^ New York, 1875, p. 268.

66

The OKIGINS OP IN\ENTION.

animals, but they have no notation nor any mechanical
invention for recording numbers. Most of the tribes of
men have adopted the quinary notation. But the only
numerals in use among the Andamanese are those denoting
"one" and "two," and they have no word to express
specifically any higher figures, but they indulge in some
such vague terms as "several," "many," "numerous."'

Among the North American savages the universal
method of keeping account ivas by means of tally sticks

ooo
ooooo
ooooo

.liowing tally.

or shells or stones or notches, one for each unit being laid
away or kept after some fashion. In the United States
National Museum is an old census of a tribe of Conianches.
It is simply a collection of bundles of straws, one for meiii
one for women, and one for children. Besides this example
are many bundles of gambler's counters, which are simply
short sticks tied together. One of the most charming
things Mr. Wallace ever wrote is telling how the rajah of
Lombok look the census.'

' Man, Anifamaiuse Ishmders, London, Triibner, iS
Conanl, "Primitive Kuml)er Systems," Pro;. Am. Aism
1893, vol. xli. p. 270.

' Widlacet Malay Archipil.i New York, 1869, chap. :

A<lv. Sc, Salem,

TOOLS Ax\n MECHANICAL DEVICES. 67

Memory-helping devices for numbers, such as notched
sticks or knotted strings, have a wide distribution. The
message-sticks of Australia, the rush of the Pelew Islands,
had their counter parts everywhere. The Maoris, says
Tregear, used notched pieces of wood for this purpose,
specially for recording genealogies. In China, the invention
of memorising by knotted cords is attributed to the
Emperor Luy-jin. Turner in his account of Nui (Ellice
Group) says, ** Tying a number of knots on a piece of cord
was a common way of noting and remembering things
among the South Sea Islanders." In Hawaii the tax-
gatherers, although they can neither read nor wTite, keep
very exact accounts of all the articles of all kinds collected
from the inhabitants throughout the island. This is done
by one man ; the register is a line of cordage, distinct
portions of which are allotted to various districts, which are
known from one another by knots, loops, and tufts of
different shapes, sizes, and colours. Each taxpayer has his
part in this string, and the number of dogs, hogs, pieces of
sandalwood, &c., he has to furnish is well defined." '

In every patent office there is an examiner of instruments
of precision. The very mention of a standard yard or
metre, of square feet or acres, of cubic inches or centimetres,
of delicate balances and platform scales, of gallons or
bushels, of degrees and their subdivisions, of clocks and
chronometers and calendars, of pounds, shillings, and pence,
awakens in the mind a consciousness of the nicety with
which things are measured or weighed or paid for in our
times. Only the astronomer, the chemist, the physicist, the
microscopist, the great banking houses, know to what a
degree of finesse all of these devices for getting the correct

* E. Tregear, y. Polynes, Soc,^ 1892, voL i. p. 127, referring to Keats ;
Fe/ew Is.y pp. 367, 392; Erman, £, Travels , vol. i. p. 492; Goqiictj
vol. i. p. 161, 212, and vol. iii. p. 322 ; Klemni, CuUur-Geschichte^ vol. i.
p. 3, and vol. iv. p. 396 ; Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 151 ; Long, Erep., vol. i. p.
235 ; Talbot, Disc, of Lederer^ p. 4 ; Humboldt and Bonpland, vol. iii.
p. 20 ; Marsden, p. 192 ; Tyerman and Bennett, yb/zr/w/, vol. i. p. 455.

68 The origins ok invention.

figures have attained. It will be interesting to note how, in
the earliest industries the places of all these diversified .

measuring apparatus were filled. The correct metric or \

chronometric data within the exigencies of each tribal life
will give a fair idea of the status of that tribe.' It is well
known that the history of navigation is almost the history
of clocks, that speed in trains is allied to red glass and
signalling, that the accuracy of the cubit is the gauge of the
quality of ancient architecture, and, in a general way, the
history of metrology is the history of civilisation. A
separate book on this subject would be worthy of prepara-
tion, only the data are so meagre.

Metric apparatus and instruments of precision include all
devices covered by what in the school arithmetics is
denominated *' tables of weights and measures." The
measuring appliances involved, and their numerical values
in different ages constitute the science of metrology. This
alone has had a very interesting elaboration. The lowest
peoples have their standards of measuring and comparing
quantity. Out of these have grown the modern processes.^

The scale or balance was known in America before
the Discovery. The Peruvians made beams of bone,
suspended little nets to each end, supported the beam at the
middle by means of a cord, and used stones for weights.
The transition from the balance to the " steelyard " is not
easy to make out.

The standards of compound arithmetic were very low
among the Andamanese. About forty pounds was a man's
load, and anything above that would simply be more than

' A photographer, who lived fifteen years among a tribe of savages, told
the author that the unit of capacity for small quantities was universally the
double handful.

* For an elaborate study of the origins of metric standards, the reader
is urged to consult William Ridge way, 177/^ Origin of Metallic Currency and
Weight Standard^ Cambridge, 1892, Univ. Press, 418 pp.,8vo; Mound
Builders^ Cleveland, 1883; McGee, American Antiquarian^ April, 1881,
reviewing Petrie's Inductive Metrolosy^ commented on by Dr. Brinton,
op. cit., p. 447.

N

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICKS. 69

a man's load. Size was rated by well-known natural objects,
seeds, fruits, nuts, &c. Capacity was counted by handfuls,
basketfuls, bucketfuls, canoefuls. There is no prescribed
form or dimensions for any object. No tallies were kept
nor counters, and this is very low down, because all
American tribes knew the use of tallies. Distance was
spoken of as a bowshot, or as from there to there, indicating
the limits. Fifteen miles, about, was a day's journey, and*
over that was said to " exceed a day's journey." »

Those ancient manufacturers and builders had no govern-
ment standards of measuring their work, but referred every-
thing to their bodies. This system was far more accurate
among rude peoples, where anthropometric differences
between the sexes and between individuals were very
slight. Many witnesses confirm the opinion that every
weapon, or chunkey pole, had its proportion to the owner.
Dr. Matthews says that the Navajo pole for the Great
Hoop Game was twice the span long, and Mr. Dorsey found
that the Omaha arrow had to measure from the inner
angle of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and
thence over the back of the hand to the wrist-bone. I have
examined many hundreds of quivers, and have always
found the arrows to be of the same length, while those of
the tribe resemble in general appearance, but vary slightly
in length for each man. Dr. Dorsey found the Naltunne,
on Siletz Agency, in Oregon, using the double arms' length,
the single arm's length, half the span, the cubit, the half
cubit, the hand length, the hand width, the finger width
(i, 2, 3, 4, 5), from the tip of the elbow across the body to
the end of the middle finger of the other hand. In most of
these cases the starting-point is the meeting of the tips of
the thumb and index finger.^

Among the Aztec or Nahuatl and the Maya, the two
most cultivated stocks of North American aborigines,
Brinton finds no words for estimating quantity by gravity,

^ Cf, Man, Andaman Islanders^ London, 1883, Triibner, p. 116.
^ Science, New York, 1892, vol. xx. p. 19^.

70 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

no weighing terms. For extension the human body and,
largely, the hand and the foot furnished standards of
measuring. Among the Mayas the footstep or print or
length of the foot was very familiar, and frequently in use
by artisans, as well as the pace or stride.

Quite a series of measures were recognised from the
ground to the upper portions of the body, to the ankle, to
the upper portion of the calf, to the knee-cap, to the girdle,
to the ribs or chest, to the mammae, to the neck, to the
mouth, to the vertex. Other measures were the hand,
finger-breadths, the span, half around the hand, as in
measuring for a glove, the cubit, the fathom. Journeys were
counted by resting-places.

In Aztec metrology, the fingers appear to have been
customary measures. The span was not like ours, from the
extremity of the thumb to the extremity of the little
finger, nor the Cakchiquel, from the extremity of the thumb
to that of the middle finger ; but like that now in use
among the Mayas, from the extremity of the thumb to that
of the index finger. There were four measures from the
point of the elbow — to the wrist of the same arm, to the
wrist of the opposite arm, to the ends of the fingers of the
same arm, to the ends of the opposite arm, the arms extended
always at right angles to the body.

The Aztec arm measures were from the tip of the
shoulder to the end of the hand ; from the tip of the
fingers of one hand to those of the other, from the middle
of the breasts to the end of the fingers. The octocatl or
" ten foot pole,*' approximately, was the standard of length
employed in laying out grounds and constructing buildings.
The road measure of the Aztecs was by the stops of
the carriers, as in Guatemala. The Aztecs were entirely
ignorant of balances, scales, or weights. The plumb line
must have been unknown to the Mexicans also.^

* D. G. Brinton, Essays of an Americanist ^ Philadelphia, 1890, pp.
433 451* This whole paper should be consulted. Charles Whittlesey,
Metrical Standards of the Mound Builders.

\

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DKnCES. 7 1

Federal money and the metric system as applied to
the mechanism of exchange are modern returns to
very primitive modes of reckoning values. The basis of
money is at times a shell, a bead, a robe, a skin. The
purchasing power of the unit is fixed in each case. And
among certain tribes there is a table of moneys, such as two
elk teeth equal one pony, eight ponies equal one wife.
The principal involved does not seem to be different from
that of our own standards, namely, to have some rare and
portable object for standards.*

The Bongo make iron spade-shaped disks, which repre-
sent their coined money.' The hoe-and-spade currency is
widespread in Africa. Crosses of copper, and ingots of native
iron hammered out from nuggets of iron ore pass for
currency. Furthermore, to give to these objects the
further semblance of coinage the manufacturers put a
certain twist or mark on the object, which is in effect a
tribal mark, and suggests the coins of the realm. These
marks are not government stamps, however, and they do
not raise the objects above the rank of tokens.

Although the native canoe-builders in the Louisiade Archi-
pelago work with adzes made of hoop-iron, the payment for
their work is made in stone axes, ten to fifty of these being
the price of a canoe. The stone axe is still the accepted
medium of exchange in large transactions — pigs, for instance,
and wives are valued in that currency. It is only fair, by
the way, to mention that the purchase of a wife is stated by
the natives not to be such in the ordinary sense ; the
articles paid are, they say, a present to the girVs father. In
Mowatta, sisters are specially valued, as they can be inter-
changed with other men's sisters as wives.3

Almanacks and clocks, how indispensable to all our
activities ! They were never absent from human traflfic,

' Stearns, " Ethno-Conchology," Rep, U, S. Nat, Museum, 1887, with
bibliography; also Gushing, Am. Anthropologist ^ Washington, 1892, vol. v.
= Schweinfurth, A rtes A/ricanae, "London, 1875, pi. iv. p. 14, 15.
^ Trotter in Pror. Kov, Grog. Soc, p. 795, Nov., 1892.

72 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The Andamanese have natural calendars, partly in the sky,
partly in nature around them. Having no numeration, they
did not count the moons in a year, but noted the cool
season, the hot season, the rainy season, in their proper
order. The year was also divided into twenty minor
seasons, named for the most part after trees which flowering
at successive periods, afford the necessary supply to the
I honey bees. These flowers are used to name the children
born while they are blooming, and these names, added to
the prenatal name conferred by the parents, constitute the
denomination of the person until maturity or marriage.

The phases of the moon and its connection with the tides
were both designated by appropriate terms. Of the starry
host they take little notice, confining their special observa-
tions to Orion and the Milky Way.

They knew the four points of the compass, and the pre-
vailing winds by name, and distinguished certain meteoro-
logic phenomena. So much for the calendar.

As to clocks, they had no mechanical device for marking
time of day, but had thirteen separate expressions for known
parts of the twenty-four hours. But these were extremely
vague, and the divisions over-lapped one another. For that
matter, clocks and watches are extremely modern devices.

The day^s journey is often mentioned as a fixed distance.
This is only true within wide limits, and it scarcely ever
exceeds ten miles for marching. "The Indians, finding
that their wives were so near as to be within one of their
ordinary day's work, which seldom exceeded ten or twelve
miles, determined not to rest till they had joined them.'' '

In these journeys the Canada Indian hunters are said to
stand a stick in the snow and make a mark along the
shadow as they pass some well-known spot. The women
and old men coming later note the angle between the
former and the present position of the shadow, and they are
thereby enabled to regulate their future speed.

The Zuni Indians know well that the light of the rising

* llearne, /o/frfte^', 6^^., Tendon, 1795, Slrahan, p. 185.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 73

sun falls on the same spot but two days in the year, and
that at noon the shadow of a pillar lengthens and then
shortens back to the same spot in the same period. They
have a pillar dedicated to astronomical observations. On
many houses in the Pueblo there are scores on the wall
opposite windows, or loop-holes for the purpose of recording
the movements of the sun. There are also pillars to be seen
in other parts of the world which could possibly be dedi-
cated to the same end, since such a feat is performed by at
least one tribe.

" Each morning, just at dawn, the Sun priest, followed by
the master priest of the Bow, went along the eastern trail
to the ruined city of Ma-tsa-ki by the river side, where,
awaited at a distance by his companion, he slowly ap-
proached a square, open tower, and seated himself just
inside upon a rude ancient stone chair, and before a pillar
sculptured with the face of the sun, the sacred hand, the
morning star, and the new moon. There he awaited with
prayer and sacred song the rising of the sun. Not many
such pilgrimages are made ere * the suns look at each
other,' and the shadows of the solar monolith, the
monument of Thunder Mountain, and the pillar of the
gardens of Zuiii lie along the same trail ; then the priest
blesses, thanks and exhorts his father, while the warrior
guardian responds as he cuts the last notch in his pine-
wood calendar, and both hasten back to call from the
housetops the glad tidings of the return of spring. Nor
may the Sun priest err in his watch of time's flight ; for
many are the houses in Zuni with scores on their walls or
ancient plates embedded therein, while opposite a con-
venient window or small porthole lets in the light of the
rising sun, which shines but two mornings of the 365 on
the same place. Wonderfully reliable are these rude
systems of orientation, by which the religion, the labours,
and even the pastimes of the Zuni are regulated." '

^ F. H. Gushing, Century Magazine^ quoted in Nature^ London, 1892,
March 17, p. 464,

74 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION. .

In the Moki village of Wolpi, Arizona, there are means of
telling noon and midnight. Fewkes says : " When the
sunlight through the kibva [sacred chamber] entrance fell in
a certain place on the floor and indicated noon time each of
the four priestesses made a single haho^ consisting of two
willow twigs equal in length to the distance from the centre
of the palm of the hand of the middle finger." Again, " At
12.15 the head priestess ascended the ladder and minutely
examined from the roof the position of the stars. She
looked anxiously for some star in the constellation of Orion
or the Pleiades, but the stars she sought were hidden by
a cloud, and she at last decided what she had in mind by
observing a bright star in the western sky. Then she went
down the ladder and announced that the time had come for
the midnight ceremony." ^

The ancient Polynesians had thirteen months in their
year, regulated by the moon, and once in a while dropped
out a moon. They had separate names for every night in
the lunation, and twenty-seven separate names for time
of day during each twenty-four hours.'

In the long voyages which they undertook about six
hundred years ago, they made excellent use of the stars
both for direction and time of day. In another chapter
some mention will be made of fire as a time measure,
but the near kindred of these Polynesians anticipated the
hour-glass by boring a small hole in the bottom of a cocoa-
nut cup, and placing it in a vessel of water, noting the time
it took the cup to sink.

The reader well knows that the primitive folk were good
meteorologists. That they knew something about natural
thermometers and barometers and hygrometers may be
gathered from the story of Gideon's fleece. Mr. Ling Roth
contributes the following charming bit from the Malay : —

* Fewkes, ** A Tusayan Dance," Avu Anthropologist, 1892, vol. v.
pp. 109, 117. For time of day among the Navajo, sec Matthews,
*' Mountain Chant," Fifth An, Rep. Bur, EthnoL, p. 389.

" ElHs, Polynes. Res.^ London, 1859, Bohn, vol. i. pp. 86-9.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICKS. 75

" When the natives of Borneo are selecting the site for a
new village a piece of bamboo is stuck in the ground, filled
with water and the aperture covered with leaves. A spear
and a shield are placed beside it, and the whole is surrounded
by a rail. The latter is to protect the bamboo from being
upset by wild animals, and the weapons are to warn
strangers not to touch it. If there is much evaporation by
the morning the place is considered hot and unhealthy, and
is abandoned.'' '

The evolution of machinery cannot be ignored in this
connection. A machine in this view is a contrivance for
changing the direction and the velocity of motion or force.
It cannot create force any more than a tool can. On the
contrary, it consumes a vast amount of force in its own
working. By means of a tool the entire force exerted is
brought to bear upon the material. The machine, by the
waste of a portion of the force enables the workman to
apply his efforts more rapidly, more powerfully, or in ways
unattainable by hand.^

All power at first was hand-power, the machinery of the
world was moved only by human muscles. In the chapter
on animals will be treated the gradual enlistment of
domestic beasts in the service of man. Besides these,
winds and water currents, vapours and electric currents and
chemical force have been domesticated for human uses.
The study of these is essential to a knowledge of industrial
progress. Muscular power is the basis of all power, just
as human backs will be shown later to be the basis of the
carrying trade.

The Zuni or Nicobar woman's simple potter's wheel,
which is nothing more than the turning of her vessel
about in a dish or basket as the work goes on, is only a
little more rude than the fashion in the interior of China

^ Ling Roth,y. Anthrop. Inst,^ London, 1892, voL xxii. p. 31.

- "A machine is a combination of materials arranged by man so as to
enable determinate motions to be obtained " (Shaw, J. Soc. of Avis,
London, 1885, vol. xxxiii. p. 395).

«■■■

76 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

of putting a lump of clay on the top of a revolving shaft,
which they turn with one hand while the pot is formed
with the other.

" The potter^s wheel was known in the world from high
antiquity. The Egyptian artisan turned the wheel by hand.
The Hindu potter goes down to the river-side when a flood
has brought him a deposit of fine clay, when all he has to
do is to knead a batch of it, stick up his pivot in the
ground, balance the heavy wooden table on the top, give it
a spin and set to work.*' ^

The spindle with its whorl is a free wheel and axle, with
the principle of the fly-wheel fully developed, and the
twister, well known to savages, is a still simpler fly-wheel.
The Zuni Indians make a block of wood about 8 in. x 3 in.
X i in. Near one end a hole is made f in. in diameter, and
the stick is notched just outside this hole. This is the fly
wheel. A stick with a head cut on it is thrust through the
hole and serves for handle. One end of the material to be
twisted is tied to the notch on the fly-wheel, and the other
end to some fixed object. The twister holds to the handle
and causes the fly to revolve by the motion of his hand.

The regular spindle serves for yarn -making, thread -
making, and twine-making, and the product is wound on
the shaft, which is twirled in a small vessel, rolled along
the thigh, or sent spinning in the air, held up by the thread
caught in a hook on the upper end. Here the operation
stops, and the writer does not know of any primitive people
to whom it occurred to fix the two ends of the shaft as
journals in bearings. The nearest approach to such a
device is the Eskimo drill ; in which the piece held in the
mouth furnishes the upper socket, the perforation being
made the under socket and the bow or strap applying the
power. The true wheel and axle reverses this process, and
does its work where the Eskimo applies his force.

Crank motion applied to the potter's wheel is of very
recent date. Dr. Smith, long resident in Siam, informed

' Tylor, Anthi-opoloiQ»t New York, 1881, p. 275.

WOOLLEN YARN. {Photo ill U.S. Nat. Museum.)

**/.

OP

TOOI^S AM) MKCHAMCAL DKVlCKS. 77

the writer that the potter first gives an immense impetus to
a fly-wheel, and then works the clay while the wheel is
turning. The next progress forward is placing the heavy
fly-wheel low down where the potter may keep it in motion
with his toes. " So doth the potter, sitting at his work and
turning the wheel about with his feet, he fashioneth the
clay with his arm." ^

In polishing the basket lacquer work, the Shans use a
crude lathe. A bamboo basket is coated with lac or with
lac mixed with ashes of straw. When the lac is dry, the
basket is turned on a very simple lathe, the wheel of which
revolves backwards and forwards, the principle of the crank
being apparently unknown. The workman uses a treadle,
which turns the wheel one way, and it is brought back in
the opposite direction by a long bamboo which acts as
a spring.^* The reader should compare with* this the ex-
ceedingly crude Moorish lathe in which the operator works
a bow drill in one hand and uses his toes to assist the other
hand to holding the cutting tools.

*' There are strong grounds," says Shaw, '* for considering
the fire drill or twirling stick, first revolved between the
hands of one or two operators, as one of the earliest ex-
amples of machinal motion, and that a long time must
have elapsed before the introduction of continuous, instead
of alternating rotary motion." But Mr. Shaw forgets the
fly-wheel on the spindle, called usually the whorl. The
spinning of fibre is as old as the fire sticks. Indeed, it
would not appear that the fire sticks are among the oldest
of human devices. Men had fire very long before they knew
how to create it.

" It is extremely probable that the first continuous motion
was employed in connection with the grinding of corn." ^

* Ecclus. quoted in Tomson, op, cii, vol. i. p. 34 ; excellent plate,
p. 35> showing two types of burden-bearing and the fly-wheel turned with
the foot.

-' Ernest Salow.y. Soc. Aris, London, 1892, vol. xl. p. 186.

3 Shaw,y. Soc, Aiis, London, 1885, vol. xxxi. p. 395.

78 tHE ORtaiNS OB' INVENTION.

Shaw arranges corn-grinders as : — (i) Simple stone pounder ;
(2.) Mortar and pestle, worked (rt') by slaves, (b) by bondsmen,
c) by cattle ; (3) flat cylindrical stone with vertical spindle.
But in reality there have been two series, the mortar series
and the grinding series, the order of which last would be (i)
rubber and flat nature rock ; (2) metate and muUer ; and
(3) the rotary mill driven first by hand and after by animals,
winds, and water.

The employment of the wind to separate chaff from grain
is an appliance in primitive agriculture or har vestry. The
utilisation of the wind in locomotion will be studied in the
chapter on primitive transportation. The Indians of the
Plains, who dwelt in skin lodges, understood the use of the
fly and extra pole on the tent to utilise the wind in creating
a draught and drawing the smoke out of the dwelling. The
sail is also used in the Arctic regions to aid in driving the
sledge over smooth ice. But no savage had any conception
of a windmill, or invited the air to participate in doing
mechanical work.

If I were permitted to coin a word, I should call all
the combined arts that relate to the getting, preserving, and
utilising water, hydrotechny ; but that would furnish rather
a long term for the study of these arts — hydrotechnology —
though it is not lacking in euphony. The spring, the well,
the city reservoir, and waterworks ; the open stream, the
canal, the locomotive ; the tide wheel, the overshot, the
turbine — all of these indicate progress in hydrotechny as
related to aliment, to transportation, to irrigation, and to
manufactures. The world's progress has followed the
water, and water has never been absent from men's minds.

No aborigines, unaided by domestic animals, have dis-
played so much patience and ingenuity in the storage and
conducting of water as the Indians of the arid region of the
United States. Throughout the Pueblo region, says Mr.
Hodge, works of irrigation abound in the valleys and on the
mountain slopes, especially along the drainage of the Gila
and the Salado, in Southern Arizona, where the inhabitants

Tools Ast) mechanical devices. 79

engaged in agriculture to a vast extent by this means. The
arable tract of the Salado comprises about 450,000 acres, and
the ancient inhabitants controlled the watering of at least
250,000 acres. The outlines of 150 miles of ancient main
irrigating ditches may be readily traced, some of which
meander southward a distance of fourteen miles. In one
place the main canal was found to be a ditch within a ditch,
the bed being 7 feet deep. The lower section was only
4 feet wide, but the sides broadened in their ascent to a
*' bench '' 3 feet wide on each side of the canal. Remains of
balsas were recovered, showing that the transportation of
material was also carried on. Remains of flood gates were
found by Mr. Gushing, and great reservoirs for storage of
water, one example being 200 feet long and 15 feet in depth.*

In Mexico and Peru, especially in the latter, this art
reached its highest perfection. ** Higher up in the Andes
irrigation was carried out on a far more extensive scale.
Partly by tunnelling through the solid mountains, partly by
carrying channels round their sides, the waters of the higher
valleys, where the supply was abundant, were made avail-
able for the cultivation of others where it was deficient : and
in the district between the Central and Western Cordilleras,
to the northward and westward of Cuzco, such channels were
extensively constructed to irrigate, not only the valleys, but
the llama pastures on the mountain sides." ^

In the evolution of hydrotechny the curious invention of
the Bakalahari negroes has a place. The women dig tiny
wells in the wet sand. They then fasten a bunch of grass
to the end of a reed and bury it in the pit. By means of
the reed they suck water into their mouths and discharge it
into ostrich shells, using as a guide to the stream a stalk of
grass. When twenty or thirty shells have been filled they
are placed in a net, carried home and buried in the earth for
future use.3

^ F, W. Hcxlge, Jm, AfUhropolcgist^ July, 1893) PP« 323-330.

** Payne, History of America, Oxford, 1892, p, 380.

3 Livingstone, Trav,, ^c, in S, Africa^ New York, 1858, p^ 59, ilL

8o THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The wheel and bucket are in common use through the
eastern continent. For lifting water out of shallow wells or
sources of supply, a wheel may be used whose diameter is a
little more than the vertical distance from the water to the
point of discharge. On the rim of the wheel are buckets
resembling those in an old-fashioned mill-wheel. The
apparatus is worked by a draught animal. But, in more
elaborate specimens of the same sort, the machine is set in a
running stream, which, working against paddles on the rim,
revolves the wheel and lifts the water. The Chinese make
an enormous apparatus of this sort, and fasten bamboo
buckets diagonally on the outside of the rim. These
descending are plunged mouth first under the water, and
ascending retain it until they pass the centre of motion,
when they discharge into a trough. Thomson speaks of
enormous wheels at Hums, on the Orontes, the diameter of
some being 80 or 90 feet.^

The na'urah^ or Persian water-wheel, common throughout
Western Asia, consists of a clumsy cog-wheel, fitted to an
upright post, and made to revolve horizontally by a beast
attached to a sweep. This turns a similar one perpendicular
at the end of a heavy beam, which has a large wide drum
built into it, directly over the mouth of the well. Over this
drum revolve two rough hawsers, or thick ropes, made of
twigs and branches twisted together, and upon them are
fastened small jars or wooden buckets. One side descends
as the other rises, carrying the small buckets with them,
those descending empty, those ascending full. As they pass
over the top they discharge into a trough. The buckets are
fastened to the hawsers about 2 feet apart. The hawser is
made of twigs, generally of myrtle, because it is cheap, easily
plaited, and its extreme roughness prevents its slipping on
the drum.^*

* Thomson J The Land and the Book^ New York, 1880, vol. i. p. 21.

^ Ibid,^ vol. i. p. 19. An excellent full-page plate represents a camel
working the luCaurah. The harness is extremely primitive. Compare
figure vol. iii. p. 8.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 8 1

In matters of engineering the starting-point backward is
itself in a remote past. Watkins, in his "Beginnings of
Engineering " sayS; ** Of the races to be considered I will
mention in what seems to me to be their order of import-
ance, Chaldea, Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, Etruria,
Palestine, Moab, Persia, India, China, and the Incas. To
this aggregate every form of engineering was known which
did not require the application of the generated forces.
They built canals for transport and irrigation, reservoirs and
aqueducts, docks, harbours, and lighthouses. They erected
bridges of wood and stone, as well as suspension bridges ;
laid out roads, cut tunnels, constructed viaducts, planned
roofs for their massive buildings ; tested the strength and
discovered the weakness of their building materials ; insti-
tuted elaborate systems of drainage ; planned fortifications ;
designed engines of attack and floating bridges ; devised
methods for the transport of heavy objects — in fact, covered
to a greater or less degree all departments of hydraulic,
bridge and road, sanitary, military, and mechanical en-
gineering." '

Assuredly even these enterprises were the mature results
of still earlier efforts, which it would be delightful to trace.
In the earliest engineering feats two facts must be sharply
kept before the mind, to wit, that time was no object, and
that there were no private buildings. Suppose that every
labouring person in London should be immediately with-
drawn from all private work, and that they all should be
organised to labour for ten years upon some government
building as a memorial of the reign of Her Gracious
Majesty. One million hand labourers would erect a pyra-
mid containing fifteen thousand milliards of tons of earth,
and the mechanics would put on the top of it a structure
larger than all the monuments in Egypt combined.

The only puzzle the modern student can have is to con-
ceive how the ancient engineer made and moved his crib-

' Watkins, ** Beginnings of Engineering," Traus. Am, Soc. Civ. En-
gineers^ vol. xxiv., No. 5, 1-76, p. 800.

6

82 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

work. It is within the abiHty of a company of savage
Indians to hammer down any great stone into any form. It
is customary for them as a tribe to all engage in the same
operation in hauling logs, or seines, or boats, or stones.
The problem is somewhat like that of Archimedes, " Given
a rope long enough, and a crib- work strong enough," and
any modern savage people will undertake to set up the
monuments of Brittany.

"The usual method of removing the iron open rings
Avorn on the ankles by the Madi requires a number of men.
A rope is fastened to each side of the ring, upon which a
number of men haul in opposite directions until they have
opened the joint sufficiently to detach the leg." ' In pic-
tures of Egyptian stoneworkers great companies of men are
seen hauling together on some heavily-weighted sledge, and
in Constantinople one may see any number of men from
eight to twelve carrying a heavy tierce of wine in slings 1

attached to four parallel bars.

The Khasi Hill tribes of India still erect megalithic
monuments. The slabs of sandstone are quarried near
by where they are to be set up by means of wedges. Some
of these weigh twenty tons. They are moved on a cradle
made of strong curved limbs of trees, roughly smoothed and
rounded, so as to present little surface to friction. In
dragging and setting up the slabs all the members of a
community are under an obligation to assist on such an
occasion, and are not paid for their labour, beyond receiving
in the evening a little food or liquor at the dwelling of the
family who sought the aid. ' This is exactly like the " barn- '

raisings " familiar to all American farmers.

" The block " (of stone) " is detached by means of wedges
introduced into natural fissures and artificially drilled holes.
Two or three stout logs arc placed under the slab at right |

angles to its axis and equi-distant. Under these are fastened '

four bamboo trunks, two on either side parallel to the axis

' Sir Samuel W. Baker, Tsmailia, New York, 1875, p. 269.
^ Austen,/. Anthrop, Inst., London, 1872, vol. i. p. 127.

TOOLS AND MECHANICAL DEVICES. 83

of the Stone, and beneath these bamboos series of smaller
bamboos like the rounds of a ladder. The whole forms a
gigantic crib-work, or carrying frame. Three or four
hundred men can unite their efforts thus in picking up the
whole and carrying it to its destination. In two or three
hours the stone may be transported a mile. It is set up by
means of guy ropes and lifting, and planted in a hole pre-
viously prepared." '

A curious fact in engineering is recorded by that most
careful of observers. Rev. J. O. Dorsey, regarding the
Omaha tribal circles. He says, " The circle was not made
by measurement, nor did any one give directions Avhere
each tent should be placed ; that was left to the women" (§ 9).
" Though they did not measure the distance each woman
knew where to pitch her tent." She also knew the proper
distances apart for safety, on the one hand, or for the con-
venience of dressing hides on the other (§ ii).^

^ A. L. Lewis, Materiaux pour VHist. de V Homme ^ Toulouse, 1876,
2 S., vol. vii. p. 185, 3 figs., which explain the process well.

- Dorsey, Third An. Rep, Bur. Ethnol, Washington, 1883, pp. 219,
220. Parkman speaks of a whole village of fifty tents being set up in
half an hour.

CHAPTER III.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE.

'* Quo modo homines ignis usum primum intellexerint non nostnim hoc
loco dicere, immo hercule nihil certum inveniri potest." — M. H. Morgan,
Harvard Studies,

It is scarcely possible to conceive of man without fire.
Very early in history he discovered the Promethean spark,
and a train of blessings came with its advent. The light
and warmth of the sun were let into his cheerless dwelling.
Forests and jungles, with their poisonous malaria, noxious
insects, venomous serpents, and ravening beasts, were sub-
dued or quickly removed. Life was prolonged by the
cooking of food and by the ability to preserve it for future
use through drying, smoking, roasting, &c. In one Indian
house in Guiana there were fires under each hammock as
well as for cooking, and, in the open, the hunter sleeps
secure from ravenous beasts so long as his fire is burning.

In old archaeological sites in Europe, representing the
remains of the Cave men of the Mousterian epoch in France
and Belgium, are found flints that have been cracked by fire,
fragments of charcoal, burnt bones that have been split for
the marrow. In the low prairie lands of the United States
the settlers, in digging wells, come upon piles of charred logs.
The latter are, doubtless, the result of natural causes, but
the former are the relics of human industries, and belong to
the earliest history of Europe, whenever that may have been.

The study of fire in its relation to human invention, and

84

toots AND Mechanical devices. 85

as a tool in doing work, must include many topics, among
them the following : —

1. Its natural available sources, from which it could have
been procured before men learned to create it artificially.

2. The methods of its artificial creation, together Avith
such apparatus and appliances as were invented to make it
burn.

3. The preservation and manipulation of fire after it had
been kindled.

4. The use of fire in domestic operations, in cooking food,
preserving food, and in giving warmth.

^. Illumination.

6. Fire in doing mechanical work and in the aid of man
in peace and war.

7. Fire as a timekeeper.

8. Fire as an object of worship.

In the allegorical panel of tile-work designed by Bracquc-
mond for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and
presented by the Havilands to the Smithsonian Institution,
the genius of fire is represented as already subdued by man,
rising from the centre of the picture, bearing in one hand a
vase, in the other a freshly-cast bronze image. About him
are factories and foundries sending forth clouds of smoke
and steam. Huge trains of freight and passenger cars cross
the foreground. The scene is laid in daylight, so there is
no need of artificial illumination. But every typical use of
fire conceivable in 1876 has been wrought into this bold
design.

Strangely in contrast with this bustling scene is the time
spoken of by Sir John Lubbock, when fire had not been
kindled on this earth. ** In what precise manner,'' he says,
" Nature communicated this secret to our species, is noAV
difficult to determine. Even the few lowly tribes of our
day that were devoid of fire-making apparatus, had found
at least some way of keeping the sijjodfdering spark alive.'' '
However, there were fires and great conflagrations kindled

* Lubbock, Preh, Times^ New York, 1872, p. 558.

86 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Avithout the aid of man by lightning stroke, by the smoulder-
ing furnaces within the earth, by chemical action, and by
friction of falling rocks and the chafing of limbs and stems
in the dense forests. Man in his pristine state was witness
of these, and, following the current of activity in other
matters, had doubtless learned to dread and rudely to
worship this element before he subdued it to his use. To
light his torch or his domestic fire at the hearth of benefi-
cent nature was his first step in its subjugation, his first
lesson in its manipulation.'

The T'lingit family of Indians in South-eastern Alaska
say that the raven gave them fire. Flying through the
inky darkness once upon a time he came upon a great
medicine man, who had the sun and moon and stars and
the divine spark in a box, which he hid away in his sacred
chest. To secure this spark it was necessary for the raven
to incarnate himself into the womb of the old man's
daughter, and to be born of her. The baby waxed strong,
much to the delight of the grandparents, and when he
demanded the contents of the chest to play with that was
granted. No sooner did the boy open the little box than in
a twinkling the heavenly bodies sprung into the sky. The
raven assumed his wonted form, seized the glowing coal in
his beak, and sped away to the T'lingit home. The preser-
vation of the fire in the box, and bearing it from tribe to
tribe, has no allusion to fire-making, but it does preserve the
reminiscence of the fact that the race had fire long, long
before the days of the fire stick, that coals were carried
from house to house, and that tribes lost fire and had to get
a new coal in the best way they could.

The traditions of the Polynesian race clearly point to

* George Goodfellow, of the United States Geological Survey, says that
many fires were started by falling boulders in the great earthquake in
Arizona, May, 1887, Pop. Sc. Monthly^ June, 1888. See also " L'Art du
feu, est'il une caracteristique de Thomme ? " By M. Duncan, Bull, Soc, d*
Anthrop, de Paris, 2 S., 1870, vol. v. pp. 61-86; 90-114; 141-145,
discussion by Broca, Ploix, Letourneau, &c.

INVENTION AND USES OK KIRK. 87

three events in the history of fire. First^ was a time when
the islanders ate everything raw ; in the second place came
ownership of fire through the earj:hquake god ; and, finally,
the creation of fire from rubbing two pieces of dry wood
together, for, said the earthquake god Mafuie, you will find
the fire in every wood you cut.^

On the authority of O. F. Cook, who lived among them,
the Golas, of West Africa, put out all the fires in a village
when lightning ignites any substance, and immediately
kindle new fires therefrom.

Mr. A. G. Theobald, who lived many years in the jinigles
of Southern India, assured Mr. W. T. Hornaday that fires
often occurred in the Animallai forests from the rubbing of
the bamboo stems in a high wind.^

Likewise spontaneous combustion must always have been
an active agent in the kindling of natural fires. It is not
improbable that in the innumerable experiments going on
always, the savage unwittingly brought together the sub-
stances that ignited. 3

The reader will find references to the methods of fire-
making in classical authorities given by M. H. Morgan, with
mentions of the works of Weiske (1842), Lasaulx (1843),
Holle (1879), Milchofer (1886), Kuhn (1886), Hough (1890).
This charming subject has not escaped the serious attention
of all distinguished writers upon culture-history. When, to
the aflSrmation that man is the only tool-using animal, it is
suggested that many animals perform work by means of
natural objects, as implements, the rejoinder is safe that
man is the only fire-making animal.

The work of Dr. Walter Hough in the Department of

* Turner, Samoa, London, 1884, p. 209. Tregear, Trans, JV. Z, Inst,,
vol. XX. The Origin of Fire, pp. 369-399. An excellent resume.

^ Private letter.

3 Coal veins in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, I am told by Dr. Walter
Hough, are often ignited by spontaneous combustion of the pyrites de-
composed by percolating water. Drifts in a coal vein frequently enter on
a burned-out area, nothing but ashes remaining.

88 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Ethnology of the. National Museum is especially devoted
to the methods of savagery in the creation of fire. The
following classification is based on the presumed order of
invention : — '

I. FlRE-MAKING BY RECIPROCATING MoTION.

1. Simple^ two-stick apparatus — Indians of two Americas,
Japanese, Veddahs, Australians, Somalis, Kaflftrs, &c.

2. Four 'part apparatus — Eskimo, some Indian tribes,
Hindoos, Dyaks.

3. Weighted drill ^ with spindle whorl — Iroquois, Chukchis.

II. FlRE-MAKING BY SaWING.

Malays, Burmese.

III. FiRE-MAKING BY PLOUGHING.

Polynesians, Australians, Papuans, Americans, Africans.

IV. FiRE-MAKING BY PERCUSSION.

1. With pyrites or stone containing iron^ and flint —
Eskimo and Northern Indians, Fuegians, Prehistoric Europe.

2. With flint and steel — General.
V. By Compression of Air.
Dyaks and Burmese.

The creation of fire by the friction of sticks is a process
in the evolution of which may be observed some of the
nicest co-operations between Nature and human effort.
There are just three ways in which one stick of wood
may be rubbed upon another — by moving with the grain,
commonly called ploughing; by moving across the grain,
called sawing ; and by twirling. The first-named two
methods seem to have had arrested development, that is,
they reached their perfection in rudimentary form, and after
that were improved no more. Besides, they have been kept
within very narrow geographic limits. The method by
ploughing is found among the Indo-Pacific races, including

^ Walter Hough, Proc. U. S,Nat,Mns., 1888, pp. 181-184 ; Kep, U* S,
Nat Mils. y 1887-88, pp. 531-587 ; Z^., 1890, pp. 395-409; Am. Anthro-
folo^isff 1890, vol. iii. pp. 359-371 ; fV/.,vol. vi. pp. 207-210.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. 89

the Australian, the Polynesian, and the Papuan, and spo»
radically in America. As these three races have done much
borrowing from one another, it Avould be far from easy to
say which of the three would be entitled to the patent on
the fire-plough. There is no special adaptedness in any
tree or wood peculiar to one of the regions mentioned above,
so that we might declare that region to be the fire-plough*s
native home. The case resolves itself into one of racial
knack and genius. The Polynesians have carried the appa-
ratus through many degrees of latitude, employ no other
method, and in many places are still using it. Let us pro-
visionally give the invention to them.

From first to last the fire-plough- consists of two parts,
namely, a stout stick of thoroughly dried hibiscus, three feet
or more long and two inches in diameter. This forms the
hearth or stationary part. A smaller stick of the same kind
of wood, about a foot long, cut at the lower extremity in
shape of a wedge, with its edge forming a very obtuse angle,
constitutes the working part or plough. The fire-making
is accomplished by violently rubbing the end of the plough
backward and forward on the stationary piece, cutting a
groove running with the grain of the wood for a distance
of four or more inches. Instead of rubbing off woodmeal,
the plough disengages extremely minute ribbons or shavings,
which the friction succeeds in heating above the point of
ignition. The groove is not used a second time, and the
plough receives a fresh trimming after each effort.

The natives of New Britain, in whom the Papuan element
greatly predominates, rub a sharpened piece of hard stick
against the inside of a dried piece of split bamboo. This
has a natural dust that soon kindles. They use soft wood
when no bamboo can be procured, but it takes longer to
ignite. The flame is fed with grass. ^

In Samoa the blunt-pointed stick is taken between the
clasped hands and shoved along the groove at an angle
of forty to forty-five degrees, slowly at first, with a range

* W. Powell, IVandcrin^Sy 6^r., p. 206.

90 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

of six inches, till the wood begins to be ground off and
collects in a heap at the end of the groove. The speed is
then accelerated until the brown dust ignites.' The Austra-
lian process and apparatus are evidently under foreign
influence, existing only in circumscribed areas. They rub a
knife of wood along a groove made in another stick previously
filled with tinder.2

The Hawaiians obtained fire by the plough. A small
stick, the aulimd^ is held in the hands and rubbed in a
groove in a larger stick aunaki. The aiilimd is of some
hard wood, while the aunaki is of hau or some soft wood.
In five seconds the rubbed wood is charred, and in about a
minute the dust which collects at the bottom of the groove
ignites, and the flame is caught in a bit of tinder, or a fuse
composed of twisted kapa or cotton cloth. 3

Fire-making by tranverse friction is a Malay device. It is
true that Malays use all other methods, and the saw may be
found elsewhere, as in both India and Further India ; but
to the Malay the fire-saw belongs. Again, it is safe to assert
that the saw belongs to a bamboo area. It is true there are
bamboos where there are no fire-saws, but fire-saws do not
work well where there are no bamboos. *' For this method
two pieces of bamboo are used, a sharp-edged piece like a
knife is rubbed across a convex section in which a notch is cut,
nearly severing the bamboo. After sawing across for awhile
the bamboo is pierced, and the heated particles fall below
and ignite." 4

Eliminating the ploughing and the sawing method, we are
brought to the method by twirling. Now, this may not
have antedated the other processes in time, but it has had a
more interesting history.

* W. Hough, ••Fire-making Apparatus," U^ S. Nat. Mus. Rep., i888,
p. 520.

' R. Brough Smith, Aborig. of Victoria. Quoted by Hough, tit stipra^
p. 571.

3 Brigham, Cat, Bishop Mus.^ Honolulu, 1892, vol. ii. p. 31.

•* Wallace, Malay Archipelago^ p. 332. Quoted in Hough.

INVENTION AND USKS OF FIKK.

91

The simplest possible device for this operation is a rod of
dry wood, and a partly decayed and very dry lower piece.
The rod is the vertical, moving element, the soft piece is the
horizontal, stationary element ; the former is twirled in some
fashion, the latter remains on the ground and is held firm
by means of the foot or the knee. Mr. Hough enumerates
the tribes that use this method.'

The vertical spindle and the horizontal hearth or socketed
piece, with its side notches for the escape of the wood meal
in which the fire first appears,
being the starting-point, the
next thing Avas to make some
additions to the manual part
in order to shorten time, to
decrease effort, and to render
more certain the result. The
bottom piece seems to have
been improved by the Eskimo
by making it broader and
cutting a step or wide rabbet
along one border. The wood
meal and fire could then fall
on this extended part. In
snowy countries the hori-
zontal step with the hearth ^'^^' i3.-The simplest form of l-k^^

drill. {After Hough.)

attachment was a decided mi-

provement. Another trick of the ingenious Eskimo was
to make his sockets along the middle of a tolerably broad
piece and then to cut his notches for draught and the escape
of the woodmeal along the median line of the stick instead
of outward. Living on the ice where there was little wood
to be had, this also was just the thing to do.

The spindle or vertical piece could be improved in several
ways. The writer has often seen Mr. Hough making fire
with the common fire-stick, and learned that it is necessary
to keep the border of the lower edge of the vertical whittled

' Fire-making Devices, &c., Rep. U. S. Nat, Mus.^ 1 888, pp. 531-587.

9^ I^HE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

away to prevent binding. This border simply polishes a ring
about the fire-socket. To improve the spindle further, some
sort of string or strap could be wrapped about it once or twice
and pulled backward and forward as rapidly as possible. If a
bowstring be used, similar to that of the jeweller, and a
socketed rest be held on the top of the vertical shaft after it
has beeji whittled to a point, then one man can still operate
the combination and get a speedy result. If the reader will
look at a collection of Eskimo men's tools in any museum
he will see often a cavity about one quarter of an inch in dia-
meter and one-tenth inch deep somewhere along the middle
of the handle. This is to convert the knife grip, bow
stretcher, or other tool, into a top rest for the drill, either
the fire-drill or the perforator. A still further complication
of this same pattern requires the co-operation of two persons.
Instead of the bow to operate the string, one holds the rest
at the top, and the hearth or horizontal, while the other
pulls the string backward and forward with his two hands.
In other words, one of them furnishes the bearings of the
drill, while the other furnishes the power.'

Among the Indians of the South-west the pump-drill is
very common for boring, and, at least among the Iroquois,
this form of fire-drill is reported. The parts of this apparatus
are the vertical shaft, the fly-wheel or spindle- whorl, the
hand-piece by the up-and-down motion of which the drill is
worked, and the string. The hand-piece, or grip, is a stick
held in the hand and attached at its extremities to the cord
or string, which also passes over a notch in the top of the
spindle. In the best forms this hand-piece is perforated, and
the shaft passes through it loosely. In the ruder forms the
hand-piece simply rests against the spindle. The apparatus
is put in motion by twisting the string once or twice about
the shaft and kept in operation by moving the hand up and
down. The sacred Hindu fire-drill is on the plan of the
two-handed cord drill, and is, in fact, the climax of this sort

' Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep, Bur. EthnoL^ Washington, 1892, pp. 289-
291, fig. 282.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE.

ir. S. Nat. Mu^n.m. Aftir Hmis':)

94 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

of fire-making. And this leads us backward to classic times,
when this was one of the methods of exciting new fire, the
other being the striking together, of two pieces of pyrites, or
of pyrites and flint, the striking of flint and steel, and the
use of a lens or concave mirror. The flint and steel and the
mirror are both too recent for our investigation. It is
an interesting thought in this connection that in many of
the celebrated experiments to demonstrate the correlation of
physical forces, the apparatus employed to generate the heat
was a spindle Avorking in a horizontal socket.

In addition to the descriptions given by Dr. Hough, Mr.
im Thurn enters very minutely into the process among the
Indians of Guiana. Two long slender sticks of the woods
mentioned, when thoroughly dried, are used in the opera-
tion. A small pit is dug on the side of one of these sticks
close to one end and a groove is cut from this pit half-way
round the stick. One end of the second stick having been cut
off* square a few inches at the same end are peeled. A knife
or flat piece of wood or stone is now placed on the ground.
Across this the first stick is laid so that the pit is uppermost
and immediately over the blade of the knife. The Indian
then grasps this stick with the toes of one foot and holds it
in position. The second stick is held at right angles to the
first, the peeled end being in the pit, the other end between
the palms of the operator's hands. The left being held
motionless, the right palm is rubbed steadily and somewhat
rapidly backwards and forwards against the left. The
friction wears away the sides of the pit and enlarges it.
The groove becomes an open channel through which the
dust-like fragments worn away from the inside of the pit fall
on to the knife or board below, Avhere they form a small
heap. After a quarter of a minute, smoke arises ; and at the
end of half a minute the heat within the pit, acting through
the open channel, ignites the little heap of dust. The fire,
once ignited, smoulders for about half a minute, during
which time it is easily blown into a flame.^

' Im Thurn, Indians of British Guiana ^ London, 1883, P* 257 ; ex-
cellent figure, 17.

INVHNTION AND USFS OF FIRP.

Two straight pieces of boughs thirty centimetres long,
and of the thickness of a lead-pencil, serve most negro tribes
for the generation of the spark by means of friction. The
Bongo generally carry the sticks in the quiver. Into the
end of one stick a score is cot, in which the other piece is
vertically inserted. By means of friction the upper piece is
made to twirl around between the palms of the hands, while
the lower piece is held tight with the foot. A hard support
(a smooth spear-head an-
swers the purpose best)
must be always provided.
A small heap of glimmer-
ing wood-dust is the result
after the brief manipula
tion ; tinder and stra i
effect the rest

If flint and steel are a
comparatively modern m
vention owing to the late
appearance of the latttr
this method of creatmg
fire had an a cestor that
may be older than any fire
sticks. This progen tor
was flint and pyntes, or
two pieces of pyrites, the
latter mineral derivinj
name from its striking
fire. A very complete strike-a-hght sent from Cape
Bathurst consists of flint, pyrites, and tinder done up in
dainty little bags, with leather pad to guard the fingers from
injury. The Eskimo, from Smith Sound to Behring Strail,
used this method. Evans points also to Fuegia and the
European archaeological sites for the antiquity of this
method."

' Schwcinfurlh, Aries Afriranac, London, 1875 ; S. Low, p]. iv. tig. 16.

' See the pyrites and steel in Hough, Rep. U. S. Nat. Mmetim, 1888.

15. — Striking lire with
of pyrileii. Central Eskioi
ffmg/i.)

96 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

** Skipertogan is a small bag that contains a flint and steel,
also a pipe and tobacco, as well as touchwood, &c., for
making a fire. Some of these bags may be called truly
elegant ; being richly ornamented with beads, porcupine-
quills, moose-hair, &c., a work always performed by the
women ; and they are, with much propriety, greatly
esteemed by most Europeans for the neatness of their work-
manship." ^

Hearne relates an interesting episode of a Dog Rib
Indian woman who had passed seven months without seeing
a human face and had supported herself meanwhile. " Her
method of making a fire was equally singular and curious,
having no other material for that purpose than two hard
sulphurous stones. These by hard friction and long knock-
ing produced a few sparks, which at length she communi-
cated to some touchwood. She did not suffer her fire to
go out all winter. Hence we may conclude that she had
no idea of producing fire by friction in the manner practised
by the Eskimo.^' ^

To light the fire, the Campas of Peru use the flint and
steel and a sort of tinder that they make themselves from a
spongy wood and a bit of impure copal, which in the form
of a grayish mass and small density, is found at the foot
of the resinous trees and is very inflammable.3

In every tribe of savages that have fire, those who are
charged with its management have learned to promote the
flame by supplying fresh air. At the critical moment when
the smoke bursts from the wood-meal at the bottom of the
fire drill, the fire-maker knows that he does not dare to
blow upon the spark with his breath, for fear of scattering
the dust. He simply waves his hand back and forth in front

pp. 571-577 r with excellent figures. Also Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep,
Bur. Ethnol., p. 291.

* Hearne, Journey ^ &^c.t London, 1795 > Strahan, p. 48. See also
Harris, Voyages^ vol. i. p. 816, fol. ; New England Canaan, p. 23.

- Hearne, yi7«;7/^j, <Sr*r., London, 1795 > Strahan, p. 261.

3 Ollivier Ordinaire, Rev. cP Ethnog.^ 1887, vol. vi. p. 271.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. 97

of the tiny hearth with sufficient rapidity to clear the smoke
away as it rises. When he appHes his spunk or torch of
shredded bark or kindling material to the Promethean
spark he keeps up the motion of his hand until the fire
has well set in the kindling. Then only can he trust
his breath or dare to whirl his material around his head.
Of the three processes involved in the act the hand is the
ancestor of all fans and blowers ; the mouth easily sug-
gested the bellows, great and small ; and the whirling dead-
wood or torch was the first attempt to compel the wind to
blow our fires. In this example, however, Mahomet goes
to the mountain.

The people who weave or make basketry have no trouble
to manufacture fans. Indeed, the hunting tribes of North
America used the large birds' wings, not to keep the hearth
tidy as our grandmothers did, but to encourage the fire.
In tropical countries palm-leaf fans are used quite as much
in coaxing the flame as in cooling the face. Indeed, im
Thurn tells us that the women who cook the cassava in
Guiana smooth the upper surface of the cakes on the griddle
with the same fan that urges the fire along. ^

From the hand to the fan and from the fan to the blower
is only a march of two steps, to say the least. The fire
maker, the fire nurse, and the locomotive engineer or
mining ventilator, are grandfather, father, and son.

The labial tube, supplemented by the nasal openings,
enabled the savage fireman, or firewoman rather, to excite
the live coal into a flame. Further along it occurred to the
pyrotechnician to move the eyes a little from the blinding
smudge by means of a tube of cane or something like it,
and the Japanese cooks at least keep up the practice. This
method also allows the air to be more effectually driven to
the very spot where it is wanted. This tube or mouth-
piece will also be the nozzle of the coming bellows. It is
difficult to imagine just how the inventor of long ago first
attached an artificial buccal cavity to this tube and thus

' Indians of British Guiatta, London, 18S3, p. 262.

7

98 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

perfected his apparatus. Doubtless one bag sufficed at first
and he did not get quite as far as the continuous current all
at once. The African blacksmith represents a later patent.
His boy sits on the ground between two goat skins, the
necks of which are securely attached to the ends of reeds.
The other ends are fixed like the mouths of mail sacks or
travelling bags, and the boy has his thumb and fingers
attached to the flat pieces of wood along the borders. The
tubes at the lower ends of the skins connect with a main
reed or pipe under the fire. When all is ready the boy
opens one hand wide and raises it as high as the skin will
permit, then closes the hand tight and presses down, holding
the other hand closed and down meanwhile. When the
first hand is nearly down, the second is deftly caught up to
repeat the process. With a little song and much style the
boy manages to get considerable fun out of the exercise.
The valve in the bellows is too far along for our study, and
as for compound blowpipes and other appliances for forcing
air in large or small quantities through a tube, they are
only modern variations of quite ancient devices.

In the matter of draught, the tall chimney is absent from
all ancient cities. The savage built his fire in the middle of his
hut just as our English ancestors made theirs in their halls,
only, if you will look carefully at the picture of a wigwam,
you will see that two poles are longer than the rest and
each one of them is attached to a fly of hide, which enables
the inmates to place a barrier against the wind, and create
such a draught as to suck the smoke out of the tent. The
Roman baths, perhaps, and the Oriental kangs teach us how
a closed tube first conducted the smoke away. But savages
had their appliances as well.

Every step in the process of inventing the chimney may
be seen in the Pueblo region of the United States. Imagine
a room built up of stone spalls and adobe, with ceiling of
stout poles and brush and mud. A low rectangular opening
is the door to this kennel, and in one corner of the roof a
hole allows the smoke from the fire on the floor beneath to

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. 99

ascend. This is the first lesson. Now these people are
great potters, and a long time ago some one discovered that
a water jar whose bottom had been worn out or broken
through would do excellent work in urging the smoke out
of the hole in the roof. Nay more, the good women also
found out that two, three, four, are better than one, and
piled them up and stopped the chinks with mud and
smoothed up the inside. There were thus tile chimney-
pots in America before there were any in London.

Quite as ingenious has been the evolution of the smoke-
stack and the chimney-jamb inside the rooms, crawling
down the wail over the fire. It only needs the brass
andirons to complete the metamorphosis.'

Though William the Conqueror introduced the curfew
bell into England, the practice of preserving fire by covering
it up with ashes is much older than his time. Indeed, Dame
Nature, long before there were any housewives, piled ashes
over lava streams and kept the fire for indefinite periods.
Dr. M. H. Morgan * has collected references from Homer,
Ovid, Virgil, and other classic authors mentioning the
practice of covering fire, and also the rights of hospitality in
this regard. But they were moderns compared with the
antiquity of the practice, as can be shown.3

The diligent search through the round of preservative
substances for the best in this department of labour is in a
line with the whole body of aboriginal activities. About a
hundred years ago Hearne made some acute observations on
this matter in North-western Canada. " Westward to procure
birch-rind for making two canoes and some of the fungus
that grows on the outside of the birch-tree, which is used by
all the Indians in those parts for tinder. There are two

^ Victor Mindeleff, Tenth An. Rep, Bur, EthnoLi pp. 162-67, %s.
51-74, relating to chimneys. The whole work must be studied for the
history of Pueblo architecture.

^ Harvard Studies in Class. Philol.y Boston, 1890, Ginn, vol. i. p. 16.

3 See also Planck, Die Feuerzeuge der Griechen und Homer ^ &c. , Stutt-
gart, 1884.

100 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

sorts of these funguses which grow on the birch-trees ; one
is hard, the useful part of which much resembles rhubarb ;
the other is soft and smooth like velvet on the outside, and
when laid on hot ashes for some time and well beaten
between two stones is somewhat like spunk. The former
is called by the northern Indians joli-thee^ and is known all
over the country bordering Hudson Bay by the name of
Pesogan^ it being so called by the southern Indians. The
latter is used only by the northern tribes, and is called by
them Clalte-ad-dee. The Indians, both northern and
southern, have found by experience that by boiling the
pesogan in water the texture is so improved, that when
thoroughly dried, some part of it will be nearly as soft as
sponge. Some of these funguses are as large as a man's
head ; the outside, which is very hard and black and
much indented with deep cracks, being of no use, is
always chopped off with a hatchet. Besides the two
sorts of touchwood already mentioned, there is another
kind of it in those parts that I think is infinitely superior
to either. This is found in old decayed poplars, and
lies in flakes of various sizes and thicknesses, some is
not thicker than chamois leather. It is rather surprising
that the Indians, whose mode of life I have just been
describing, have never acquired the method of making fire
by friction, like the Esquimaux." '

** With the decayed or thoroughly dry trees the Indians
always k^pt up their annual holy fire ; and they reckon it
unlawful and productive of many temporal evils to extin-
guish even the culinary fire with water. In the time of a
storm, when I have done it, the kindly women were in pain
for me, through fear of the ill consequence attending so
criminal an act. I never saw them to damp the fire, only
when they hung up a brand in the appointed place as a
threatening symbol of torture with death or when their
kinsman dies. In the last case, a father or brother of the
deceased takes a fire-brand, and, brandishing it two or

. * HearnQy /ourney, <Sr*i*., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 278*

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. lOI

three times round his head, with his right hand dips it
into the water and lets it sink down." ' The Eskimos
keep a blubber lamp burning the year round.

The Andamanese, and perhaps some other very uncul-
tured peoples, know not the art of kindling fire at all.
They do not seem to have any traditions on the subject like
the Promethean myth, but hold that their people have had
fire from the Creation. Whether they procured their first
supply from volcanoes, still active on one of their islands, or
from forest fires, the Andamanese can teach us a lesson in its
preservation. From E. H. Man we learn that when they
all leave an encampment with the intention of returning in
a few days, besides taking with them one or more smoulder-
ing logs, >vrapped in leaves, if the weather be wet, they place
a large burning log or faggot in some sheltered spot, where
owing to the character of the wood invariably selected on
these occasions, it smoulders for several days, and can be
easily rekindled when required. Decayed pieces of the Croton
argyraius^ and two species of Diospyros (bastard ebony or
marble- wood), and a fourth, called by them chor^ are chiefly
used as fuel. All labour of splitting and chopping is saved,
and it is only necessary to beat a log of this description on
a stone or other hard substance a few times before it breaks.
In each hut that is occupied there is invariably a fire, the
object of which is to keep the owner warm, to drive away
insects, and to cook food ; while the smoke is useful in pre-
serving the stores of provisions, which are placed above it.
Fires are generally kindled by fanning the embers with a
frond of the Asplenium nidus^ and they are extinguished by
pressing the burning logs against some such object as a tree,
or stone. If more than a few hours^ absence from home is
anticipated, besides a supply of provisions, a smouldering
log is entrusted to some one member of the party, whose
duty it is to kindle it into a blaze whenever a fire is required.^

Among the Taveta, East Africa, the fires are not allowed

* Adair, American Indians^ p. 405.

' Man, Andaman Islanders, London, 1883, Triibner, pp. 82, 137.

I02 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

to go out in the village. When a family fire goes out, it is
rekindled by getting a blazing faggot from a neighbour. In
the history of the tribe they had always preserved the fire.
They use fire-sticks and flint, and procure tinder from the
Mahwale tribe.'

In the course of time these spunk knots and smouldering
logs became joss-sticks in China, and all sorts of fuses and
slow matches in western nations.

For the handling of fire-brands the naked hand sufficed,
as it does with most of our backwoodsmen. But among
eastern savages tongs are employed in lifting the hot stones
used in cooking. These are generally a long strip of bamboo
bent in the middle so as to bring the ends together as in a
pair of tweezers. The art of stone-boiling was well known
among the North American savages, and always they sup-
plied themselves with tongs, either by bending a pliable
stick or splitting a larger one half way its length. These
rude appliances, and a stick for stirring the fire, supple-
mented with a skewer for moving the food, include the
outfit of the ancient cook.

Just how it first occurred to the primitive folk that
cooked meat would last longer and digest more quickly than
raw meat is unknown. The ever-ready guesser will say that
a lucky accident was the teacher. But lucky accidents give
no lessons to those who are not already alert. The only
truth that can be arrived at is in the study of the cookery
of modern savages.

The most abject peoples on the earth cook their food.
The only exceptions at all worthy of mention are the Eskimo,
** who," says Collinson, *' seldom cook their food, the frost
acting as a substitute for fire." ^ Any one who has eaten
freshly-killed beef and a slice of beef after hanging a month
in a freezing atmosphere, will take sides with the Eskimo.

* French-Sheldon, y. Anthrop. Inst.^ 1892, vol. xxi. p. 370.

- Collinson, "H.M.S. Enterprise, &c.," /. Roy, Soc.^ London, 1855,
vol. XXV. p. 201. According to Murdoch, the Eskimo prefer cooked
food, and never eat raw meat unless compelled.

INVENTIONS AND USES OF FIRE. IO3

Surely, there can be no bacteria in that climate. Provisions
keep for millenniums, for that matter, and raw meat there
is tenderer than cooked meat here.

The rudest savages that have come to a knowledge of fire,
before they apply this element to vessels of any kind, depend
upon roasting or baking alone. If we are to credit the
assertion of a cursory visitor, " the Australians never take
trouble to cook their food, but merely tear off the exterior
skin of the animal, and, after holding the body over the fire
for a few minutes, eagerly devour it in its uncleaned state,
and frequently eat so voraciously as to be in a condition of
inactivity and torpor for several hours afterwards." ^ The
same is true everywhere. The order seems to be, roasting
or parching whole, roasting after preparation or in ovens,
boiling by means of stones, boiling in pots, the use of stoves
of some kind.

The Polynesians were aboriginally most delightful cooks and
lived in blissful ignorance of the frying-pan. A pit small or
large was dug, and heated stones put in the bottom. Upon
'these was carefully spread a layer of leaves and a layer of
bread-fruit, properly dressed, and more leaves and more hot
stones, and then earth and leaves. In half an hour the
operation was finished and the food cooked to a turn.
There are many now living in the States who remember
the days of " roasting ears," when green maize was similarly
baked in the ear and husk, a custom doubtless borrowed
from the aboriginal cooks. The Polynesians frequently
prepared a communal oven. A pit twenty or thirty feet
in circumference was dug out, the bottom filled with stones,
logs of firewood piled on them, and stones on the top of the
wood, as in an open-air lime-kiln. The wood was then burned
and the hot stones on top raked to the sides of the pit.
Hundreds of ripe breadfruit were piled in the centre of the
pit, leaves spread over them, hot stones piled on top like an
arched oven, and a foot or more of earth piled on that. In
a day or two a hole might be made in the side and the

^ P. H. Eagle, Ride Across the Frofttier of Victoria ; also Brough Smith.

I04 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

owners draw out the food until it was all consumed. The
fruit would remain good for several weeks after the oven
was opened.^

The Polynesians had no pottery or potstone ware, but
they had a custom of putting " a quantity of arrowroot
powder with the expressed milk from the kernel of the
cocoanut into a large wooden tray or dish, and having
mixed them well together, they threw in a number of red-
hot stones, which being moved about by their white sticks,
heated the whole mass nearly to boiling, and occasioned it
to assume a thick, broken -jellied appearance." *

The Andamanese, having pottery, may cook in a variety
of ways. Food, in its skin or shell, may be roasted whole
in, or on, or over an open fire, that is baked like an ash cake,
seared or spitted and roasted. It may be carefully wrapped
in leaves and cooked among burning logs or in the midst
of hot stones. Finally, there is no end to the ways in
which the earthen pot and the food may become acquainted.
The result of this variety is that these savages never eat
half-cooked food. They have invented a method of pre-
serving food through cooking so ingenious that it is worth
describing here. Having procured and cleaned a length of
bamboo, they heat it over a fire that the juices contained in
it may be gradually absorbed. When this is satisfactorily
accomplished, half-cooked pieces of pork, turtle, or any
other food, are packed tightly into it, and the vessel is again
by degrees put over the fire, in order to heat it slowly, lest
the rapid expansion of the meat should cause a crack.
When steam issues forth, the bamboo is taken off the fire,
and after the opening has been closed by leaves, is set aside
with its contents until a meal is required, when it is replaced
on a fire, for it is a peculiarity of these savages to eat this
food in an almost boiling state. As soon as the meat has
been once more thoroughly baked, the bamboo is split with
an adze, or other implement, and all take a share in the

^ Ellis, Pofyfies, Res., London, 1859, vol. i. p. 40.
^ Ibid., Bohn, vol. i. p. 49.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. IO5

feast. Meat thus prepared will keep good for several
days.'

The Campas of Peru roast, smoke, and boil. They use
salt, of which the Lorenzos are ignorant. When they cannot
consume by night all the game that they have taken during
the day they smoke it by hanging it above the fire.'

Smoke as a preservative of food is a very early inven-
tion. No sight is more common in a savage hut than that
of a frame suspended over the fire in the centre of the cabin
for holding fish or meat to be dried out and smoked for
future use. It will be readily seen that this was a potent
factor in the increase of longevity, not only securing pro-
visions for time of famine, but eliminating a portion of the
noxious creatures that prey on subsistence and shorten life.
On every American farm and plantation might be seen a
few years ago a building called the ** smoke house." Here
were hung hams and shoulders and sides of hog's flesh to
be stored and occasionally smoked to keep off the flies.

The Indians of the Plains and other parts of temperate
America had learned also that fat is a preserver of fresh
meat. Just as the country housewife nowadays keeps her
sausages fresh indefinitely through the winter by boiling
them to kill the germs, packing them in stone jars and
pouring melted fat over them, the Indian dried his buffalo
meat, ground it to meal by pounding, packed it away in
skins and poured over the mass melted buffalo tallow or
bears' grease. The germ theory of decay was totally un-
known, but the power of heat and hot fat to preserve flesh
were quite well understood.

Before Benjamin Franklin invented stoves, the whole
world, from the beginning of time, warmed itself at the open
fire. The Eskimo used his lamp for drying clothes and
heating his igloo quite as much as he did for illumination.
The West Coast people of America, who dwelt in communal
houses, arranged their clans about a central fire, whose

* Man, Andaman Islanders^ London, 1883, Trlibner, sub voce, Food.
^ Ollivier Ordinarie, I^ev, d'Ethnog., 1887, vol. vi. p. 271.

I06 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

smoke enfolded them in a common misery before it escaped
through the openings of the roof. The Algonkian tribes,
the Iroquois, the various stocks along the slopes of the
Rocky Mountains, not only ate the food from a common pot
in gentile groups, but warmed their bodies in consanguine
groups. The proverbial fireside was one of social im-
portance. Around it the clans ate, and warmed themselves,
and slept, and wrought and told their legends. The fireside,
as a place of common gathering and genial friendship, lies
at the bottom of more refined ideas to be especially
mentioned.

Indeed, two absolutely different sets of inventions spring
forth from this humble differentiation of ideas. The cook-
ing-stove and the parlour-stove, the range and the heating
apparatus, both started out from piles of smouldering
embers in ancient smoky wigwams, and both grew up to
their modern stature under the influence of great pre-
dominating needs. Hunger and cold created two kinds of
stoves, the former dwelling in the kitchen, the other in the
drawing-room, the office, the shop, the assembly-room, as of
old.

The latter has limitations of climate, the former has no
limitations, for ** hunger has no ears." The former has
exi/^ed always. There have ever been kitchens of some
kind. The latter, prior to the nineteenth century, got little
further than the charcoal brazier, which is really a refined
but dangerous substitute for the wigwam fires of the Sioux
Indians or the wooden lamps in the Korak^s polog. One
can scarcely realise the savage discomforts for artificial
warmth amidst which even kings and nobility dwelt in not
remote times. The Orientals resorted to their ovens when
they could no longer endure the cold ; but Europe was not
acquainted with the kang.

The next use of fire among savages to which attention is
called is for the purpose of illumination. In the most
primitive society men do not like to be left wholly in the
dark, so the natives of Middle America imprison the fireflies

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. IO7

and compel them to illuminate their rude habitations. The
Eskimo during the long and dreary winter light up their
subterranean homes with lamps of soapstone, having wicks
made of moss resting in a mass of fat.

The Indians of British Columbia and Oregon coast used
the candle-fish for their primitive torch. The creature
contains so much fat that it will burn with a wick of cedar
bark drawn though it.

The aborigines of Eastern United States, as well as the
first settlers, made use of the fat pine-knot. It is common
to read of the students of those days conning their lessons
by this smoky, primeval light. The burning of natural
objects, in short, is the most primitive and simple fashion
of illumination. The searching out of the most valuable
substances in each area constituted the development of
invention along this line.

From these simple expedients to the electric light the
investigation lies along an interesting path, growing brighter
and brighter, on which shines first the torch and the signal
fire, then the open lamp, then the closed lamp, then the
rushlight and the candle, all of them fed on vegetable and
animal fats. Later, camphene lamps, olefiant gas, petroleum
products, and, last of all, the electric light, bring the night
nearer and nearer to the brilliancy of the day.

For artificial light the Hawaiians burned the kernels of
roasted kukui nuts strung on slender strips of palm or
bamboo. As the nuts burned, the remains were knocked off
as soon as the next nut was ignited. The oil was also
expressed from the nut and burned with a wick in stone
cups. Animal fat was used as well for this purpose, and for
a wick a dried rush or a fuse of kapa was suitable.'

"We procured cocoanut oil, and when it grew dark,
breaking a cocoanut in two, took one end, and winding a
little cotton-wool round the thin stalk of the leaflet of the
tree, fixed it erect in the kernel of the nut. This we filled

* Brigham, Catalogue Bishop Museum^ Honolulu, 1892, vol. ii.
P- 35-

I08 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

with oil, and thus our lamp, excepting the small piece of
cotton wick, was the product of the cocoanut tree." *

Torches, made by women, of resin wrapped in a large
\Q2Li (Crmum lorifolium)^ is used by the Andamanese when
fishing, or travelling, or dancing by night.^

The damar resin is made into long torches throughout
the Malay area and wrapped in splints of bamboo. A
deliciously-scented white resin exudes from the hyawa
tree ijria heptaphylld) in British Guiana. The rough
masses of this, which are very inflammable, are often
collected and stored by the Indians for the purpose of
lighting fires. Sometimes it is broken up into small pieces
which are put into hollow sticks to be used as torches.

As a servant, the savage man utilised fire to do the work
of mechanical tools, to assist him in conquering the beasts of
the field, in levelling the discouraging forest, and in over-
coming his enemies. Imagine the sons of men without fire,
the sport of every wind. No wonder that so many mythic
tales begin with the time when a race of fireless men dwelt
wretchedly on the planet. The first men did not study
economy, but waste ; for they had to burn their way into a
right to stand upon the earth.

The use of fire in hardening wood is alluded to again and
again by travellers. The well-known digging-stick employed
in collecting molluscs on the shore, and roots and vermin
from the earth, which antedates all pickaxes, hoes, and
spades, was thus tempered.

The Tanana Indians of Southern Alaska, belong to the
Athapascan stock. They have no better wood than willow,
frequently for bows ; but, by dint of heating and rubbing
many times over, they succeed in giving to the weapon
considerable elasticity.

The fishing arrows of the Omahas were made without
heads. The end of the shaft was cut to a point, then about
four inches of the end of each shaft was held close to the

' Ellis, Polynesian Researches^ vol. ii. p. 252.
"" Man, op. cit, p. 186.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. I09

fire, and it was turned round and round till it was hardened
by the heat.'

Other Sioux tribes use arrows without points for certain
game and fish. The shafts are merely sharpened at the
ends, which are also hardened in the fire.

The Pueblo agricultural tribes employ often the fire-
hardened stick in the raising of their crops.

The Eskimo and Coast Indians were conversant with the
use of fire in bending wood, both by heating the green
sapling and by boiling the wood to be bent. In the chapter
on woodworking, the use of fire in this regard will be more
fully explained under boat-building. The dishes of the
Eskimo and Indians, as well, are made of thin pieces of
whalebone or spruce-wood heated until they may be bent
into form. Many hundreds of dishes, especially on the
Yukon river, are thus shaped, the ends being sewed to-
gether with spruce-root or whalebone strips.

The natives of Bowditch Island sometimes burned the
trunk of a tree to make it fall, but as the fire occasionally
ran up the heart of the tree as well, they usually cut away
at the trunk with their shell hatchets day after day until it
fell. It took froni ten to thirty days to level a tree. Another
plan was to dig down and cut the roots. In hollowing out
a block of wood, they did the work by burning. ^

The New Caledonians felled trees by means of a slow
fire close to the ground, taking four days for the operation.
For hollowing a canoe they cut a hole in the surface of the
log with a stone axe, kindled a small fire, and burned down
and along, carefully dropping water all around, to confine
the blaze to a given spot.3

Fire opened the door of the primitive races to the use of
metals. It is not necessary, as stated before, to believe that
this mutual acquaintance of man and fire and metals is of
very late occurrence. It is not true, probably, that men
had to pass altogether through the rude and the polished

' Dorsey, Third An» Rep, Bur, EthiioUy p. 301.

' Turner, Samoa^ London, 1884, p. 270. 3 Ibid,^ p. 343.

no THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

stone age before they learned that some stones cracked in
the fire, some were scarcely affected by it, and others were
rendered soft and tractable thereby.

The copper art, not the copper age, in the north central
states of the Union, just now being carefully studied,
teaches that a metallic age may co-exist with one of rude
and polished stone combined. This copper is found in
outlying masses and in shallow pits. The rocks surrounding
the almost pure masses were removed by means of fire and
water. The metal is said to have been hammered cold.
But there is nothing unreasonable in the suggestion that
the open wood fire was invoked in the process of making
drills, needles, chisels, plates, ornamental discs, &c.'

It is in Africa, however, where the ingenious savage of
to-day best understands the handling of metal by means
of fire. Good ore from Nature's hand furnishes the
material cause of the art. Then follow anvils, sledges of
stone, charcoal, bellows of skins, tongs, and a host of cold
chisels, punches, swedging apparatus, constituting quite an
array of tools. It may be hinted that the Africans were
taught these arts by wiser men. But the fact remains that
peoples no higher in culture than North American Indians
are practising a rude metallurgy by many ingenious pro-
cesses now peculiar to themselves.

The negroid tribes inhabiting East Africa use weapons
and tools made of iron, which they manufacture themselves.
Among the Kaflfir tribes native smiths are numerous, but
their knowledge of metallurgic art is very primitive. Two
round boulders of greenstone serve for an anvil, on which
the red-hot iron is beaten with a rude hammer, whilst
another Kaflfir minds the charcoal fire, which is always made
in a small hole in the ground. Two goat-skins are carefully
sewn up, and meet in a hollowed-out bullock horn, one end
of which is turned toward the fire. By alternately pressing
the one goat-skin down with the hand closed, and pulling

* See Reynolds, Pop. Sc. Month., vol. xxxi. pp. 519-531 ; Am. Anthro-
pologist ^ Washington, vol. L pp. 341-352.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. Ill

the Other up with the hand open, the air is forced into the
coals, and sufficient heat is developed for the work. All
the assegais of the Kaffirs, and the arrowheads of the tribes
of the north, are made by native smiths, and most of them
by smelting the iron directly from the ore. The natives
also understand wire drawing. For this purpose they use
small plates of iron, into which they bore holes.^

Livingstone's description of the South African iron ore
illustrates well the help afforded by Nature to lower races
in their arts. The material is obtained from the specular
iron ore, and from the black oxide, the latter, being well
roasted in the laboratory of Nature, contains a large propor-
tion of the metal. It occurs in rounded lumps, and when
found in river beds, it is easily detected by the oxide on the
surface, and is dug with pointed sticks. Livingstone gives
the report of an English gunmaker on this metal.^

The smelting furnace of the Dyoor is made of clay, about
four feet high, with a conical base for charcoal, and a
goblet-shaped top for the granulated ore. There are four
perforations at the base through which pass the tewels, by
means of which a strong current of air is supplied to the
base of the furnace. In front of one of these is a pit for
the accumulation of the beads of crude metal. The shaft is
lighted below, the air is forced through, the ore is melted,
and after about forty hours particles of molten iron begin
to ooze and collect in the pit at the bottom. This crude
metal, by means of stone hammers and repeated heatings
in a forge, is cleansed and made fit for use.3

The Bongo furnace is a little more elaborate. It has
three compartments, the middle one for the reception of
ore and charcoal in alternate layers, the upper and the
lower ones for pure coal. The chambers are separated from
each other by ring-like incrustations on the inner wall.
The bellows of the Bongo are formed of two trumpet-

^ Griesbach,y. Anthrop, Inst.^ I^ondon, 1872, p. cliv.

"" 7 ravels, &*<:., in S. Africa, New York, 1858, p. 695.

3 Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae, London, 1875, pi. ii. figs. 11, 12.

112 THE ORIGINS OK INVKNTION.

shaped earthen vessels, covered on their outer end with
leather, and opening into a third one. All the negro tribes
of Africa use such a bellows, with immaterial variations.
The valve is unknown, a very imperfect substitute being
secured by piercing holes in the handle at the centre of
the hide, and using the hands to let the air in and confine
it.'

An interesting metallurgic art has sprung up in two
regions of North America, namely, in Arizona and New
Mexico, and in British Columbia and Alaska. It is not
denied that since the possession of better tools, including
files and emery paper, much better work is turned out.
And, earlier still, Russians on the north, and Mexicans on
the south, have influenced the craft. Still there is a
residuum of doubt whether the northern Indians, as well
as the Navajos of the south, may or may not have had a
superstructure of their own on which to build. At any
rate, in both regions there are now quaint silver- and
coppersmiths who practise a curious mixture of savage
and civilised handiwork in metal.

Matthews says the appliances and processes of the smith
are much the same among the Navajo as among the
Pueblo artisan. But the latter lives in a spacious house,
and may have a permanent forge just the right height.
The wandering Navajo constructs a temporary forge on
the ground. Their tools and materials are few and simple :
a forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucible, moulds, tongs, scissors,
pliers, files, awls, cold chisels, matrix and die for moulding
buttons, wooden implements used in grinding buttons,
wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and materials for
soldering (blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease,
wire, and borax), materials for polishing (sand-paper, emery-
paper, powdered sandstone, sand, ashes, and solid stone),
and materials for whitening (a native mineral substance —
almogen — salt, and water).

A forge built for Dr. Matthews by an Indian was 23

* Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae^ London, 1875, P^* v. pp. 4, 5, 6.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. II3

inches long, i6 inches broad, 5 inches in height to the
edge of the fireplace, and the latter, which was bowl-
shaped, was 8 inches in diameter, and 3 inches deep. The
forge was made of mud. Before this was completed a
wooden nozzle was laid in for the bellows, where it was
to remain, with one end about 6 inches from the fireplace,
and the other end projecting about the same distance from
the frame. Then he stuck into the nozzle a round piece of
wood, which reached from the nozzle to the fireplace, and
when the mudwork was finished the stick was withdrawn,
leaving an uninflammable tweer. The nozzle of the bellows
was tied to the protruding end of the wooden tube. The
whole task of constructing did not occupy more than an
hour. The bellows was a bag of goat-skin tied at one end
to its nozzle, and nailed at the other to a disc of wood, in
which is the valve. Handles and other accessories of the
bellows were carved from wood. The nozzle was made of four
pieces of wood tied together, and rounded on the outside
so as to form a cylinder with a quadrangular hole in the
centre about one inch square.' The bellows were worked by
a horizontal motion of the arm.

For an anvil they employ any suitable^ piece of iron, but
hard stones are still used sometimes for the same purpose.
Crucibles are made of clay baked hard. After being in the
fire two or three times they swell and become very porous.
Some smiths use for crucibles fragments of Pueblo pottery.
The moulds for casting their ingots are easily cut in sand-
stone with a home-made chisel. Each mould is cut approxi-
mately in the shape of the article which is to be wrought
out of the ingot, and is greased with suet before the metal
is poured in. Tongs are made like sugar-tongs, and often
nippers or scissors are used for tongs. Ordinary scissors
are used in cutting the metal after it is wrought into thin

' This method of securing a bore, even in a crooked pipestem, is wide-
spread. The Eskimo split a piece of wood, cut opposing gutters in the
two halves^ which are then joined again, and held firm by a lashing of
raw-hide.

8

iI4 THE ORIGINS OF IXVEXTION.

plates. Iron pliers, hammers, and files are purchased from
the whites. The latter serve not only their legitimate
functions, but are also used for punches and gravers
Metallic hemispheres for beads and buttons are made in a
concave matrix by means of a round pointed bolt serving
for a die. These matrices and dies are made by the Indians.
On one bar of iron there may be many matrices of different
sizes ; only one die fitting the smallest cavity is required to
work the metal in all. For levelling the edges of the
metallic hemispheres for buttons and beads, a small, roundish
cavity is cut in the end of a cylinder of wood, of such size
that it will hold the hemisphere tightly, but allow the
uneven edges to project. The hemisphere is placed in this,
and then rubbed on a flat piece of sandstone until the edges
are worn level with the end of the wooden cylinder. For
making charcoal they build a large fire of dry juniper, and
when it has ceased to flame they smother it well with earth.
If the fire is kindled at sunset the charcoal is ready for use
next morning. The smith makes his own blowpipe, usually
by beating a piece of thick brass wire into a flat strip, and
then bending this into a tube about a foot long, slightly
tapering, and curved at one end. They blow an intermitting
current with undistended cheeks. The flame used in solder-
ing is derived from a thick braid of cotton rags soaked in
grease. For polishing they use powdered sandstone, sand,
or ashes — all without water. For blanching, almogen
(hydrous sulphate of alumina) is dissolved in water with
salt. The silver, slightly heated, is boiled in this solution,
and soon becomes white.

The Navajo silversmiths crouch on the ground while
working. The whole process of producing their ware is
minutely worked out by Matthews.'

But the splendid victory of man over the earth was
achieved literally with the firebrand. The memory of con-
flagrations seems to haunt the dreams of bears and jackals

' Cf, Matthews, Second An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol,^ Washington, 1883, pp.
171-178, pi. xvi.-xx.

INVENTION AND USES OF KIRK. II 5

and tigers, and all ferocious beasts. The naked African has
only to kindle a little flame and lie down to sleep among
ravenous lions. The wolf, the cougar, the wild cat, were
long ago taught the hopelessness of resisting its fury. Great
hunting excursions were made successful by setting the grass
on fire. Venomous serpents and insects and bitter enemies
of man, visible and invisible, had to yield to the brand.

The Shooli negroes hunt larger mammals thus by a co-
operative method. Each man supplies a certain length
of netting, and these are fastened together, it may be, to
form a continuous barrier over a mile long. This is set up
in the high grass along a space that has been burned over.
Before each section of net a man is concealed. Several
thousands of acres to the windward are fired, compelling
the animals to run towards the nets, where they are killed
by the men in hiding.' The hunting season commences
when the grass is fit to burn. But should a person set fire
to grass belonging to another proprietor, he would be con-
demned.

In the old camping days on the American prairies con-
stant watchfulness and ingenuity were demanded in prevent-
ing the ravages of fire. The aborigines were well aware of
this, and racked their brains to prevent the danger. They
made fire in pits, cut trenches that the fire might not cross,
and even saved their lives by burning a space before the
great conflagration could reach them, and over this the
flames could not pass.^

Not only in the pursuit of wild beasts, but in the art of
war, fire held primarily a conspicuous place. The devices
used will be described in the Chapter on War. The firebrand
and its various processes in conquering and subduing the
beasts inimical to man, and in compelling the earth to yield
submissively to his dictation would form a study by itself.
Even omitting the desolations of war caused thereby, one is

' Baker, Ismatliat New York, 1875, P* 457> ^^^^ figure.
' Cf, Christy, "Why are the Prairies Treeless?" Proc. Roy, Geog. Soc,
London, 1892, pp. 78-99.

Il6 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

led to place this deadly weapon at the head of the list of
useful inventions. Agriculture may be said to have been
born of fire. There are many regions of the earth where
this wasteful method still obtains. The forests are fired ;
the young growth is removed ; the crops are planted ; the
blasted trunks are left to decay gradually. By and by the
fertility of the ground is exhausted, and the prodigal hus-
bandman makes another fiery onslaught upon the original
forest. Fields are abandoned to grow up in such crops as
seem them best. This was the primitive agriculture. In
many places the modern farmer finds that he has been
anticipated by men of whom there is no record.

The employment of fire as a mechanical means of deter-
mining definite portions of time must not be overlooked.
Dr. Walter Hough has collected a number of examples under
this head, among them the following ' : —

The Polynesians skewer a number of the nuts of the
candle-nut tree {Aleurites triloba) on a long palm-leaf midrib
and light the upper one. Each kernel consumes in about
ten minutes to a charred mass, which must be removed by
an attendant when the next one below is ignited. The
Marquesans tie bits of tapa at intervals along the torch.*

In China, the prescribed time during which the royal
procession at the coronation of the emperor must move
through the distance between the palace and the temple is
regulated by a functionary who burns a joss-stick of a fixed
length. At present in China, gong heung, or time-incense,
consisting of five sticks of pressed wood-dust, made long
or short according to the season, is burnt during the night,
which is divided into five watches.

In Western China the water is raised by immense wheels
belonging to the village, or to individuals who sell it to the
peasants. The price is calculated by the quantity that flows
from the wheel while a given length of joss- stick burns.3

' Am. Anthropologist^ vol. vi. p. 209.

' See also supra, note on the Hawaiians by Bishop.

3 See Rockhill, Th^ Land of the Llamas, p. 4?.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. II7

Chinese messengers who have a short time to sleep awake
themselves by means of a" lighted bit of joss-stick between
the toes. In Korea the palace clock is an oiled paper
lantern enclosing a rope of hemp soaked in nitre. Each
hour is divided into four parts by cords tied to the rope.
Time is announced by a lantern having transparent slides.
The Koreans also reckon time after the manner of Wouter
van Twiller — by the number of pipes smoked.

The European expressions, " marked candles," ** King
Alfred's," " auction by candle," ** courting by candle," &c.,
are well known, and tell of the prolonged survival of a very
ancient type of clock.

A series of human activities, connected for the most part
with religion, have been ever associated with fire on the
ceremonial side of life. In the simplest forms of Christian
worship, from which almost all symbolism is eliminated,
one constantly hears the word used in a figurative sense,
in allusion to ancient altars. From this poetic allusion
backward through symbolism, through sacrifices by fire, to
fire-worship is a tolerably straight road.

The exorcism of horses and other animals among American
tribes is well known. Matthews describes and illustrates
with graphic power the introduction of fire into the Navajo
medicine ceremonies. ** The building of the great stack of
juniper and cedar, twelve feet high and sixty paces in
circumference, went on simultaneously with the sand
painting.

" At the moment the music began the great central fire
was lighted, and the conflagration spread so rapidly through
the entire pile that in a few moments it was enveloped in
great flames. A storm of sparks flew upward to the height
of a hundred feet or more, and the descending ashes fell in
the corral like a light shower of snow. The heat was soon
so intense that in the remotest parts of the enclosure it was
necessary for one to screen his face when he looked towards
the fire.

'* When the fire gave out its most intense heat a warning

Il8 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

whistle was heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms,
lithe, lean, dressed only in the narrow white breech-cloth
and moccasins, and daubed with white earth until they
seemed a group of living marbles, came bounding through
the entrance, yelping like wolves, and slowly moving around
the fire. . . . When they had encircled the fire twice they
began to thrust their wands towards it. One would dash
wildly toward the fire and retreat ; another would lie as
close to the ground as a frightened lizard, and endeavour to
wriggle himself up to the fire ; others sought to catch on
their wands the sparks flying in the air. One approached
the flaming mass, suddenly threw himself on his back with
his head to the fire, and swiftly thrust his wand into the
flames.'' The end proposed in each case was to burn the
bunch of down from the end of the wand, and with a show
of dexterity to restore it.^

" Formerly," says Lacouperie, " the ancient kings [of
China] had no houses. In winter they lived in caves which
they had excavated, and in summer in nests which they
had framed. They knew not yet the transforming power
of fire, but ate the fruits of plants and trees, and the flesh
of birds and beasts, drinking the blood and swallowing the
hair and feathers (as well). They knew not yet the use of
flax and silk, but clothed themselves with feathers and skins.
*' The later sages arose and men (learned) to take advantage
of the benefits of fire. They moulded the metal and
fashioned the clay, so as to rear towers with structures on
them, and houses with windows and doors. They toasted,
grilled, boiled, and roasted. They produced must and
sauces. They dealt with the flax and silk so as to form
linen and silken fabrics.'' ^

The simplest invention with regard to the preservation
of fire grew to most important offices and ceremonies among

* Matthews, Fifth An. Rep, Bur. Ethuol.^ p. 432, pi. xii. The
reader should try to see the wonderful illustrations of this paper.

* The Silk Goddess^ London, 1891, Nutt, p. 17; compare ]. Legge,
The Li ki, p. 369.

INVENTION AND USES OF FIRE. II9

the cultured nations of antiquity. The Greek prytaneum
and the temple of Vesta at Rome were the culmination of
a series of cults, which began with the central tent fire of
primitive peoples. M. Elie Reclus, in his article " Fire '*
in the Encyclopcedia Britannica^ works out this idea, but
Professor Frazer more recently gives clearly the line of
progress in the development of the Prytaneum, the temple
of Vesta, the Vestals and Perpetual fires. " The Prytaneum,
a round building with a pointed, umbrella-shaped roof, was
originally the house of the king, chief, or headman (prytams)
of an independent village or town, and it contained a fire
that was kept constantly burning. When a colony was
sent out, the fire for the chief ^s house {prytaneutn) in the
new village was taken from that in the chief's house of the
old village." " The Italian temple of Vesta, like the Greek
prytaneum, was a round building. Tradition preserved the
memory of the time when its walls were made of wattled
osiers, and the roof was of thatch. The inmost shrine
continued down to even late times to be formed of the same
simple materials. Thus, looking back into the dim past,
we descry the chiefs of the old Graeco-Italian clans dwelling
in round huts of wattled osiers with peaked roofs of thatch.
And through the open door of the hut we see a fire burning
on the hearth." " The gathering of sticks and putting
them on the fire probably fell on those * maids-of-all-work '
in early households — the wife and daughters. Afterwards
the fire in the hut, which royalty had relinquished to
religion, was tended by maidens, who represented the
daughters of the king."

" The creation of new fires, />., the formal extinction and
rekindling of fires at fixed periods, like the custom of
maintaining perpetual fires, probably owed their origin, not
to any profound theory of the relation of the life of man
to the courses of the heavens, but to the elementary
difficulty of lighting the kitchen fire by rubbing two sticks
against each other." *

* J. G. Frazer, J, of PhiloLt London, 1885, vol. xiv. pp. 145-172.
The whole paper should be read.

I20 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Mr. Frazer is correct in the main, but it is not difficult
to make fire with two sticks. The more probable motive
in new fire was the finding of fire kindled by natural causes.
The tribes on the Western Soudan extinguish every fire
when they find a tree ignited by lightning. The Anda-
manese keep perpetual fire sacredly, because they have
never learned how to kindle it.

CHAPTER IV.

STONE-WORKING.

" In seeking to ascertain the method by which the stone implements
and weapons of antiquity were fabricated, we cannot, in all probability,
follow a better guide than that which is afforded us by the manner in
which instruments of a similar character are produced at the present day."
— ^JoHN Evans.

The modern savage and his ancient representatives revealed
in the study of archaeology were good lithologists. They
knew in each region what stone was best for their purposes
in every emergency. They found out where this material
abounded under the best conditions to be worked. They
planned methods and invented apparatus for mining and
quarrying it. They transported the material for long
distances, half shaped it in their quarries to reduce the
weight, made treaties with hostile tribes to secure the right
to visit the coveted spot, and bartered the choicest of their
own productions with fortunate possessors of the coveted
material. All of these statements are known by archaeo-
logists to be true, and abundant examples may be cited to
substantiate them.

But the savage man's knowledge of lithology did not
stop at his acquaintance with materials. The qualities of
substances were known to him, both as to working and as
to using. He could tell you how each kind of mineral
ought to be worked, and how it would do its work after
it was put into shape. An examination of his workshops
demonstrates that he understood cleavage and granular

121

STONE-WORKING. 123

Structure, and the idiosyncrasies of each stone. Many
hundreds of rejected pieces about the quarries have been
struck only one or two or three blows and then thrown
away ; as though the ancient stone- worker communed with
himself thus : "I have struck this one blow, and that is
enough to prove that this rock or cobblestone is too soft,
too friable, or without proper cleavage." After a second
stroke, it would occur to him that there were flaws or hard
lumps in the way. Perhaps all went well around one side
of the pebble ; but on turning the stone over and flaking,
he would be assured by long experience that the blade or
other object he sought to make would be much too thick.
This would result in abandoning the experiment. A
careful study of this subject, by Holmes especially, leads to
the inevitable conclusion that the prehistoric savage had
nothing more to learn about the physical properties of
minerals that were necessary for him to use in his
avocations. So true is this that the most skilful flint-
knappers of Brandon and elsewhere are not able to
reproduce some of the more beautiful forms that are
common in museums. The Smithsonian Institution has
had a number of skilled workmen spend a great deal of
time on the making of a leaf-shaped blade, but they have
never succeeded in the effort.

The very earliest men suspected to have lived upon this
earth by the French archaeologists were the people of
Thenay. But they and their ancestors must have walked
along the shores of time far enough and long enough to
study all minerals and all rocks, and to select the best one
in all the earth for chipping and flaking. These flints of
Thenay were found by the Abbe Bourgeois in what he
believed to be undisturbed Tertiary formation, and so able
an archaeologist as Gabriel de Mortillet sustains him in the
conclusion. Indeed, the distinguished archaeologist has
placed these Thenay flints at the head of the class in the
St. Germain museum. This implies, as was just said, that
man existed in the indescribably long ago Tertiary, an

124 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

that he had even then graduated in mineralogy. There
are other ways of explaining these interesting pieces. They
may not after all be of human workmanship. They may
not have been found in place in the undisturbed Tertiary.
The Abbe was not a geologist, and sharper eyes than his
have been deceived in such matters. Finally, these flints
may not be the finished products of extremely ancient art
work, but the rejected material of later flint chippers,
just as one finds spalls of marble and blocked-out rejecta
about the sites of ancient and modern stone-cutters' yards.
Within the few past years investigations have been con-
ducted in the United States, chiefly by the gentlemen
connected with the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smith-
sonian Institution, which make it clear that millions of
roughly chipped stones formerly thought to be ancient, on
account of their form, are only the refuse left by men who
were aiming to make blades. This leads to the conclusion
that in other lands it is quite possible that many surface
finds are "rejects,'* not implements. The question of
antiquity is a geological one.

The geologic surroundings of savages had a pronounced
effect upon their implements, masonry, sculpture, utensils,
and weapons, limiting the forms and sizes, and determining
to a considerable extent the kinds employed in the various
districts, independently of biologic and other conditions.

The geology of the tide-water country in the United
States is altogether unlike that of the highland, and the
rocks available to the aborigines in the two regions were
not only diff'erent in distribution, but peculiar in the shapes
they received and in other features that affect the character
of the utensils made and employed.

The workable stones, such as argillite quartz, quartzite,
rhyolite, jasper, and flint were much sought by the abori-
gines of the lowland. Fragmental material was to be
obtamed almost everywhere upon the surface, but choice
varieties were confined to limited areas and often to distant
regions ; and, where surface exposures were not sufficient

v-|

if

IV

\ A A A A A ^"

i

1

*

i
«

;

STONE-WORKING. 1 2 5

to supply the demand, quarrying was resorted to, and the
work of securing, transporting, and trading or exchanging
the stone must have become an important factor in the
lives of the people. The masses of rock were uncovered,
broken up, and tested ; the best pieces were selected and
reduced to forms approximating the implements to be made,
and in this shape they were carried to the lowland.

In the lowland all varieties of hard stones are fragmental,
and the species are intermingled in various ways. The
fragments of rock are not merely broken, angular pieces,
but rounded masses and bits known as boulders, cobbles,
and pebbles, and comprise chiefly such tough flinty, homo-
geneous stones as are available in the arts of primitive man.
Nature, in her own way, selected from the highland along
the stream courses the very choicest bits of crumbled rocks,
reduced them in hundreds of cataract mills and in the
breakers on the shores of ancient seas to rounded forms,
and deposited them in the lowlands in great heaps and
beds. Nature has not provided any other form of the
several tough varieties of stone so perfectly suited to the
purposes of the implement flaker as the boulder or pebble.

Nature selected the rocks used by the tide- water peoples
and distributed them in groups, varying with the original
location, with hardness, with toughness, with shape and
with size. The effect of these conditions of distribution
upon the stone art of the various districts was necessarily
very pronounced. One community located near deposits of
large boulders used them, and the tools shaped therefrom
are large on the average, and vice versd,^

The most important result of Holmes^s investigation is
the emphasis laid on the fact that thousands of spalls and
wrought stones lying about, which have been called paleo-
lithic implements, because they are so rude, are only the
rejecta of the quarrymen and of the blocking-out process.
By actual experiments, Mr. Holmes and others have shown

' Consult Holmes, '* Distribution of Stone Implements, &c.,'* Am, An*
ihrofolo^st^ Washington, J893, vol. vi. pp. 1-14, 2 pi.

126 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

that for one boulder that yields a good implement at least
ten are thrown away after one, two, or more blows that
reveal the weak spot.

In repeating the processes of the ancient cutlers and
armourers, Holmes found among the ** rejects," or
*^ wasters,'* three well-marked steps of progression. The
first class of rejects were discarded after one, or at most two,
blows, revealing bad material. The second class have one
face chipped over, the other still showing the unwrought
mineral ; but this half- working brings to light a hump or
fault on the chipped side. The third class are wrought on
both sides, but on the dressing down of the second side
some weakness revealed itself, and the " turtle-back " was
discarded. Unless geological evidence is forthcoming to
prove that a given piece is ancient. Holmes does not regard
the form of the artefact to be good evidence either of antiquity
or of the utility of the specimen. It is simply rubbish.

It is worthy of note in this connection that, in many of
the European paleolithic sites, the most beautiful leaf-shaped
implements in the world are found associated with so-called
paleoliths. And this is exactly what Mr. Holmes finds to be
true in his quarry sites — boulders, cracked boulders, turtle-
backs, and broken leaf-shaped pieces, fractured at the last
moment, all in one confused mass. But near by, on an
adjoining camp-site, knives, spear-heads, arrow-points, and
the rest abound. " Nearly all rude, bulky implements of
chipped stone, and all failures or rejects of manufacture, are,
as a matter of course, found upon or near the sites from
which the raw materials were derived."

Again, the percentage of failures — turtle-backs and other
refuse of manufacture — decreases rapidly with the distance
from the source of supply of the raw material, extending little
beyond it.^ In one instance Holmes was able to trace up a
rhyolite quarry from a camp site a hundred miles away by

' Holmes, " Distribution of Stone Implements," Am, Anthropologist^
Washington, 1893, vol. vi. pp. 1-14. Also H. C« Mercer, Pop. Sc,
Monthly, New York, 1893, September.

STONK- WORKING. I 2 7

simply following up the implements and wasted chips of this
material along the lines of their greatest abundance.

The earliest period of human industry is called the
" Stone Age," because, in digging about among the graves
and remains of the past, archaeologists find relics made of
stone always lower down, or in older beds, than relics made
of metal ; and it is conceivable that there might have be^ a
time when men were so rude as to use naught but apparatus
of stone in their industries. But there is no evidence of such
a period. The careful study of modern savages proves that
for every stone tool showing evidence of human workmanship
there were many more constructed of wood, bone, shell, hide,
&c. And these very pieces of stone themselves were accom-
panied with, and attached to, other and perishable material.
Even the hammer-stone was an apparatus for making some-
thing else which could not be used until it was so attached.
The stonecutter's age began very early in the history of work-
manship, but even then he was only one of many craftsmen.
It is convenient, however, if we keep this explanation in
mind, to speak of a " stone age," in which was developed
the search for material and the study of its qualities with a
view to working it into the general scheme of mechanical
appliances in vogue.

The aboriginal stone- working art may be subdivided in
several ways. Men have been wont to speak of a palaeolithic
and a neolithic age of the world, or status of culture. In
the former, the products are said to have been only rudely
chipped and flaked ; in the latter, they were battered and
ground, or polished.

These two terms have become firmly embedded in the
vocabulary of archaeology, and when properly used are con-
venient. But they have not always been judiciously em-
ployed. I here take for granted that men have practised
every art rudely at first, and have learned to work at it
more cleverly later on. This is true of every human
occupation.

But there is another truth that must be also tenaciously

128 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

held in mind. Arts, industries, occupations, are all;^deter-
mined by the proximity of material. It is easier to peck a
granular stone than it is to chip a flinty one. Polishing one
stone on another is a simpler art, and easier to learn, than
making a delicately flaked dagger of flint, and it does not
require half the knack. It is even conceivable that a region
might be so favourably situated that savage men could more
easily develop an .age of metal therein than one of polished
or of chipped stone. There are vast tracts of earth where
there is not a mineral having conchoidal fracture. Here
were discovered tribes of aborigines in the polished, or at
least the hammered, stone age. But they were cannibals,
and their language and social system both showed that they
were low in the scale of culture. The conclusion is not that
these savages had passed through a chipped stone age before
they were found, but that they did the easiest thing within
the capabilities of their environment. The Polynesian
Islanders, the natives of the West Indies, the Tlingit Indians
are examples of this class.

In certain portions of Africa, in Canada, and perhaps in
Michigan, the metal age is as old as the stone age, and from
some areas all evidence of the stone age is absent. The
wiser method of looking at this matter is to hold that each
art has had its elaboration in the home of its proper materials,
beginning with simple and almost infantile processes, and
working along through greater complexity to their perfec-
tion. That there has been degradation and dissolution of
skill and industry is equally true. But, when men lost
their knack in polishing stone they did not take to chipping
or flaking. They simply made a more sorry job of battering
and polishing. This process may be seen in any city where
new methods are introduced. A few non-progressive per-
sons will hold on to an old art, and it will decline in their
hands.

In studying out the evolution of invention as regards the
stoneworker^s art, therefore, little help will come from the
terms " paElaeoHthic " and " neolithic/' These are excellent

STONE-WORK TNG.

129

in their place in the classification of a definite series of art
products like that of Western Europe, where flint was first
blocked out, then chipped or ground to an edge merely, then
polished over the whole surface.

From the point of view here assumed, whence we may
look down upon the workman, and his work, and his reward,
and the demands of a more and more exacting public, it
is better to disregard
this historic specula-
tion, and turn the eye
upon the various ar-
tisans and tools en-
gaged. The aboriginal
stoneworkers, or stone-
workings, may be thus
classified : —

1. The stone-knap-
pers : makers of spalls,
and artefacts with large
facets. Their imple-
ments were at first
other stones, then stone
hammers specially se-
lected and formed, and I'IG. 19.— The first blow in Stone Imple-

r^ 4.1 ^ 1 • ment Making. (After Holmes A

after that knappmg & v ^

hammers of metal. The art consists in breaking stone with

a blow.

2. Stone-chippers and flakers ; makers of chipped products.
Their tools were small hammers of stone, but more especially
pointed pieces of bone or antler, which were used as pitching
tools, or for pressure.

3. Hammerers of stone : makers of mortars, pestles, axes,
sculptures of all kinds. Their apparatus was the stone
hammer, ancestor of modern bush-hammers.

4. Stonecutters, par excellence : workers in soft materials
at first, such as soapstone and the less compact volcanic
rocks. The tools were chisel-like, or gravers, and were

9

130 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

worked with the hands rather than struck with mallets.
The modern carvers are their descendants.

5. Sawers of stone and other hard materials. Their
tools are not well understood, since, strange to tell, few
white men have ever reported observations on the subject.

6. Borers of stone. Their tools were drills of soft material
chiefly, used with sand, and, in boring soft stone, harder
stone points.

7. Polishers of stone. Other stones with or without
sand, and corals or ochres, were the means employed. It
was well known to the early artificers of this class that the
dust of any stone was its best polisher. After the same
fashion the diamond is polished with diamond dust.

A complete catalogue of the workmen of this class would
have to include also thequarriers of stone, with rude shovels
of scapula, crowbars of hard wood burnt at the end, sledge
hammers of huge boulders, with or without hafting, and a
skilful use of fire and water; The human beast of burden,
with wallet of skin or woven basketry, would complete the list.

The recent examination of immense aboriginal quarries in
the United States discloses this whole series of ancient
activities. They were in full operation always when the
explorers and settlers first visited each region.

Above all, it should be remembered that two or more ot
these artisans, and indeed all of them, in the early culture
periods, might be one and the same person. The Indian
quarriers about the city of Washington, doubtless, who dug
into the hill at Piney Branch and extracted the boulders,
were the same men who tested and trimmed them, who
flaked and chipped them, and who wore the products out in
the chase or in war. The differentiation of crafts came
later. In the West Indies, surely, the same artists quarried
the volcanic rocks and worked out the stone collars and
mammiform stones.^

' Mason, "Antiquities of Porto Rico," Smithson, Rep,^ 1876, pp.
372-393, many figures. Also Smitkson, Rejf., 1884. The Guesde Col-
lection.

(

STONE- WORKING. 1 3 1

In our day there would be division of labour in such
matters. In any stonecutter's yard may be seen at work the
spall-maker and stone-breaker, with great hammer or with
mallet and steel chisels. Indeed, he will on occasion break
one stone with another.

In the flint-knapper's humble shops, about Brandon, the
chipper of gun flints holds the office of the old-time dagger-
makers near by.

On all public buildings the busher, pounding away on a
block of granite with several plates of steel fastened to-
gether, is the lineal descendant of the very ancient wielder
of the stone hammer in battering and pecking stone.

In the steam marble works strips of soft iron sawing back-
wards and forward separate the material through the co-
operation of sand and water as in primeval times.

It is not decidedly known when the ancestors of gem-
cutters and borers began to use emery or corundum powder.
But the lapidary's wheel and the mechanical devices for
polishing industrial stone look backward easily to the first
savages rubbing one stone against another of the same sort
or of harder material. The same stone that does the
rubbing is itself rubbed, and in many operations the sand or
emery is reduced to a fine flour that makes the best of
polish.

For the more civilised successors of the savage quarrymen
the reader will have to make a journey to Peru, Mexico,
Easter Island, Southern India, or ascend the Nile and
examine the beds from which were cut, with very simple
appliances, the great blocks for Egyptian sphinxes and
obelisks, or he must visit the quarries of Baalbec or Perse-
polis, or the later-worked beds of Italy and Greece.

What with steam excavators, and drills, and dynamite,
and travelling cranes, the modern quarryman has gone very
far past the early processes. Yet he cannot even guess how
his predecessors removed and set up the great monuments
of the past.

The knapping of stone as an art is not practised in

132 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

precisely the same fashion throughout all savage areas,
owing to national traits and cleverness, to material and to
the end proposed. The Eastern Indian of the United States
doubtless held a boulder of quartz or a mass of rhyolite or
argillite in his left hand, and with another suitable piece, or
with a specially hard specimen which he kept for the pur-
pose, held in the right hand, struck a smart blow upon the
former to determine its quality. At this point the material
piece was either accepted or thrown away. If the workman
with his right hand kept on striking sharp, hard, ringing
blows, carrying away conchoidal flakes from first one side
then the other, until the stone assumed the correct form for
dressing down.

The problem ever before the workman's mind was to
prevent the occurrence of a hump or monticule in the
middle of the object. Should such a hump be left, the
subsequent processes for making a beautiful leaf-shaped blade
could not go on.

It is contended among archaeologists of one school, how-
ever, that these pieces with thick centres, called " turtle-
backs" in the United States and Chellean or Mousterian
implements in France, were designedly blocked out, that
they are really one type in an evolutionary series, that the
maker of chipped implements must needs have gone through
this form of work before he invented processes by which he
could avoid the hump in the middle and secure a laminated
blade. The American archaeologists, who have laboured
long to repeat the processes of the aborigines in stone work,
find themselves unavoidably making " turtle-backs " when
they are really trying to create the leaf-shaped blade. If
that be so, then such pieces found in earlier geological
horizons are really palaeolithic, and there can be no objec-
tion to such an opinion.

In the country of obsidian and of the finest calcareous
flint the object of the knapper in earliest times was not only
to secure leaf-shaped or almond-shaped implements. Long
razor-like blades were in great demand for scarifying, shaving.

STONK-WORKING.

^^^

sacrificing, and for domestic purposes. The California Indians
used a " coid-chisei " or pitching-tool of antler struck with a
hammer of wood or stone for such results.

No historic reference is found descriptive of the way in
which the ancient Mexicans and the savages of Western
Europe struck off long and even blades of obsidian and flint.
It is possible, by carefully studying the texture of these
materials, to do this work with a blow. Some references
are to be found to the use of great and steady pressure.
But the evidence is clear enough that, with the proper

Fig. 2C.— Removing Flakes with Stone Hammer. {Af/er Holmes,)

knack, either the ancient Dane or Frenchman might with
a single blow of his stone hammer remove a flint blade
nearly a foot in length. The Mexican knapper was equally
clever, as the abundant relics of his handicraft testify.

The tools and processes of the stone-chipper or flaker are
more varied. The author has seen both Indians and white
men pound a small chip of jasper into excellent shape for an
arrow-head with a small pebble of quartz alone. For the
scraper blades and coarser knives and smaller weapons there
is no doubt that this process sufficed. To effect this, take
a thin chip of any conchoidal stone between the left thumb

134 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

and forefinger. With an elongated pebble of hard stone
strike a series of quick, light, elastic blows along one margin
of the chip, barely touching it. The nearer one comes to
missing the edge the better. The blow is better struck
downward and slightly under. Turning the chip over, the
other margin may be similarly trimmed, and, by reversing
it end for end, the processes may be repeated on the margins
from different sides. Any one possessing a large series of
American arrow-heads will observe that the margins of
many of them have been trimmed by the end to end
reversion when the chip is revolved.

Even when the little chipping hammer has not been the
principal implement, its services have not been altogether
dispensed with. There is no doubt, however, that the chief
apparatus in the manufacture of chipped implements through-
out the world has involved some kind of pressure.

The Eskimo are still in the chipped stone age all the way
around from Mackenzie river to the Yukon mouth. The
most delightful raw material for whale lances, deer lances,
arrow-heads, scrapers, and knives abounds. One of the
commonest objects to be found in ethnological collections
from that region is the chipping tool. It consists of two
parts, a handle of walrus ivory exactly carved to fit the
chipper^s palm, enabling him or her to have the firmest
grip and to exert the greatest pressure. AH of these handles
are finished with the utmost care and highly polished.

At the working end of this ivory grip is a groove dug out
about two inches long, half an inch deep, and less than a
quarter of an inch in width.

Into this groove is fitted a strip of very hard antler or
bone, extending, say, one inch beyond the end of the handle.
The two parts are firmly seized together by a band of sinew
or fine raw-hide string. The apparatus is ready now for
action.

Before describing its process, it ought to be said that the
two parts have each a raison d^Hre, A piece of antler or
bone could not be found large enough for the grip or handle.

STONE-WORKING. 135

And that material is entirely too slippery and hard for the
chipping point. Wood is too soft, ivory is too hard. A
material is needed which is tough enough to break stone
and yet soft enough to allow the stone to sink into its
substance a little way to get a hold. Hard bone or antler
are of all things the best, as every Indian had found out
before Columbus discovered America. Expert Indians will
do the finest chipping with a steel point. But this can be
made very sharp at the end, and does not slip. White men
who make arrow-heads prefer the point of steel.
The method of using the chipper among the Eskimo is to

Fig. 21. — Chipping Stone by downward pressure. (After Holmes.)

lay a glove or piece of hide in the left hand, to place on this
the bit of stone to be wrought, and then to hold it in place
by means of the thumb. Thus prepared, the workman or
workwoman (for both sexes chip stone in Alaska) grasps the
chipper in the right hand and presses downward along the
edge of the stone, making thirty or forty efforts per minute,
feeling the way along, gauging the width of the chips deftly,
until the point or butt is reached. The piece is turned over
or reversed, as in the process last described. The especial
feature of the Eskimo work is this downward pressure, which
to a civilised artisan would seem to be working in the dark.*
In the United States National Museum is a collection of
the fibulae of the deer, pieces of very hard bone about a foot

* Figured and described in Murdoch, Ninth An. Rep. Bni\ Ethnohy
Washington, 1892, p. 288, figs. 279 281.

136

THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

long and pointed at one end. They are the chipping tools
of the Shoshonean tribes of the Great Interior Basin of the
United States. These Indians made their arrow-heads,
spear-heads, and knives of jasper chiefly. Their method of
procedure was to grasp the chipper near the working end,
so that the other end might be firmly braced in the forearm.
The bone in drying becomes extremely tough and strong,
having the two qualities requisite in a chipper, strength and
bight. Testimony is conflicting as to whether the Shosho-
nean presses up-
ward or downward.
The probability is
that the versatile
artisan uses the
process that suits
him. In one case
he would grasp his
bit of stone with
the second joint of
his thumb and the
first joint of his
forefinger, and
push off his little
flakes upward.
This process may be repeated by any one who will grind
the end of a tooth-brush handle to a point and follow the
directions. By the other process the Shoshonean imitates
the Eskimo, lays the piece of stone upon a bit of leather
in his palm, and presses upon the edge in a downward
direction.

Mr. Gushing informed the writer that the long and
beautifully crenated surfaces of choice daggers and other
blades were produced by placing little bits of soft gum along
the midrib at regular intervals, and then using pressure.
The writer has for years sought for an Indian who could
do this fine dagger work, but he has failed. This is indeed
one of the lost arts. The English gun-flint makers are able

Fig. 22. — Flaking Stone by outward pressure.
{After Holmes.)

STONE- WORKING. 137

to take a core of flint and divide it into a series of laminae
with marvellous skill ; but no amount of reward has been
able to tempt one of them to produce a leaf- shaped blade.
Mr. Edward Lovett, of the Bank of Scotland, went to great
pains for the author to secure the services of a knapper to do
this work, but the specimens turned out to be utter failures.
The deft hands that were once so numerous have lost their
cunning, and there may never stand on earth another who
can imitate what they wrought.'

"The Andaman Islanders employ chips of quartz for
lancets and razors. No piece is used more than once, and
several may be required for each operation. Those having
a sharp, blade-like edge are reserved for shaving, while
others with a fine point are kept for tattooing or scarifying.
Flaking is regarded as one of the duties of women, and is
done by them. For making chips two pieces of quartz are
needed. One is first heated and allowed to cool ; it is then
held firmly and struck at right angles with the other stone.
The smallest flakes are obtained in this way and not by
pressure." ^

The rejected flakes and cores are thrown upon the refuse
heap to prevent their cutting the feet of children, and Dr.
Man thinks that this accounts for supposed rude stone
implements found in Kjokkenmoddings.

As intimated previously, there are vast regions of the
earth, once inhabited by savages, where there does not
exist a bit of quartz, or jasper, or flint, or obsidian, or any
other sort of stone capable of being flaked. But there are
volcanic as well as sedimentary rocks, which may be
pounded or battered into shape. These same materials

* Evans, Ancient Static Implements^ pp. 34, 35. Murdoch, Ninth An,
Rep, Bur, Ethnol,^ pp. 287-89. Mason, Smith son, Rep,^ 1886, part i., pi.
xxi. , figs. 92, 96. The largest cache of chipped stone implements ever dis-
covered was found in a mound near Chilicothe, Ohio, by W. K. Moorehead.
They are seven thousand in number, and weigh three tons and a half. Sett
Moorehead, Primitive Man in Ohio^ New York, Putnam, fig. 35.

* Man, Andaman Islanders^ London, 1883, Triibncr, p. 160.

138 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

abound all over the world, even where there is abundance
of flakable stone.' If the striking of one stone against
another is as easy as breaking one stone with another, then
the rudiments of stone pecking, as before suggested, are as
old as those of chipping stone, and the hammer is as
ancient as the flaker.

The practical method of working among savages is to
select the toughest bit of stone accessible for a hammer.
Holding this in the right hand, between the thumb and two
middle fingers, and placing the forefinger on the top, the
workman administers quick, sharp blows at the rate of three
hundred or more per minute. The hammer has an ex-
cursion of three inches, more or less. At short intervals
the worker brushes away the loosened material with a little
broom of stiff fibres and begins again. At first, only
common boulders were selected for hammers, but it did not
take the ingenious ones long to discover that little pits on
either side enabled the thumb and middle finger to relax
their hold a little just as the blow was struck, in order to
avoid injury by the concussion. So the conventional
hammer stone was invented. Mr. McGuire says that after
an hour's work with a tool without the " finger-pits," his
arm grew very sore. The pecking of stone, among modern
savages, reveals all the steps through which the art passed
in its early evolution. In the Acorn region of California,
the women take a common boulder for the nether mill-
stone. Around the margin of the upper side they place a
hopper of basketry, sometimes luting it fast with the pine-
tree gum, sometimes holding it down with their feet, while
they do the grinding with their hands.

For a pestle these primitive millers use an elongated
piece of hard porous rock, the corners of which have been

' Recently Mr, Joseph D. McGuire, of Washington, has devoted two
years to the study of the stone hammer and it§ various uses, with impor-
tant results. J. D. McGuire, " The Stone Hammer," &c., Affi. Aitthropo^
logisti Washington, vol. iii. ; also by the same author **The Aboriginal
Lapidary," id., vol. v. pp. 165-176.

STONE-WORKING. 1 39

battered away by pecking. With this apparatus the
milling begins. The constant beating on the nether stone
with the pestle gradually excavates a bowl-shaped cavity, a
shapeless mortar, as simple as it can be. There are nume-
rous examples of apparatus of this elementary sort, in which
the mortar is carved on the surface of a great stationary
rock near some camp, and thither resorted one family after
another to prepare their flour.

But families, or, more properly speaking, clans and tribes
in that grade of culture move from place to place. It
would be necessary to have among the household effects a
portable mortar. In the eastern portions of the United
States great numbers of mortars are found that are
extremely rude in shape. A piece of granite or sandstone,
not over six inches thick and one foot across, was battered
into an exceedingly rude outline on the outside, and hollowed
out a few inches on the inside. The pestles are better shaped,
being oftentimes quite cylindrical. A few examples are
very heavy, and we are informed that they were suspended
from the limb of a tree and kept ia motion with the two
hands. It is just possible that these rude shallow mortars
had basketry hoppers. Even in the Ohio valley, where some
kinds of stone pecking were done with great skill, the
mortars are still rude. But along the Pacific Coast of
America, from Alaska to the Mexican States, the mortars
were carved out with exquisite care. The TUngit Indians
of South-eastern Alaska were especially clever with the
stone hammer. A block of sandstone or serpentine or
porous volcanic rock was hammered into a symmetrical
bowl-shaped form on the outside, and hollowed out so as
to leave a wall one inch or less in thickness. Upon the
exterior of these, carved projections were left of considerable
beauty.

The pestles for these mortars were of the same materials.
The fundamental form was bell-shaped, but in many
examples the top is cut in the likeness of one of the
totemic animals of the tribe. Other forms were used, but

STONE- WOR KING. 1 4 1

every one of them was produced simply by pounding one
stone with another. Upon the surfaces of both mortars and
pestles hundreds of little pitted marks are left, showing
where the blows were struck. On the coast of California,
about the Santa Barbara Islands, were great manufactories
of mortars and pestles. Huge blocks of sandstone were
quarried, pounded into form and then pecked out into the
symmetrical shape of a great bowl. These were finished up
on the outside and the inside with much care, and they
were articles of trade throughout the neighbouring region.

Further south, in Mexico and throughout Tropical
America, mortars and pestles give place to metates and
muUers. But these, where they are not mere slabs of gritty
stone, slightly modified by pounding, are carefully pecked
into shape with the hammer stone. Even those that are
made with legs, and have their borders adorned with
sculpture, are not exceptions. They are the product of the
stone hammer alone, and were wrought out by incessantly
pounding one piece of rock with another. Quite similar
to these table-form metates are the stone chairs or stools
seen frequently among archaeological collections from
Middle America, and they were wrought out in the same
shops. Their furrowed ornamentations are the work of
stone picks, of hard material which could be easily re-
pointed, now and then as occasion demanded. A more
universal product of the stone hammer is the stone
axe and celt and sledge. There are many edge tools in
all European collections that went from the knapper's
hands to the grindstone, and were gradually transformed
from chipped implements into polished implements in
the process of being worn out. This was necessary
where excellent flint occurred, and better material was
scarce. But in both Americas, and almost everywhere
out of Europe, and in many parts of Europe, axes and
celts were made by means of the stone hammer. This
process of pecking-out axes is hinted at in the older
writers, and Loskiel affirms that it required a lifetime

142 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

frequently to fabricate a single piece. To determine
the truth of these assertions, Mr. J. D. McGuire, of
Ellicott City, Maryland, conducted a careful series of ex-
periments at the Smithsonian Institution for the author.
The results are given in a series of papers published by Mr.
McGuire. Any ordinary grooved axe or celt could be
produced in less than fifty hours of continuous work. A
grooved axe of jadeite was wrought from the rough spall in
eighty-six hours. But for the occurrence of a flaw in the
material the axe would have been brought to an edge in one
hundred hours.

The examination of many hundreds of specimens reveals
the process of the aborigines, which seemed to be somewhat
like that of the sculptor. The workman looking over many
hundreds of boulders or spalls sees one in which his
imagination detects the outline of the celt or the axe desired.
His motive is the same as that which has reigned in the
minds of artisans from the beginning of industry, namely,
to achieve the greatest result in the expenditure of the least
effort. It is interesting to note how little labour will trans-
form a pebble into a grooved axe, when the workman knows
what he is about. His skilled eye detects at a glance the
very best piece for a specific result, and after he has pecked
away a few hours the metamorphosis is complete. Upon
the surface of most objects of this class the marks of the
hammer are left, frequently from an ornamental motive,
and there is also oftentimes a large surface that Nature
wrought. But the enormous amount of work done by the
stone hammer does not appear in the museum, because the
effects of the blows have been obliterated by polishing.

Among the celts and axes seen in collections there are
many that are too highly ornamented ever to have been
much used. Objects of this kind are common especially from
the West Indies. But they were made by the self-same pro-
cess that produced the commonest axe, namely, by striking
one stone against another hundreds of thousands of times.
The old proverb, "A continual dropping wears away a

STONE-WORKERS. 1 43

Stone," must surely have been written of. the stone
hammer.

The stone hammer itself has had a curious history in this
series of operations. Many hundreds of them are to be seen
in the museums of the world. Schliemann mentions the
finding of thousands of them without suspecting their
function.' The simplest hammers are merely battered
masses of stone, while the best of them are almost lenti-
cular in shape, with pits on the sides and evidences of work
over the entire rim.

Artists of antiquity had recourse to the stone hammer as
well as did the artisans. ,

There does not seem to be a habitable part of the world
where the aborigines have not left their marks upon boul-
ders, cliffs, standing stones, walls of caves, by means of this
implement. The simplest process is the production of
shallow lines in intaglio, portraying beasts and human beings
and illegible figures. In places where men have been wont
to congregate the surface of the rock has been gone over
several times, until it is an inextricable confusion of etch-
ings. The scribe or artist, as the case might be, simply took
a pointed hard stone in his hand, and by means of a succes-
sion of blows traced out a shallow writing or picture. Mr.
Pickwick's famous inscription of Mr. Stumps's autograph
was no doubt wrought after the same fashion. Innumerable
savage carvings were cut in soapstone and other soft material
by scratching, etching, cutting, and the like. But in all
granular material there has been but one implement and
one method, the easiest and the simplest, the implement
being the stone hammer and the method that of a rapid
succession of blows.

Next in line of evolution in this class of work is a kind of
low or flat relief produced by pounding away the intervening
material and leaving the figure outstanding. It is seen in
many rude Indian carvings, but in its perfection in the Maya

^ Schliemann, quoted by McGuire, Am. Anthropologist ^ Washington,
1893, vi. p. 314; vii. p. 358.

144 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

inscriptions of Central America. Here the artist has in
mind a certain symbol which has been painted on pottery
or other material, and seeks to reproduce the same image
in flat relief by pecking away the unnecessary stone. This
kind of work was done by Mr. McGuire with great rapidity
upon a block of tough lava, now in the United States
National Museum. With stone hammers he first made the
surface flat. Then having marked thereon with a bit of
charcoal the Maya symbol, he, by means of pecking tools

Fig. i4.-

chipped to a point, removed the surplus stone. The con-
stant wearing of the point demanded irequent renewal, but
this was easily accomplished. The result was that in less
than thirty hours he worked out of a rough block the rabbit
symbol in flat relief. ArchKologists in their writings have
frequently remarked upon the lack of square-cut incisions in
American sculpture. This phenomenon is sufficiently ex-
plained by the instrument.

From this form of carving, common enough in both
hemispheres, to high relief was only a matter of normal

StoXE-WOKKlNG. 145

growth. The processes were the same. There has not been
found a sculpture in Mexico or Central America or in South
America that was cut in any other way. The statuary
was wrought after the same fashion. In the Old World it
is not possible to speak with the same precision. Some of
the more ancient sculptures of Egypt represent men stand-
ing on platforms and pounding with stone hammers. This
tool is capable of such work. No one knows who has not
tried what results it will achieve. It is not necessary to
introduce steel or adamant, as one born out of due time, to
do the work of that faithful implement which stood by our
race from the beginning. All the primitive sculptures of
the world were wrought with the stone hammer alone. The
early sculptures of Egypt, Babylonia, and India were not
beyond its powers. Indeed, it would not be difficult to
prove that the stone hammer was more capable of effecting
these works than were the first efforts in bronze and iron.

The modern stonecutter is a familiar object, with his
white cap and apron, his tools of steel, which he holds
lightly in his left hand and his wooden mallet wielded in
his right. His prototype in savagery is not difficult to find.

In many portions of the United States and without doubt
elsewhere in the world, there are quarries of soft slate,
serpentine, alabaster, steatite, and other materials. The
aborigines were wont to quarry these substances and actually
to carve them into form. The eastern Indians, finding a
protruding mass of steatite, set themselves to cutting out
a block large enough for a cooking-pot or pan, leaving a
great deal for waste. These blocks were removed by means
of long, wedge-shaped picks or chisels of quartz. Deep
gashes were cut in from the top and sides until the piece
could safely be removed with levers or wedges or heavy
stone mauls. The pot was cut into shape with the same
edge tool of quartz and not by pecking. The stonecutter
did not hold his chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other,
but seized the chisel in both hands and used it on the stone
after the manner of an adze. In very many of the examples

10

146 I'HE ORtGl^IS OF IS'VENTION.

that were broken in the working these scarfs are visible in
parallel rows, showing that the implement was about an inch
wide at the edge, and could take off a chip from one to three
inches in length. When the stonecutter's work was done
on the vessels, the marks of his tools were obliterated by
scraping and polishing. For scraping there was no end of
sharp chips of flinty rocks, and the grainy sandstone would
complete the smoothing process.

The most beautiful stone-cutting done by modern savages
is that of the Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands, on
the Pacific coast of British Columbia. They quarry a black
slate, which is very soft at first, and this is really whittled
into shape with knives having metal blades. There seems
to be a difference of opinion as to the existence of any
antique forms of this ware, owing to the difficulty of work-
ing such materials with stone knives. Formerly the same
designs were wrought of wood in the greatest abundance.

Hearne remarks of the Indians in North-west Canada :
" Their household furniture chiefly consists of stone kettles
and wooden troughs of various sizes ; also dishes, scoops,
and spoons, made of the bufialo or musk-ox horns. Their
kettles are formed of a pepper-and-salt coloured stone ; and
though the texture appears to be very coarse, and as porous
as a drip-stone, yet they are perfectly tight, and will sound
as clear as a China bowl. Some of those kettles are so large
as to be capable of containing five or six gallons ; and though
it is impossible these poor people can perform this arduous
work with any other tools than harder stones, yet they are
by far superior to any that I had ever seen in Hudson's Bay,
every one of them being ornamented with neat mouldings
round the rim, and some of the large ones with a kind of
flute-work at each corner. In shape they were a long square,
something wider at the top than bottom, like a knife-tray,
and strong handles of the solid stone were left at each end
to lift them up.'' '

The Eskimo still saw such hard stones as the pectolite,

^ llQutncj/cur/tej^i ^c, London, 1795, Strahan, p. i68i

STONE-WORKING. 147

which is placed among the jadoid materials for texture
and temper. There are two ways of effecting this sawing.
One piece of stone may be cut with a thin spall of the
same or harder material, or the work may be done by means
of sand and a soft stone on a splint of wood to carry it. The
Eskimo also know how to bore a row of holes as quarrymen
do, and split the material thus.

The modern sand-saw, of soft iron, helped out by plenty
of water and grit, is out of the question in savagery. But
the principle was discovered by them that a very soft
substance could cut a very hard one by means of sharp
granules of a denser material. The application of water in
the work has a great deal to do with the rapidity of the
cutting. To keep the scarf clear of worn-out material a
fresh supply beneath the carrier is quite necessary. Mr»
McGuire gets by far his best results with sheets of cold*-
hammered copper. The opinion that raw-hide and sand,
either wet or dry, will cut stone needs confirmation.
Experiments with such materials failed utterly in the
Smithsonian experiment.

Savages knew how to bore holes with stone, and how to
perforate stone The perforator of stone was a long piece
of carefully-chipped jasper or other hard material, in shape
of an ordinary nail. For a grip a broader head was left at
the butt-end. This could be held in the hand and worked
by a reciprocating motion exactly after the manner of the
awl or reamer. For the thousand and one uses to which
an awl could be put, however, other substances, such as
bone, horn, antler, and ivory were used. The stone reamer
of very hard rock was excellent on soft rock.

The simplest composite drill now in use among savages
consists of a shaft of wood, into the lower end of which is
inserted a point of stone, held in place by a seizing of raw-
hide or sinews. This may be twirled between the palms of
the hand. But the most effective method of boring stone is
by means of the pump-drill, or the bow-drill, or the strap-
drill, using not a hard point of stone or other material, but

148 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

one of wood or bone, with plenty of sand. The process is
well described by Mr. McGuire. Dr. Rau was partially suc-
cessful in boring diorite. Mr. McGuire has made the pipe,
the ceremonial axe, and the double conical perforation. He
has, by means of the most primitive appliances and a little
emery, reproduced in quartz crystal the bore made with the
solid drill, and that with the delicate core standing in the
middle. If with sand alone, and in the use of the bow-drill
or pump-drill or strap-drill any savage artisan could perforate
beads of jasper, chalcedony, or jade, that is now among the
lost arts.

" The Brazilians use ornaments of imperfectly crystallised
quartz, from four to eight inches long, and about one inch
in diameter. Hard as they are they contrive to drill a hole
at each end, using for that purpose the pointed leaf-shoot of
the large wild plaintain, with sand and water.'' '

This quotation from Sir John Lubbock has been oft re-
peated, and the writer, after all he has been saying, is not
going to deny the account. Certain it is that beads of very
hard material and very small bore are common products of
savage manufacture. But it must be admitted that, without
emery, the author cannot do it, and all experiments to
repeat the Brazilian processes with sand and water have so
far failed at the Smithsonian Institution.

Polishing and grinding stone were among the earliest, as
they are now one of the latest, arts. The preparation of
gems, the making of plate glass and ground glass, the grind-
ing down and polishing of ornamental stones, are some of
our most active modern industries. Many patents are still
taken out for improvements in the art, and many hundreds
of skilled labourers make their living in this way. Now the
first grinders of stone are usually relegated to the neolithic
period of history ; with what reason it is difficult to say.

Probably no discovery is older than the fact that friction
would wear away wood or bone, or even stone. Practically
the modern savage uses stone to grind other substances, and

* Lubbock, Prehx, Times^ New York, 1878, p. 561.

STONE-WORKING. I49

also grinds one stone with another. The North American
Indian woman keeps near her side a bit of whetstone, on
which she sharpens her bone needles and bodkins and
crimping tools. Her companion is similarly provided with
whetstones for repairing the edge of the implements in his
crafts. He also uses sandstone, on which he has chipped a
little groove to rub down the shafts of his arrows, and other
woodwork. Stone is his sandpaper, scraper, plane, spoke-
shave, and polisher in one. The potter, after building up
her vessel by coiling, rubs away every mark of the fingers
from the surfaces with grinding and polishing stones. The
woodworker, having chipped out a dish, or a sculpture with
adzes and chisels of stone, obliterates the scars by means of
a grinding stone. The cook, noticing that in the. grinding
of food both upper and nether millstone give to each other
a polished surface that must needs be removed with a stone
hammer, undesignedly invented the process of all subse-
quent gem-cutting and stone-polishing.

The polishing of one stone upon another is, however,
the characteristic art of neolithic times. In the course of
grinding the edge of an axe or chisel a polish would be
communicated. But many hundreds of these implements
are polished beautifully over their entire surface. Some of
them have the brilliancy of a mirror. They are not only
ground, but they have been polished by rubbing down with
buckskin and fine powder of some kind.

Just a word should be said in this connection also about
the polishing that comes from use. Upon the surfaces of
many of the hoe blades coming from the Mississippi valley,
there is a lustre or nacre that was not designedly added. It
would seem that the mere act of using had enabled the
implement to take on a vitreous glaze. Furthermore, pipes,
battle-axes, adzes, axes, chisels that have been used a long
time, acquire a gloss and brilliancy that cannot be conferred
at once. The greasy hand of the savage, seldom washed,
also communicates a beautiful surface to shell, ivory, and
stone implements.

150 THE ORIGINS OF imTilNTION.

Among the stone implements in New Zealand collections
may be seen the Jioanga^ or grinding stone, oval in shape,
formed of coarse sandstone, with a hollow oval groove in its
upper surface. In these, implements were ground down
with the aid of water.

As the natives performed the tedious process of shaping
their implements, at which they spent most of their time,
they sang a song of first voice, second voice, and chorus.
The first voice asks what the grinding of the stone is for.
The second replies that it is to shape the tool, to sharpen it,
and describes the flying of the chips, the splitting of the
stone, &c. The chorus encourages the workman, urging
him to continue his work, with an appeal to the goddess of
axe-sharpening.'

In the service of this goddess the Polynesians were indeed
faithful. Their material was extremely hard. None in the
world employed for implements or weapons was more re-
fractory. It was wrought into useful and grotesque forms,
and received a surfacing that was truly remarkable. In our
day examples command fabulous prices both on account of
the material and the skilled labour bestowed upon them.

in speaking of the lapidary art among savages it is
necessary to include all those materials which have been
required to take the place and do the work of stone. This
is quite essential in studying the arts of those island areas
where stones for chipping or for grinding are absent. For
instance, there were very skilful natives among the Ba-
hamas, but they made their chisels and adze blades of
shell. In a similar plight were many of the Pacific
islanders, but the Tridacna, the Margarita, and other mol-
luscs, were at hand with their kind offices. " Among the
materials upon which primitive man set his eye, shells of
molluscs are not to be overlooked. Everywhere within
the range of these creatures their soft parts afforded ready
and most nutritious food, and the hard parts were the
servants of innumerable wants. The early men not only

' Cf, A. Shand, J, Pofynes. Sor., Wellington, 1892, vol. i. p. 82.

STONE- WORKING. 1 5 1

used shells for dishes and tools and art purposes, but
wrought in them; and the shells in turn wrought on the
men,. suggesting forms and uses, and touching the fancy by
their beauty of colour, and even their power of music." *

The shell could be chipped, or sawed, or ground, or
polished, or perforated like a stone. The same is true of
ivory, whales* teeth, fossil tusks, antler, and the hard shells
of some seeds, and even nuggets of copper and iron. All of
these may be classed with the material of the lapidary,
upon which he exercised his ingenuity and secured his
patents. They taxed his patience and evoked his faculties,
and were turned into the currents of the world's great
industries in very ancient times before the historian had
learned to write. ....

* Holmes, "Art of Shell in the Ancient Americaas," Second Aft»
Rep. Bur, Ethmly Washington, 1883, pp. 179-305, pi. xxi.-lxxvii.

CHAPTER V.

THE POTTER^S ART,

** This earthen jar
A touch can make, a touch can mar ;
• • • • t

To-morrow the hot furnace flame
Will search the heart and try the frame,
And stamp with honour or with shame,
These vessels made of clay."

Longfellow, Keramos,

Porcelain is the glorification of pottery, ^f the processes
of making and decorating it, and of the purposes for which
it is created. If, then, we are able to find the origins of
modern pottery in primeval times, and the survival of those
times in the ware of our own day, there is shown an un-
broken genealogy between sun-dried vessels of the first
ceramists and the most delicate work of Worcester, Sevres,
Meissen, Hochst, and Berlin. It might be refreshing to
the reader, before making on foot this tedious journey to
the humble dwellings of the first potters, to look over the
works of Brogniart, Jacquemart, Birch, Bowes, Gamier, and
the South Kensington handbooks. No harm, but much
inspiration, would also be experienced by spending a day or
two among the brickmakers, the terra-cotta works, the old-
fashioned fabricators of cheap stone ware, the potteries
located here and there in all lands, or, if occasion permits,
to take in the finer works of Staffordshire, Sevres, Meissen,

Berlin, or of Trenton and Cincinnati. There will be no

152

THE POTTER^S ART. TS3

need in our visit to the earliest ceramists to speak of
earthenware and stoneware and porcelain. There will be
plain ware and lustred ware, but glazes and enamels that
are not purely accidental will be unknown. Clay there
will be in abundance, but the artisans will not be quite so
particular about the hydrated silicate of alumina and pure
white sand and chalk and felspar and calcined bones and
potash. Neither will they require such costly machinery
for grinding the clay and the flinty ingredients until a
paste as fine as flour dough can be made. The washings
and settling, the mixing and weighing, will not be so
scrupulously done. You will see no potter's wheel, nor
any machinery like unto it, nor any device that at first
sight will remind one of it. Yet, the ends achieved thereby
will be reached. The primitive artisans will both mould
and model, though in quaint ways. The modern potter
invented neither moulding nor modelling. Engobe or slip
will be applied to the surface of the vessels, and dainty
figures will be painted thereon, though it must be freely
admitted that the paint-shop does not contain so many nor
such lasting colours. No matter, all our art is the lineal
descendant of theirs through many vicissitudes which con-
stitute the charming story of the ceramic industry.

In the very earliest graves and camp-sites no fragments
of pottery occur. If our first parents were makers thereof,
we should know it, because this most brittle of human
works is also among the most enduring. Fire -making
devices were invented before pottery, because all of it
was effected by means of fire, if we except sun-dried bricks
and lamp -stoves. The bow and the arrow, the spear
and the fish-hook, are older. They are found in older
graves. Can it be that this art came in with the grinding
of food ? At any rate, it long antedated Homer, for the
potter's wheel is mentioned by him (II. xviii. 600). The
simpler hand epoch antedates all books and writings, and
there are many, many tribes of uncivilised peoples on the
earth making beautiful ware, who do not read at all. The

154 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Lake-dwellers had pottery, and so had the Mound-Builders,
and the people of very ancient Troy. In Peru beautiful
specimens come from the oldest graves, and over the caftons
of Colorado, and especially of its tributaries, hundreds of
complete vessels, and millions of fragments, are scattered
similar to that made near by to-day.

We need not stop to inquire about the first person in the
world who fabricated a clay vessel, nor try to conjure up
the manner in which the invention was made. Clay is the
most docile of all materials. It has its limitations, but
compared with stone, bone, horn, wood, hide, fibre, and
so forth, how easy it is to work — so pliable, and yet so
superior to all the above-named substances in the fire. The
first man who trod in clay must have noticed that he
had made a pan impervious to water. The earliest cooks
put hot stones into tight baskets to boil their food. Soap-
stone pots did tolerably well if the walls were left thick
enough. But, just as soon as people had fire, became
sedentary, ate farinaceous food, the pot came to be born.
And in cold regions, the use of fire would, as we shall see,
compel the invention of pottery.

In the last and simplest analysis, sun-dried adobe or
bricks are the most primitive things made of clay. They
are masses of rude paste worked up by hand, not at first in
moulds, and dried in the sun. 'In all rainless regions of the
globe they exist. In Babylon, in Egypt, in Peru, in
Mexico, it is the same story. Given the material and the
arid climate, and the thing is done, by that universal law,
in human affairs as in nature, of following the lines of least
resistance. This may not be the oldest treatment of the
material since climate is a ruling factor, but it is the least
complicated method of handling it.

The next simplest process is to be found in vogue in our
day among certain Eskimo tribes on the tundras about the
peninsula of Alaska. These cunning people, when most
spread out, occupied the northern shores of America from
Southern Labrador all the way around to Kadiak Island in

THE POTTKR's art.

^ ^

Alaska. Almost everywhere they utilised fire only in the
lamp-stove. Forests being absent, and even drift-wood
being scarce, their only resource has been to burn the
blubber or fat of the seal, whale, walrus, and other animals
that abounded in that area. There was no lack of fuel.
Of the mosses and vegetable fibres that came in their way
they fabricated the wicks. For a lamp they took a slab of
soapstone about two inches thick, straight along one margin,
and curved on the other. This was excavated to form a
shallow dish, in which the blubber was put, and the wick.
The Eskimo knew both the firesticks and the flint and
pyrites method of exciting fire, so it was never difficult to
make a blaze. Now, there are in the west, regions where
no soapstone exists of which to make lamp-stoves, so the
ever quick-witted housewives knead clay with blood and
hair, and form it into a thick shallow dish or bowl with the
hand, and after drying it only a little, proceed to make
thereof a true lamp-stove. The constant use of this simple
device hardens it by burning, so that there is no need of
firing the ware at all. Nothing save a sun-dried brick could
be simpler. The first real potter seems in this way to
have been a fabricator of lamps and stoves. Now and
then rings are incised around these objects, commencing
already in the most simple manner the process of decora-
tion. No rims, nor handles, nor legs, nor bases, nor paint,
nor modelled ornaments occur. We are behind the history
of the art.

True pottery, hardened in the fire, if we are to trust
the testimony of the living and the dead, is and was
confined within certain boundaries. Within these, since
clay is almost universally distributed, the fictile art was
generally practised, though the Australians and the Polyne-
sian race have always been ignorant of it. They cook in
open fires and pits, and drink from gourds. No doubt at
first the art was stimulated by the absence of other material.
In South-western California, where the potstone was abun-
dant, great numbers of globular ollas are yet found, some

T56 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

of them capable of holding several gallons, and scraped
down very thin. The light and tough boiling basket also
no doubt deterred many other migratory tribes from this
method of cooking. The geographic distribution of the
art will be found amenable to those natural and mental
laws whose co-operation we are tracing.

At the present moment there is no other spot on the
earth where the primitive potter can be studied to such
advantage. as in the south-western portion of the United
States, in the drainage of the Upper Rio Grande and the
Colorado river. There, at the present time, are tribes
belonging to the Keresan, the Tewan, the Zuiiian, the
Shoshonean, and the Athapascan stock. Whatever their
ancestors may have done in other habitats for vessels, here
they have all learned to make pottery and to build adobe
walls. The Navajo may perhaps be excepted from the
wall -builders, dwelling in hogans with his cousin, the
Apache, and both of them migrants from the Mackenzie
drainage. To this workshop let us go and sit at the feet of
the primitive artisan.

Mr. Gushing, who has spent many years of his life among
these Pueblos, says, "There is no other section of the
United States where the potter's art was so extensively
practised, where it reached such a degree of perfection,
as within the limits of these ancient Pueblos. ... In
these regions water not only occurs in small quantities, but
it is attainable only at points separated by great distances,
hence to the Pueblos the first necessity of life is the
transportation and preservation of water. The skins and
paunches of animals could be used in the effort to meet
this want with but small success, as the heat and the aridity
of the atmosphere would in a short time render water thus
kept unfit for use, and the membranes once empty would be
liable to destruction by drying." '

In the early times the Zuni used large sections of reed,
and now a common sight is a water-carrier employing a

' Cushing> Fourth An, Rep, Bur, EthfioLy Washington, 1886, p. 482.

THE POTTER*S ART. I57

gourd or a basketry bottle, lined like the ark of Moses,
within and without with pitch.'

As to the supply of material. Holmes says : "Nature was
lavish in her supply of the material needed. Suitable clay
could be found in nearly every valley, both in well-exposed
strata and in the sediment of streams. I have noticed that
after the passage of a sudden storm over the mesa country,
and the rapid disappearance of the transient flood, the pools
of the arroyos would retain a sediment of clay two or
three inches thick, having a consistency perfectly suited to
the hand of the potter. It would not be difficult, however,
to find the native clay among the sedimentary formations
of the neighbourhood. Usually the material has been very
fine grained, and, when used without coarse tempering, the
vessels have an extremely even and often a conchoidal
fracture.^' ^ This clay from the arroyos, or from its natural
beds, the women of the Pueblo gather and transport on
their backs to their workshops under the open sky, either
on the mesa or on the housetops. It is further washed
carefully to exclude foreign bodies, and to render it pliable
to the artist's hand.

We read a great deal about the employment of what the
French call degraissant in working clay, that the walls of
the vessel are rendered stronger and less liable to crack
thereby. Be that as it may, the Pueblo woman mixes sand
or pounded potsherds with her clay. In the ware of the
Mound Builders pulverised shells, old pottery, mica, and
other tempering materials were employed. The pottery
of the southern half of Africa is formed of clay found near
ant-hills, in which case the mixing is done by the little
creatures. The compounding of these materials is not a
haphazard aflair. Too much or too little of the tempering
material would be disastrous. The shells must be carefully
burned previously, or the fragments would be calcined in
the firing, and afterwards slake. Gushing says that the

' Fourth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol,,, p. 491, fig. 520.

* Holmes, Fourth An, Rep, Bur, EthnoUy Washington, 1886, p. 267.

158 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

quality of the clay is not uniform throughout the Pueblo
region, and to this cause he attributes the fact that in some
places " fragments of the greatest variety in colour, shape,
size, and finish of ware occur in abundance.'^ In other
spots where the architecture of the houses is equally well
executed, potsherds are coarse, irregular in curvature, badly
decayed, and exceptionally scarce.* This is another con-
firmation of the principle of mutual relation between the
inventive faculty and the natural resources upon which it
operates.

The potter is now ready to construct her vase, and in its
edification employs one or all of three methods, modellings
mouldings and coiling. We should waste time in discussing
which is oldest among these three processes. They will
be discussed in the sequence named because that is the order
of their importance in the region under consideration.
Just as the Eskimo woman takes a lump of prepared clay
and with her fingers models her stove-lamp, the Pueblo
woman and savage women nearly all over the world
model vessels from the lump, model also the rims and bases
and handles and raised decorations of ware made in the
other methods mentioned. This very earliest and rudest
act of clay-working remains and is glorified in the sculptor's
art.

Moulding pottery is a common method at present, and it
must have been practised most extensively in former and
in ancient times. All over the United States bits of ware
are picked up on whose surfaces are deep furrows and nodes
whose true structure is declared by making casts of these
markings in plaster, clay, or wax. The deeper portions
saved from attrition are clearly thrown up, and reveal the
presence of basketry, textile, or netting. In many cases, to
be mentioned later, these impressions are ornaments produced
by means of textile substances. But the ninety and nine
were made in nets or baskets or bags. In such examples
the markings are on the outside.^ It is just as easy, how-

Cushing, Fourth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol., p. 493. ^ Ibid,, p. 484, fig. 501.

THE potter's art. 159

ever, to work the other way and build the vessel on the
outside of the mould, in some cases a gourd, as in Arkansas
pottery, in others a basket, as in Pueblo examples. Further
south, in Mexico and in Ancient Peru, modelling and
moulding were more commonly practised than on the Rio
Grande. The Mound Builders also had certain forms which
they achieved by these processes. The Guadalajara potter
of our own day understands perfectly this art of moulding.
He seems to be the cleverest artist in the world, producing
portraits and animal groups with marvellous exactness by
means of spatulas of hard wood, a brush or two, a bit of tin
and stones for rubbing smooth. He does not model en bloc
as one of our artists does, but moulds and models his man
first and then dresses him by laying on the parts. He
appears like one who has taken a lesson or two in modern
sculpture and is trying also to hold on to his old traditions, —
with marvellous cleverness, however, for he never saw a
throwing wheel or a studio.

It is very doubtful whether true casting was ever
practised by savage peoples. And some writers forgetting
that the primitive ceramist could supplement moulding
by modelling, seeing on the inside of vessels the imprint
of natural or artificial objects have assumed that the clay
was plastered all over the inside or outside of the mould
and that the latter was removed always by burning. There
may have been instances of this, but the savage woman
thought too much of her net or basket or gourd to destroy
it so ruthlessly.

The third process of building up pottery was far the most
common, at least in the Western Continent. It is a kind of
potter's wheel of a slow velocity, only the hand travels
round and round instead of the clay. **The ancient Pueblo
potter rolled out long, slender fillets, or ropes of clay, vary-
ing in width and thickness to suit the size and character of
the vessel to be constructed. They were usually, perhaps,
from one fourth to one half an inch in thickness. The
potter began by taking the end of a single fillet between

l6o THE ORIGLNS OF INVENtlON.

the fingers and proceeded to coil it up on itself, gradually
forming a disc. At first the fillets overlapped only a little,
but as the disc grew large and was rounded upward to form
the body of the vessel the imbrication became more pro-
nounced. The fillet was placed obliquely, and was exposed
on the exterior side to probably one half of its width. Strip
after strip of the clay was added, the ends being carefully
joined, so that the continuity might not be broken until the
vessel was completed The rim generally consisted of a
broad strip thickened a little at the lip and somewhat re-

curved. The exterior imbricated edges were carefully pre-
served, while those on the inner surface were totally
obliterated, first by pressure, and finally by smoothing
down with an implement or with the fingers, imprints of the
latter being frequently visible. So thoroughly were the
fillets pressed down and welded together that the vessels
seldom fracture more readily along the lines of junction
than in other directions." '

The suggestion of this peculiar mode of building up a

dish was doubtless given by coiled basketry. In the Chapter

on Textiles in this work the whole process will be minutely

described, and as both arts are confined to the sphere of

' Hulmes, Feiirlh An. lit}- Bur. Elhnol., p. 274. figs. 217, ziS.

THE potter's art. i6i

woman's work, there will be no difficulty in seeing how she
could coil in one case as well as in the other. Indeed, the
Havasupai Indians put a thin lining of clay inside the
basket trays by means of which they winnow their grass
seeds and parch them with hot stones. Gushing thinks that
they actually started their coiled ware on the bottom of a
basket. Either the outside or the inside of the bowl would
serve the purpose.*

A precisely similar process of coiled work is described by
Man among the Nicobarese, and Atkinson among the New
Caledonians, both of which peoples use some device to
facilitate the turning of the work. The Nicobarese start
the coiling on a lump of clay moulded in the bottom of a
dish supported on a pad-ring, and the New Caledonians
make theirs on the outside of a roundish pebble. On this
they put a small dab as a beginning ; round this the coils of
clay are wound and the pot built up. As the under side of
the stone is roundish it becomes a natural primitive potter's
wheel.2

The former is preferable, because after the walls have been
built up for some distance, the same basket serves as a
support and primitive potter's wheel. Mr. Cushing remarks
on this ingenious discovery that the fabrication of large
vessels thereafter was no longer effected by the spiral method
exclusively. "A lump of clay, hollowed out, was shaped
how rudely so ever on the bottom of the basket [moulding]
or in the hand [modelling], then pressed in a hemispherical
basket bowl and stroked until pressed outward to conform
with the shape, and to project a little above the edges of its
temporary mould [moulding], whence it was built up spirally
until the desired form had been attained [coiling], after
which it was smoothed by scraping." 3

* Gushing, Fourth An. Rep, Bur, Ethnol.y p. 497, tig. 524, and p. 500,
lig. 529.

- E. H. Man, ** Nicobar Pottery, "y. Anthrop, Inst,, vol. xxiii. pp. 21-271
I pi. J. J. Atkinson, " New Caledonian Pottery," iV/., p. 90.

3 Cushing, Fourth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol.^ p. 499, figs. 526, 527, 528,

529, 530.

II

l62 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Any one who is clever may follow this description by
using either artistes clay or paste from the pottery. In the
building up of the vessel the workman has certain decorative
motives in mind of which mention will be made presently,
and a portion of these may be realised in the treatment of the
coil. It should be previously fixed in mind, however, that
in most cases all traces of the coils are to be obliterated either
when the clay is soft, by means of little paddles of gourd or
shell or pottery or wood, or they are subsequently rubbed
away with fine grained polishing stones.

In addition to all this smoothing and scraping and rubbing
the potter of the Pueblos was acquainted with slip, which
was really very fine clay thinned with water and applied as a
wash, previously to decoration with colour.

At this point, indeed, the fineness, the form, and the
finish of ware becomes differentiated by the functions which
it has to perform, whether it will have to go to the spring
and become a vehicle, to stand in the house and be a re-
ceptacle of ever-needed water, whether it be the storehouse
for grain and foods, a vessel of dishonour in the cooking pot,
a dish for serving food, or a vessel of honour in the work of
art, or the sacred meal bowl. Abundance of fragments all
over the world attest that the fire was often applied to the
rude piece, with no other decorations than a few scratches
with a pointed stick. But the primitive potter, as we know
her, was not satisfied with this for noble uses.

In the first place, the student, looking at a very great
collection like that in Washington, notices that untarnish
ware ranges 'in colour from nearly white and grey and light
creamy yellow to red and brown and jet black. This is
owing, in the first place, to the selection of the clay, and to
the natural colour imparted by clays in the different locali-
ties. The burning also has to do with the body colour, but
more of that anon. On the authority of Holmes, " reds
and browns result from the presence of iron, which may
have been oxidised in burning, or the red oxides may have
been used in rare, cases as colouring matter in kneading the

THE potter's art. 1 63

clay. The surface is often lighter than the mass ; a con-
dition probably resulting from colouring matter in the clay,
which is destroyed on the surface and remains unchanged
within. In the south the colours of the paste are often
slightly reddish or yellowish in hue. It is notable that a
small percentage of the ware of all localities is red." *

Brick-red is the rule in Peru and common among the sacred
pottery of Mexico. That of the mounds is a dirty brown
or dark grey, with a sprinkling of red, and each area has its
characteristic colour. Both the texture and the shade of
fragments discovered in various places have their say in
deciding concerning the status of the makers. Indeed,
among American archaeologists and ethnologists who have
been making the map of the Northern Continent according
to tribes, the limits of certain textures of pottery fragments
have been useful in determining boundaries.

The forms of primitive pottery are an ever-pleasing sur-
prise to the archaeologist and the technographer. Of course,
if a bowl or dish or pot or jar or vase be moulded inside or
outside of a basket or gourd, the shape is pre-ordained up to
the point where the work has to be constricted or gathered in.
There is the dividing line where the artist has to withdraw
the mould and proceed alone. In modelling the rest of the
jar or in building by coiling she has got to imitate natural
objects or those fabricated from other materials. Of these
there are abundance in the endless shapes of gourds and
shells and horn and wood and bark and basketry." ^

The causes of modified forms, after the primitive idea has
been adopted, have been tabulated by Holmes : —

" Incapacity of the material to assume or retain form.

" Incapacity of the artisan.

" Changes in the methods or processes of manufacture.

** Changes of environment.

" Changes of use.

* Op, ciL p. 269.

^ Compare Holmes, Fourth An* AV/., ^c, figs. 210-216 ; 466-473.

164

IHE ORIGINS OK INVKNTION.

" Lack of use.

" Influenci^ of iievv or exotic forms.

" To enhance useful ntss.

" To please the fancy for the beautiful or tlie grotesque,"

' Holmes, Fourth An. Rep. Bur. Elhiiol., ii[i. 450-457,

THE potter's art. 1 65

Most of these are easily understood. If, however, the
reader is unacquainted with the poor resources of the primi-
tive potter, he will scarcely realise what a toilsome journey
it is across the top of a jar after it begins to narrow until
the rim is reached.

For some of the older pieces of flat jars taken from the
ruined Pueblos fabulous prices have been paid, on account
of their rarity and the great difficulty in building them up.
Indeed, there are some things clay cannot do. The wood-
worker, or the basket-maker, or Nature herself pronounces
a word, gives expression to a formal thought, in presence of
the potter ; the latter repeats it as best she can. After all
she is a novice, and her imitations display her limits. The
composition and resolution of her desires, the patterns
before her, the limitations of her material and the effects of
environment, account for all ceramic forms.

The ornamentation of primitive pottery was effected by
engraving the surface, by adding parts and by colouring.
According to Holmes, the sources of decorative motives
were : —

" I. Suggestions of features of natural utensils and
objects.

** 2. Suggestions of features of artificial utensils or
objects.

" (a) Functional, as handles, legs, bands, perforations, &c.

'* (b) Structural, as the coil, seam, stitch, plait, twist, &c.

" 3. Suggestions from accidents in construction, as marks
of the fingers, of implements, of moulds, &c.

" 4. Suggestions of ideographic features or pictorial
delineations.'' ^

These primary suggestions are afterward modified by the
natural law of least effort and, survival according to the
methods governing change of form. The aesthetic sense
begins to assert itself before the vase is finished. Very

' Holmes, Fourth An. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.^ p. 453. Illustrations of
these, id., p. 454, seq., figs. 475-479-

1 66 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

pleasing effects are produced in Pueblo pottery on the
unchanged surface of the coiled ware by pinching the coils
regularly in accordance with some pre-ordained plan, by the
finger-nails, the finger-tips, or with pointed sticks, after the
fashion of the good housewife decorating the edge of a pie.
In Holmes's work upon the pottery of the ancient villages of
Tusayan is figured a vase, belonging to the Hemenway
collection, which seems to me to be certainly the most
beautiful specimen of rude aboriginal pottery in the world.*
The coils are indented and left plain in such a manner as
to cover the whole surface with triangles in light and dark
shading. No colour has been applied ; no tool but a
woman's delicate fingers has touched the gracious surface.
It is a brilliant recitation in the old-time ceramics, an
example of fingering which all lovers of art behold with
pleasure, and conviction that in the stone age men and
women were under the spell of the beautiful.

It will be noted that the feminine gender is used
throughout in speaking of aboriginal potters. This is
because every piece of such ware is the work of woman's
hands. She quarried the clay, and like a patient beast of
burden bore it home on her back. She washed it and
kneaded it and rolled it into fillets. These she wound
carefully and symmetrically until the vessel was built up.
She further decorated and burned it and wore it out in
household drudgery. The art at first was woman's.

The Caribs are very skilful potters. The manner of their
working is precisely like that of the Pueblo people of the
United States, only the Caribs commence the work by
laying out a flat circular sheet of clay on a small piece of
board ; the rest of the material is rolled out between the
palms of the hands into long cylindrical pieces as thick as
a man's thumb. One of these rolls is laid round the edge
of the foundation so as to stand up like the rim of a tray.
This is made solid, smoothed up, and other rolls added
until the whole is complete. Colours and glazing are done

' Fourth An, Rep, Btir, Eihnoh^ p. 297, fig. 253.

THE POTTER^S ART. 1 67

with vegetable dyes and certain barks, burnt and ground
and mixed with the clay, give to the ware a black colour.

The Dinka tribes make pottery off-hand. Handles are
wanting in nearly all the pottery of Central Africa ; the
exterior is usually marked with incised lines, which afford
a rough surface to the bearer^s hands.^ The negroid in-
habitants of New Guinea are governed by the same rules.
The water-jars are globular and as symmetrical in form as
the pretty little ollas that come from Chiriqui. The
women carry them on the shoulder supported by one hand,
and not on the head as do their African congeners.

Among the Andamanese, both men and women make
pottery at present. A clay, unmixed with other substances,
is used, found only in a few places, and there the work is
carried on. The tools employed are a pointed stick, an
Area shell, and a kneading board. The clay is first cleaned
of stones and other foreign bodies, washed and kneaded to
a proper consistency. Rolls about fifteen inches long and
one half-inch thick are then made, and the pot is built up
by coiling one of these after another, the inequalities of
surface being removed by the shell, and the surface
ornamented with wavy, checked, or striped designs by
means of the pointed stick. The pot is then dried very
carefully in the sun and over the fire. When it is
sufficiently hardened, it is baked thoroughly by placing
burning pieces of wood both inside and around the vessel.
It is then allowed to cool and is considered ready for use.
With good management a pot is ordinarily fit for use by
the close of the day on which it is made. They are quite
uniform in shape, and vary in size from that of a cocoanut
shell to a capacity of two gallons or more.^ When needed
for travelling, pots are fitted in a light wicker frame of
bamboo like a conserved ginger jar. 3

' Schweinfurth, Aries Africattae^ London, 1875, Sampson Low, tab. i,
fig. 6.
- Man, Andaman Islanders^ London, 1883, Triibner, p. 154.
3 Ibid,^ p. 179.

l68 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

To any one who has traced his name in the sand or
pressed a seal on wax it will occur how the first ceramists
engraved their ware. Scarification of the whole surface was
and is practised universally. Modigliani figures such a vase
from Nias ; ^ and one cannot go amiss for examples in any
part of the world. Indeed, the same process has become
a craze both in pottery and wall decoration in civilised
countries. Even these patternless scratches are frequently
quite decorative, and they lead quickly to geometric
patterns, endless in variation and instructive in their
evolution.

A study of aboriginal textile processes is absolutely
essential to a correct understanding of the leading strings
which the primitive designer followed in working her way
out of plainness into most refined combinations. There
was no difficulty in accomplishing this, since women also
everywhere invented the textile art. Diagonal and diaper
weaving in basketry or matting were revelations to the
imagination of the potter. Her first movement away from
straight lines and square corners, which she practised as a
weaver, was toward triangles and herring-bone and an
endless variety of geometric forms on the softer material.
In the former, she was bound by the rigidity of her
filaments ; in the latter, her hand had no such limita-
tions.

A little further on, the study of form and colour on
painted ware will enable the reader to follow this transfer
certainly, even into more modern and higher art life.
The shifting of textile patterns to pottery was effected in
two ways, by freehand tracing with a pointed instrument
and by stamping, that is, by printing designs carved on
wood, by pressing natural objects on the surface, or by
pressing textile work on the clay.

Tracing or etching on pottery with any sort of pointed
tool seems to have been a necessity with the oldest of
potters, It is difficult to find fragments that have not been

f Un viaggio /'// Nias^ MHano,

THE potter's art. 1 69

SO treated. Work of this sort is freehand, however, and in
seeking to reproduce the geometric lines on textiles the
novice errs, comes short, and finally gets lost or bewildered,
doing the thing that is easiest. Many of the designs of this
class on ancient ware are only the shreds and distorted
remnants of older patterns that once had meaning.

Printing began with the impressions of the nails and the
markings on the finger-tips. This was quickly followed,
however, by deftly laying bits of string or some other textile
object or surfaces of natural objects upon the soft ware
regularly. And this suggested the making of stamps. If
cut in relief or constructed by attaching bits of wood, &c.,
to a plain surface, the design would be intaglio. If the
pattern were simply cut into the block or stamp the figures
would be in relief like the image on a pound of butter.
All of these methods were employed in savagery.

Quite in advance of this marking on the surface was the
creation of decorations in relief by modelling. Nothing
could be simpler than the first efforts. The pristine
modellers in clay were like children playing with putty
or wax, or making mud pastry. They simply took a little
surplus material and, working it into familiar form, luted it
on the side of the vessel, where it remained permanently
fixed.^

These simple elements were ready at once to modify their
forms by the methods already laid down, to combine in
patterns innumerable, and to become the alphabet of a
language which has been spoken by nearly all the races of
men. It is really a species of overlaying. The textile
worker found out a dozen ways of adding feathers, shells,
and other pretty objects by sewing, and the potter with a
little wet clay repeats the process.

The Pueblo potter, however, was not fond of overlaying.
Her work is in this regard severely plain, since she gets her
embellishment through surface etching and colour. To this
list must be added the plain Chiriqui ware, all Eastern

' Holmes, Fourth Aiu Rep. Bur. Elhuol.^ p. 283, figs. 233-238.

I70 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

American, and much that comes from Africa, the Malay
region, Fiji, and even the older wares of China, Japan, and
Corea.

The Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley, the
Mexicans, the Central Americans, and West Indians, the
South Americans especially, developed methods and types
of added ornament that are quite remarkable. They not
only combine bosses and fillets, and coils and scrolls in
harmonious grouping, but they ventured out into sculpture,
commencing with the crude and grotesque, and ending with
genuine portraiture of men and animals. These are so
faithfully executed at times that the naturalist has no
difficulty in naming the species. Vegetable forms are
often copied in the body of the ware itself, but rarely are
vegetable forms luted on as decoration.

Animal forms are combined, and monstrosities produced,
but there is little dramatic grouping to be seen, though
there is, especially in Central American ware, abundance of
animal life in action. The monkey is an especial favourite
for this class of modelled decoration on vases.

By examining a large series of pieces from any region the
student is able to mark the decay of gross forms, corre-
sponding to what Max Miiller has termed phonetic decay
in speech. Upon this vase, near its mouth, sits in lifelike
pose a frog, a monkey, or a bird. In the next, the image is
not quite so plain, and as the eye ranges along the series the
creature seems to be sinking into the material until a little
boss or two on the surface for eyes or ears or crest, marks
the spot where the full image ought to be, a kind of short-
hand, standing first for letters and then for whole words.
And this may raise the question which cannot be settled
here, namely, whether the plastic art was not deeply con-
cerned in that evolution. through which pictography became
phonography in the history of written speech. After
appreciating the exuberance of fancy in this Middle
American ware, one would have to wander long through
collections of the finest ceramic products ia the world to find

THE POTTER^S ART. I?!

a conception worked out that has not its barbaric prototype
in those. Not that the former is to be mentioned in the
same day with the latter. No such doctrine is promulgated
in this book. The lily is more beautiful than the lily seed,
yet the former is all in the latter potentially.

After all, the most gorgeous decoration in pottery is by
means of colour. Savages generally did not paint their ware,
nor do they at the present moment. The Peruvian was
economical in the use of the brush. The Mound Builder,
the Eastern Indian, the Mexican, the ancient peoples of the
old world, aborigines of the negroid area in Australasia,
sparingly used this style of ornament. The Egyptians,
indeed, made a pseudo-porcelain, in which quite a variety
of plain colours were used, but their most common ware
was in monochrome. The As8yro -Babylonian and the
Hebraco-Phenician branches of the Semitic family adhered
closely to the natural colours of the paste and the slip, with
sparing use of black. Even the Greeks, the Etruscans, and
the Romans used only body colour, to which in the climax
of art a plain glaze and black pigment were added. With
these simplest of all resources, the Greek potters created
products that are the astonishment of the world. Highly
coloured pottery did not make its appearance in Europe
until the Mohammedans asserted their sway. What was
doing in the Celestial Empire when the most cultivated
peoples of Ancient Europe were still working in terra cotta,
it is difficult to say. Very coarse earthen and stone ware
come from the Far East. But the Chinese invented porce-
lain. Even in the old blue ware, most antique of all, there
is the greatest wealth of animal and vegetal forms, of
scenery and grotesquerie.

It is a pleasure to turn aside from these earliest Eastern
Hemisphere efforts at colour to study for a while the ancient
and modern potters in Central America, and in the Pueblo
country. Enough has been said of the manner in which the
artist brought about the smooth vase ready for the colour.
Nothing more need be said concerning the slip or wash of

172 THE ORIGINS OF IWRNTION.

fine, thin clay laid on the surface, before or after the last
finishing touches of the engraver and modeller.

One will see quite frequently in collections of South-
western pottery and in other regions doubtless, little
compound vessels with two or more cavities, looking like

a number of small cups that got stuck together in the
making. They arc now and then labelled incense cups,
cosmetic cups (which they are frequently), or even condi-
ment cups. But they are the paint cups of the potters,
holding white, black, red, brown, yellow mineral or vegetal
colours, all mixed ready to be laid on.

By the side of these curious paint '' tubes " will be seen

THE potter's art. 173

half a dozen brushes made of very finely shredded textile
fibre, or of hair daintily seized to the rib of a leaf or the
quill of a bird. The portfolio of the artist is the whole
pictorial world around her. But her first hesitating efforts
in colour on her ware will be the imitation of the works of
her own hands. Later on, the natural world, the realm of
fancy, and the mythologic host will furnish her daughters
with motives. Lastly, the descendants of these will yield
themselves to that unseen and unsuspected but irresistible
current of art evolution, in which their mysterious designs
will connote nothing in the world to those who employ
them and the entire metamorphosis from naturalism to
convention will be completed. Mr. Gushing, who lived
several years with the Zuiii for the sake of studying them
thoroughly, makes some ingenious suggestions concern-
ing the development of colouring that ought not to be
omitted.

Decoration in colour began when the smooth surface was
reached. As long as the dish was left with the corrugations
on, there was no motive to use paint. Vessels are for
cooking, for serving food, for carrying water, and for storage.
For eating and drinking vessels the interior surface at least
would better be smooth. The Zuni eating bowls were
painted inside, not because that portion is more in view,
but because bowls were made smooth on the inside even
when they were left corrugated on the outside.^

This style of decoration once coupled with a kind of ware,
or Avith a definite part of a vessel, retained its association
permanently. Furthermore, every student of basketry
knows that the coiled basket bowl has a right side and
a wrong side, whereon the ends of filaments are fastened
off. The half-painted pot or bowl is a close imitation of
the basket in this regard.

It cannot have escaped the eye of ingenious and vigilant
potters in early times that clays of various kinds when

' Gushing, Fourth An, Kep» Bur, Ethnol.^ p. 498, fig. 525. This is an
excellent illustration.

burned change in colour, and produce a great variety of
shades. This fact was quite sufficient to explain the use
of clay-washes as paint, and as a permanent decorative

Fir.. 29.— Detail 011 Muki Vase.

Among the more advanced
ilso employed. But the most

Flu. 30.— Detail on Moki Vast.

primitive decoration of this sort was undoubtedly of mineral
origin.

In the South-western States of the Union occur in
abundance whole pieces and fragments of plain, rough grey

THE potter's art. 1 75

ware ; of whitish ware decorated in black ; of red ware,
either plain or adorned with geometric patterns in black
and white.

The grey or brown colour was produced when a cor-
rugated jar was smoothed down with stones and burned
without slip. There would be an exception to this where a
ferruginous clay abounded, and was used in building up the
vessel.

The tempering material of sand or broken pottery or
digratssant necessary to prevent the cracking of the vessel
in drying, left the surface rough. This led to the use of
slip, and a vessel thus prepared and burned had a creamy,
pure white, red-brown, or other colour, according to the
clay used.

Black was the next pigment discovered. Perhaps, Mr.
Gushing suggests, because the mineral blacks used in stain-
ing splints for basketry would naturally be tried on pottery,
and those that would remain became standard. One slip
would also colour another. At any rate, ancient remains in
the South-west show that white and black varieties came
first, then red and black, and later the red, with white and
black decoration. It was easy to employ the red clay for
the first wash, the blue clay, which burned white, for the
white pigment, and any of the black pigments for that
colour. Or the process might be interchanged. But there
are no examples of black ware with decorations in red or
white. The designs were applied to the surface of the ware
by means of brushes made of the fibre of the yucca, finely
shredded. The lines are in some Pueblo ware, and in much
of the lower Central American States, drawn with as much
care as one of our own artists' would bestow.

In all the painted ware the designs have been laid upon
surfaces that had been specially prepared to receive them.
The parts selected were generally those exposed to view, but
there are older reasons than that. The one suggested by
Mr. Gushing had to do with earlier forms. Granting, also,
that natural objects and basketry furnished the first sugges-

176 THE OBI&INS OK INVKNTION.

lion of form, they would likewise have to do with the earliest
attempt at ornamentation. Once the fashion was set, there
was nothing else to do subsequently but to follow it.

S.W. United States.

"Generally the neck furnishes the space for one zone of

devices, and the body that for another, while the shoulder,
where it is wide or particularly accented, suggests the intro-

flG. 32. — Painted Design on Bowl from Rio San Ji

duction of a third. In vessels of irregular form the figures
take such positions as happen to have been suggested by the
available spaces, by the demands of superstition, or the
dictates of fancy pure and simple." '

' Holmes, Fourth J'l. Kep. Bur. EthiiBl., p. 302.

THE potter's art. 177

Now, the very same motives have actuated potters in our
own day, or at least in historic times. Whether the parts
of the vessel to be decorated were best selected by savages,
civilisation follows suit, and has made little changes therein.
The same is true of colours in clays. It is to be seriously
questioned whether the most experienced potters could go
to our south-west country and find better materials for ware
than those sought out by the # aborigines, and often carried
to great distances.

There is no better way of showing the first suggestions
and the modifications of decorative motives than to study a
few designs evidently transferred from one art to another.
Holmes shows the commonest form of two-colour pattern.
Every embroiderer knows that a child could soon be taught
to imitate it in bead or sampler-work. In wampum belts,
in basketry, in primitive embroidery these geometric patterns
are ever obtruding themselves.^

In the basketry bowl, made in the same coiled combina-
tion by the Pima Indians, living on the Gulf of California,
just where California and Mexico come together, the meander
is perfectly worked out, not in straight lines, but in true radii
emanating from one pole of the sphere, and true parallels
following the coils around.*

Now let us compare with this a bowl found on the Rio
San Juan, not far distant from the corner-stone of the four
political divisions of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and
Utah. "A narrow zone of ornament based upon the
meander encircles the exterior margin of the rim, and a
broad, carefully drawn design, consisting of two parallel
meanders, occupies the interior. The meandered fillets of
the interior are in white, and the bordering stripes and the
upper and lower rows of triangular interspaces are in solid
black, while the median band and its connected triangles
are obliquely striped. The oblique portions of the meander
are indented or stepped." The drawing is a reconstruction

* Fourth An. Rep. Bur. Elhnol., p. 487, figs. 507, 508, 509.

• Sixth Au. Rep. Bur.Ethnol., p. 220, fig. 323.

12

17^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

from fragments, but the extended pattern will show what the
design was on the bowl. This pattern would be very easily
reproduced in basketry by a Mohave woman, and the steps
or indentations that she would reproduce have been carefully
copied by the painter.' In the paper from which this design
is taken, the author has produced an extended series of
portraits of the most precious specimens of Pueblo art, and
in the accompanying figures unrolls the designs by a sort of
Mercator's projection, so that the elements may be more
carefully studied. Nothing is more apparent than the
rounding of corners and the little liberties which gradually
lead the painter on to the point where she may venture in
freehand to produce vegetal and animal designs. Geometric
and textile motives are seen sparingly also on the ware of
Mexico, Central America, Peru, and in the Mississippi
Valley. The aborigines of these regions, however, were
painters on bark and skin and other surfaces. The painted
robe of the Plains Indians, the Mexican and Maya Codices,
and works of that kind, lent their pedagogic aid in giving
bias to the decorator's mind. It c;^n easily be imagined
that the Indians of our North-west coast, were they to
become suddenly potters would transfer all their wood and
slate carving skill to ceramics. Their luxuriant variety and
beauty of basketry work would also have their influence.
They would combine the geometric work of the Pueblos
with the rounded forms of the Mounds and of Chiriqui.
The Pueblo stocks do not seem ever to have painted on any
integument or paper. They made their coloured figures in
the sand by drawing furrows on the natural surface and
filling these with sands of different colours. Conventional
figures for beasts and birds and insects were painted on
pottery, but we must go further south for the native home of
animal forms on ceramic ware.*

* Holmes, Fourth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol,^ p. 317. Compare figs. 290 +
291 ; 292 + 293 ; 294 + 295 + 296 ; 302 -f 303 + 304 + 3^5 5 3^0 +

311 ; 318 + 319 ; 321 + 322 + 323 ; 324 + 325 + 326 ; 327 + 328 +

329; 332 + 333 + 334 ; 336 + 337 \ 338 + 339 ; 340 + 341 ; 342 + 343.
=^ Gushing, Fourth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol,, p. 515, fig. 551 ; p. 519, figs.
559, 560.

THE POTTER^S ART. 1 79

The Mound Builders' pottery departs from the Pueblo
pottery chiefly in the modelling of animal forms. It is at
the same time so inferior to the ware from the middle
American region that one might regard it as the rudi-
mentary state of the latter. Furthermore, those who have
studied the matter discover local peculiarities even in this
area, dividing it into an upper Mississippi type, a middle
Mississippi type, and a lower Mississippi type. The material
of this ware is often mixed with the rich alluvial soil of the
region, and tempered with broken or pulverised shells.
These natural supplies gave a special characteristic to the
work of Mississippi pottery.

Two types of body colour exist, the dark and the light,
these effects being due partly to the clays used and partly to
the manipulation. The fundamental forms are bowls, pots,
bottles, or jars, and vessels imitating natural or artificial
objects. In the first three types there is a similarity with
Pueblo work, but in the specialised forms the Mississippi
ware is unique.^ Holmes figures an animal-shaped dark
vase from Arkansas, combining a number of marks peculiar
to this area. The whole was moulded, the figure lays no
claim to portraiture, the feet are luted on, the surface was
engraved, after baking, with rings and involuted lines. In
this same fashion and very much after the order of the stone
pipes, but inferior in execution, occur imitations of fish in the
freshwater streams, of the wild animals, of birds, and of the
human form, besides grotesque objects in endless variety.
Their surfaces are ornamented by trailing, incising, or excava-
tion in the soft clay j by stamps and impressions ; by engrav-
ing on the dried or on the burnt surface, and by painting in
white, red, brown, and black.

A very great number of the animal and human forms
hint at the derivation of the first suggestion from a carving
rather than from a weaving people. The most noticeable
feature in the wooden dishes of the T'lingit and the Haida
stocks is the form of a seal, bear, bird, or other creature

' Holmes, Fourth An* Rep* Bur^EthnoLj p. 404, fig. 416.

l8o THR ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

common to this forest region, lying on the back, and the
stomach or body forming the vessel, while the head and the
.tail or the head of another animal form the handles. At
times the animal is erect, and the opening is in the back.
In very many cases the head and tail are merely carved in low
relief at the ends. The work on the old ware is extremely
well done. A very popular delineation in this woodware is
the head of an animal reaching above the edge of the dish
and forming a handle on one side. In the great museums
of Europe and America is to be seen an abundance of this
North-west Coast woodware.^

Along this same line of development the Mound Builder
made a bottle of the human form, thinking at the same time
of a gourd in the matter of pouring out the liquid. The
standard human effigy vase from this region is shown in
Holmes.2 A woman sitting on her heels with her hands on her
knees, with very good profile, is the subject. Holmes says of
this vase, which is ten inches high, that it is well modelled,
a good deal of attention having been given to the details of
anatomy. The back is very much humped, and the verte-
brae are represented by a series of knobs. The knees, calves,
ankles, and the various parts of the feet are indicated with
an approach to accuracy. Balfour shrewdly observes, with
reference to the grotesque in all this savage art, ** However
rude these representations may be, the intention is realistic,
and the greater or less resemblance to nature is only a ques-
tion of skill. But want of skill may of itself tend to alter
the character of such designs. Imperfect realism readily
degenerates into the grotesque, and this may partly account
for the great prevalence of fanciful representations of objects
among so many savage peoples." 3

The Mound Builder was capable of better work in pre-

* For a series of grotesque handles see Holmes, Fourth An, Rep, Bur,
Eihnol,, p. 388, figs. 383, 384; for vessels, figs. 385 to 391 ; 415-419;

445-447-
2 Holmes, Fourth An, Rep, Bur, Ethiwl,^ p. 425, figs. 452 and 453 b.
^ Henry Balfour, Midland Naturalist ^ 1890, vol. xiii. p. 10.

THE potter's art. i8i

seating the human form in clay. An example of this is seen
in a head five inches high, figured by Holmes. The walls
are from one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch thick. ** This
vase was modelled in plain clay, and allowed to harden
before the devices were engraved. After this a thick film
of fine yellowish-grey was applied to the face. The re-
mainder of the face, including the lips, received a thick
coat of dark red paint. The whole surface was then highly
polished." '

By far the most elegantly decorated ware in America is

found in the central regions, from the isthmus northward to

Nicaragua. Both geometric and animal forms are delineated

in such manner as to show that the makers were already in

the metallic age. The fabrics and the ceramic ware both

manifest the influence of that curious metal-work which

characterises the region. But, in what Mr. Holmes calls the

" Lost Colour Group," a new feature in laying on ornament

is introduced. " The paste is fine grained, and usually of a

light yellow grey tint throughout. The surface was finished

either in a light-coloured slip or in a strong red pigment.

In some cases the light tint was used exclusively, and again

the red covered the entire surface, but more frequently the

two were used together, occupying distinct areas of the same

vessel, and forming the ground work of decorative patterns

in other colours. They were polished down with great care,

giving a glistening surface upon which the markings of the

tool can still be seen. The bright red colour is only a

ground tint, and is not used in any case in the delineation

of design. The patterns were worked out in a pigment or

fluid now totally lost, but which has left traces of its former

existence through its effect on the ground colours. In the

beginning of the decoration a thin black colour, probably of

vegetal character, was carried over the area to be treated,

and upon this the figures were traced in the lost colour.

When this colour, or taking-out medium, disappeared, it

carried the black tint beneath, exposing the light grey and

* Holmes, Fourth An. Rep. Bur. Ethiwl.^ p. 407, fig. 420.

1 82 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

red tints of the ground, and leaving the interstices in black.
These interstitial characters are often mistaken for the true
design." ^

There is one instructive body of evidence that must not

be overlooked before the potter's art is dismissed. True it
is that not much remains of the textile industry of antiquity.
Here and there a few charred examples, and in desert or
rainless countries, like Peru and Egypt, the relics of more
advanced weaving and embroidery, that is all.

But it occurred to the potters of antiquity to adorn the
surfaces of their ware with textile patterns. The threads
made deep furrows on the clay while it was soft. The
burning fixed the impression. Centuries of exposure have
removed from these fragments the painted decorations and
the engraved designs. But dust has crept into the meander-
ing furrows, just as dust enveloped the Mesopotamian cities.
By washing the fragment and pressing on the surface soft
wax or putty or artist's clay, the most delicate filaments of
the ancient textile stand out revealed.

Curiously enough, the potsherds of North America, with
few exceptions, bear the impress of fabrics made to this day
by the living aborigines. More than this, the Lake dwell-
ings of Switzerland reveal among the charred objects not
only the plain weaving with which all are familiar, but the
twined style, common all over North America and Africa.
These, and even the very knots in the nets, are similarly
demonstrated on pottery, as well as a kind of embroidery on
bark, such as the Polynesians employ in making stamps for
tapa cloth.*

' Holmes, Sixth An. Rep. Bur, Ethnol., 1888, p. 113.

* Sellers, Pop. Sc. Monthly^ New York, vol. xi. p. 573. Holmes, ** Pre-
historic Textile Fabrics," Third An. Rep. Bur, Ethnol. .^ Washington,
1884, pp. 393-426, pi. xxxix., figs. 60-115.

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CHAPTER VI.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS.

** Inventor, Pallas, of the fattening oil,
Thou founder of the plough and ploughman's toil ;
Come all ye gods and goddesses tliat wear
The rural honours and increase the year,
You who supply the ground with seeds of grain,
And you who swell those seeds with kindly rain. "

Virgil, Geor^tcs, L

Primitive peoples approached the vegetal kingdom for
food^ iox fibre y and for woods or timber.

In the matter of aliment, no one can doubt that the earliest
peoples helped themselves from the bounty of nature, and
their inventions, if they made any, related merely to search-
ing for food and carrying it home.

In progressing beyond this natural harvest and consump-
tion, they adopted the order of selection and preparation
previously laid down in this volume, proceeding always
from the simple to the more complex in every respect. As
an example of a great variety of plants utilised by a savage
race whose wants were not excessive, Ellis, in his Polynesian
Researches^ mentions the apape, used by the natives in
building their canoes, and the faifai, employed for the same
purpose; the aito, or t02, {Casuarina equasitifolia)^ called
also ironwood, for making weapons ; the reva {Galaxa
sparta\ quite as valuable ; tiairi, or candle-nut tree (Alurties
triloba) ; tamanu, or ati {Callophyllum inophyllum)^ an insect-
proof wood out of which furniture and keels for canoes are

183

184 tHK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

wrought ; purau (Hibiscus tiliaceus)^ furnishing wood for
paddles, boards for native vessels, and rafters for ordinary
dwellings ; auti [Morns papyriferd)^ or Chinese paper mul-
berry, for manufacturing the cloth worn in the islands ;
mate {Ficus prolixd)^ the berries supplying a scarlet dye and
the bark furnishing fibre for the large and durable salmon
nets ; romaha {Urtica argented)^ from the bark of which are
made strong elastic fishing lines and smaller nets ; bread-fruit
{Artocarpus^ many species), the chief food tree of the islands ;
taro (Colocasia esculentd)^ the most serviceable article of
food ; the uhi, or yam {Dioscorea alatd)^ a valuable food
foot ; the umaia, or sweet potato ( Convolvulus batatus)^ also
grown for food ; pia, or arrowroot (Chailea taccd)^ grows
spontaneously, and is sometimes cultivated ; the haari,
cocoanut (Coccos nucifcrd)^ used for spears, wall plates,
rafters, pillars, kitchen knives, parts of canoes, fences,
bagging, fuel, house screens, mats, baskets, clothing, hats,
food^ apparatus of worship ; maia, plantain and banana
(Musa paradisiaca and M, sapientum)^ thirty varieties culti-
vated ; vi, or Brazilian plum (Spondias dulcis)^ an abundant
and excellent fruit ; ahia, or jambo {Eugenia Alallaccensis)^
the most juicy fruit in the island ; mape, or rata {Tuscarpus
edulis)^ used in times of scarcity as a substitute for bread-
fruit ; ti-root (Dracance terminalis)^ baked and eaten ; to, or
sugar-cane {Saccharum officinarum)^ often carried on long
journeys to appease hunger and thirst as well. To this list,
Ellis says, many more were added, but this will be ** suf-
ficient to show the abundance, diversity, nutritiveness,
delicacy, and richness of the provision spontaneously fur-
nished to gratify the palate and supply the necessities of
the inhabitants.^' * The Kew Gardens could multiply this
list ten times easily.

De Candolle discusses the origin of cultivated plants under
the following heads : —

1. Plants cultivated for their subterranean parts.

2. Plants cultivated for their stems or leaves.

* KUis, Polynes. I^es., London, 1859, Bohn, vol. i., chaps, ii. and iii.

PRIMITIVE UStS OK PLANTS. 1 85

3. Plants cultivated for their flowers.

4. Plants cultivated for their fruits.

5. Plants cultivated for their seeds.

In noting the unequal distribution of cultivable plants,
he enumerates the .inducements held out by Nature to
cultivation.

1. A region with plants worth the trouble of cultivating.

2. With not too rigorous a climate.

3. Having only moderate duration of drought.

4. Furnishing security to the cultivator.

5. Yet pressing the necessity of cultivation by the absence
of game, fish, and indigenous nutritious plants, isuch as
chestnuts, dates, bananas, breadfruit and the like.'

As an example of a plant worthy of cultivation, a sago
palm tree of good size will produce enough food to keep a
man a whole year. Wallace says it is truly an extraordi-
nary sight to witness a whole tree-trunk converted into food
with so little labour and preparation. The great Sago
district is in the island Ceram. When sago is to be made,
a full-grown tree is cut down, the leaves cleared away, and a
broad strip of the bark taken ofi^ the upper side of the trunk.
The pith is dug out with a club of hard wood having a
sharp piece of quartz embedded in one end, leaving a skin
not more than half an inch thick. This material is carried
away in baskets, made of the sheathing bases of the leaves, to
the washing machine, of which the large sheathing bases of
the leaves form the troughs and the fibrous covering from
the leaf stalks of the young cocoanut the strainer. Water
is poured on the pith, which is pressed against the strainer
until the starch is dissolved. The water charged with the
starch passes on to a trough, with a -depression in the centre,
where the sediment is deposited and the water trickles off by
a shallow outlet.^

Quite as remarkable are the banana, the breadfruit, the

* Cf, De Gandolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants^ kew York, 1885.
"" Wallace, Malay Archipelago^ New York, 1869, p. 383, seq. with
pictures of apparatus.

1 86 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

date, the yam, and perhaps others, besides all the great
cereals.

Vegetable food species, says Payne, may be arranged in
regard to the way in which they most quickly and amply
repay the labour which the process involves, into three
groups : (i) Plants bearing succulent fruits, stems, or leaves ;
(2) plants with succulent roots ; (3) culmiferous or cereal
grasses, supplemented by edible nuts and other materials for
the miller. They fall into the same order when it is sought
to group them with reference (i) to the order in which man
appears to have been led to appropriate them as natural
bases of subsistence ; (2) to the amount of labour necessary
to adapt them for human consumption ; (3) to the amount
of labour necessary to convert them from a natural to an
artificial basis ; (4) to the value possessed by each relatively
to their bulk and capacity for storage ; and (S) to the degree
in which their cultivation contributes to advancement.^

The harvester, the carrier, the miller, the baker, the cook,
the purveyor, are all to be seen in embryo in the occu-
pations of the first men and the first women in their role of
going to the plant kingdom for foodstuffs. Very often one
woman will be found in her daily cares performing all of
these functions.

At first, the planter, the farmer, or the gardener, did not
appear. The order of her coming (for this art primarily
belonged to women) seems to have been first as a field
botanist, familiarising herself with nutritious plants ; second,
as a weeder, removing from proximity with the useful plant
others that impeded its growth and were of no use ; third,
as a planter, putting the root or seed where it would gro^v
and take care of itself. An example or two taken from
actual life will illustrate at once how this primeval gleaner
came at last to dress and keep the earth.*

" The Panamint (Shoshonean) Indians of Death^s Valley,

' Payne, Hist, of America^ New York, 1892, vol. i. p. 333.
' Consult Ling Roth, ''Origin of Agriculture, "y. Anthrop, Jnsi,^ I^ondon,
1886, vol. xvi. pp. 102-136.

E USES OF PLANTS. 137

California, eat large quantities of the nuts of /Vims iiioiio-
phylla. In early autumn, after the seeds have matured, but
before the scales have opened, the cones are beaten from the
trees, gathered into baskets and spread out on a smooth
piece of ground exposed to the heat of the sun. The scales
soon become dry and crack apart, and the seeds are shaken
out by blows of a
stick. They
then gathered into
baskets and most
of them are cached
in dry places among
the rocks for use
during the year,
To prepare them
for food the nuts
are put into a basket
with some live
coals and shaken or
stirred until theyare
gradually roasted." '
Theseedsofmany
Other plants, indeed
of almost all that
are not poisonous,
are also used. The
met hodofprocuring
them is different
with each plant, but
the process of roasting is always the same. The common
sand grass of the desert {Oryzopsis membranacea) produces
an abundance of seed and is generally used. In gathering
it the squaw carries in one hand a small basket and in the
other a paddle made of wicker-work resembling a tennis
racket. With this she beats the grass panicles over the
basket.

' Covilk, Am. Anlhrfffologisi, Washinfilon, 1892, vol. v, p. 352.

1 88 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

One of the prickly pears {Opuntia basilar is) used by these
Panamiiit Indians has taxed the ingenuity of the harvester,
and her methods of overcoming the difficulties is very in-
genious. " In May and early June the flat, fleshy joints of the
season^s growth as well as the buds, blossoms, and immature
fruit are fully distended with sweet sap. They are broken
ofi^ with sticks and collected in large baskets. Each joint
having been rubbed with grass to remove the fine, barbed
prickles, is exposed to the heat of the sun. Instead of the
drying process, another, more elaborate, is sometimes
adopted. A hole about ten inches in depth and three
feet in diameter, is dug in the ground and lined with stones.
Upon this a fire is built and other stones thrown in. When
they are thoroughly heated — the ashes, coals and all — one
layer of stones is scraped away, and some fresh or moistened
grass spread in the hole. Next a layer of cactus joints is
added, then more hot stones, and so on, until the pile is well
rounded. The whole is then covered with a mat, and lastly
with moist earth. After about twelve hours of steaming
the pile is opened, and the na'-vo is salted and eaten. A
portion is dried and preserved."

There grow in the desert several large crucifers. The
process of preparation is as follows : The leaves and young
stems are gathered and thrown into boiling water for a few
minutes, then taken out, washed in cold water and squeezed.
The operation of washing is repeated five or six times, and
the leaves are finally dried ready to be used as boiled cab-
bage. The washing removes the bitter taste and substances
that produce nausea and diarrhoea.

The ripe pods of the mesquit bean (Prosopis jtiltjiora)
contain very hard, bony seed, but the spaces between them,
the body and septa of the pod, are stored with a small amount
of nutritious matter, consisting principally of sugar. These
are gathered and often cached until spring by the California
Indians. The pods are ground in a wooden mortar and the
flour sifted out.

The common reed {Phvagmttes vulgaris) furnishes the

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 1 89

Panamint Indians with sugar. In early summer, when the
plants have attained nearly full size they are cut and dried
in the sun. When perfectly brittle the whole plant is
ground and the finer portions separated by sifting. This
moist, sticky flour is moulded by the hand into a thick gum-
like mass. It is then set near a fire and roasted until it
swells and browns slightly, and in this toffy-like state it is
eaten.

In April when the flower buds of the Yucca hrevifolia are
swelling, they are in a proper condition for food. The buds
are terminal on the branches, and are protected by a close
rosette of serrated, stiff, pointed, almost dagger-like leaves.
The fibre of these leaves is so tough and the situation of the
buds on the stem such that it would be diflftcult to cut one
out even with an axe or hatchet. The Indians substitute
dexterity for instruments. The four or five uppermost
mature leaves are drawn together over the apex of the bud
and grasped by the hand ; then by a quick, sidewise bend
the head is broken off. The leaves and tips are discarded,
leaving an egg-shaped, solid, juicy mass. This is roasted on
hot coals and eaten at once or kept until cold.

In some parts of the Charleston Mountains, Nevada, the
Piutes use a small mescal {Agave utahcnsts). Where
the plant abounds are numerous mescal pits, in which it
has been cooked in previous years. These mescal pits, as
they are called, are circular depressions in the ground six to
twenty feet in circumference, and sloping evenly to a centre
one three feet in depth. They are deeply lined with coarse
gravel. A great fire was built in a pit, and kept up until
the stones were very hot. The fire was raked out, the
mescal plants placed in and covered with grass. After two
days of steaming the pile was opened, and the mescal was
ready for eating.

Mr. Coville, the Botanist of the Department of Agriculture
in Washington, in his function devotes much energy to
searching for the native American plants that might yet be
brought under cultivation. In this work it is necessary to

190 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

know what species were of use to the aborigines, and the
result is most astonishing. The list would include hundreds
of species.*

Wherever savages have been visited in their native
simplicity, they seem to have found out just how to garner
the products of plants in the best manner. The Calispel
Indians gather cranberries with rakes ; the Ojibwa woman
paddles her canoe among the wild rice, and with a proper
wand beats the seeds into a coarse mat spread on the
bottom. The gatherers of certain water-plants know the
feeling of the desired roots with their feet, and use these
members to secure them.

After all has been said about other devices, the digging
stick is the beginning of agricultural implements, the pro-
genitor of the hoe, the spade, the plough. It would be
difficult to find a tribe so low down as not to know its use.
A patent-office examiner would declare that nothing could
be simpler than to rub a stick on a rock to give it a point.
Hardening this point in fire came later. At any rate, the
California tribes dig clams, the Oregon tribes dig roots,
the Australian tribes dig vermin, the Andamanese dig yams,
and all over Africa root-food and animal food are forced out
of the ground with the digging stick. As for taro, the
Polynesian both plants it and harvests it with the same
implement.

Ellis says : ** The chief and almost only implement used
was the o, a stick sharpened at the point, and used in
loosening and turning up the earth. Formerly they
hardened the end with which they penetrated the soil by
charring it in the fire. No use is made of the foot in
thrusting the spade into the soil, but the person digging
assumes a crouching attitude, pierces the ground, and breaks
up the earth by the strength of the hands and arms. The

^ Consult Sturtevant, " Origin of Garden Vegetables," Am. Natu7-aH5t^
vol. XIX. ; Newberry, " Plants used by North American Indians," Pop. Sc.
Monthly i vol. xxxii. See also Goodale, " Useful Plants of the Future,"
Proc. A. A. A. S., 1892, pp. 1-38, and ** Official Guide to Kew Gardens."

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS.

making and repairing of fences occupies much of the time
of those engaged in the cultivation of the soil." '

This implement is not only useful in taking from the soil

the crops that Nature has planted and raised, but it is the
beginner of artificial planting.

An exceedingly ingenious deidce in the nature of a

' Ellis, Polyius. Rescarchts, London, 1859, vol. i. [j. 137.

192 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

harvesting implement is the kelp-knife of the Oregon
Indians. The stalks of kelp are harvested and tied together
to form the long lines used in deep-sea fishing. To cut
loose the stalk from its root a slip-knot of cedar withe
containing a knife-blade is passed over the kelp-bud at the
top of the water. A stone sinker carries the apparatus
down the stem to the bottom, and the harvester, holding
the kelp stem with one hand, quickly pulls a line which he
had previously attached to the cutter, and severs the stalk
close to the root. When wet these stems are very strong,
but when dry they snap like pipe-stems.

The farming corporations in new countries now burn off
the prairie, and by means of the steam-plough are able to
cultivate thousands of acres under one management. They
follow this up with wheel, spring-tooth, and crushing
harrows, and plant their crops with buggy drills. All this
seems easy enough, for it is naught but riding. Many who
read this will remember their grandfather's farm, where the
processes were far more simple and the work more laborious.
Some have travelled in Mexico and Sicily and Tunis, where
the ploughs are as primitive as they were in the days of the
prophets. But this is nowhere near the beginning of agri-
culture. Let us see. A company of Cocopa or Mohave or
Pima women set forth to a rich and favoured spot on the
side of a canon or rocky steep. They are guarded by a
sufficient number of men from capture or molestation.
Each woman has a little bag of gourd seed, and when the
company reach their destination she proceeds to plant the
seeds one by one in a rich cranny or crevice where the roots
may have opportunity to hold, the sun may shine in, and
the vines with their fruit may swing down as from a trellis.
The planters then go home and take no further notice of
their vines until they return in the autumn to gather the
gourds. This is the testimony of E. Palmer, who spent
many years as a collector among the American aborigines.
Seed-time and harvest : no preparation of the soil, no
tending of the young plants ; ingathering, that is all.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PI^NTS. 1 93

The Polynesians propagated the ante {Morns papyrifera)^
or Chinese paper mulberry, from scions, just as in England
the osiers are raised. The arum was multiplied by trans-
planting the small tubers which grow round the principal
root, or by setting out the top or crown of the roots that
had been used for food/

The breadfruit tree was propagated from shoots springing
out of the roots. The uhi or yam {Dtoscorea alatd) was
cultivated with much care. On the sides of hills and banks
terraces were formed of mixed rich earth and decayed leaves.
The roots were kept in baskets till they began to sprout.
The eyes or sprouts were then cut off with pieces of the root
attached to them, and these spread out and left to dry. The
rest of the yam was eaten. The native agriculturists had a
theory that it was better to plant the eye with only a thin
shaving of the root than with the whole tuber or a thick
slice attached as we do. When the slips were sufficiently
dry they were put into the ground sprouts uppermost, and
a small portion of leaves and mould laid over them. When
the roots began to swell the farmers kept hilling them up,
as we call it, until they were sufficiently mature to harvest.
The umara or sweet potato {Convolvulus hatatus or chryso-
rtzus) received the following treatment. A mound of rich
black mould is raised, nine or ten feet in diameter and three
feet high. In the top of this mound they inserted a small
bunch of vines, which germinated and produced abundantly.
Arrowroots were planted whole, and a number of tuberous
roots formed at the extremities of the fibres.

On his first voyage Columbus found the natives culti-
vating what is called a yam {Dtoscorea alatd). "They
powder and knead them, and make them into bread ; then
they plant the same branch in another part, which again
sends out four or five of the same roots." ^

The " Campas of Peru burn and cut down the lofty

' Ellis, Polynes, Res,, London, 1859, Bohn, vol. i. pp. 34, 344.
"* J» of Christopher Coluvibtts, Hakluyt, London, 1893, vol. Ixxxvi,
. 112.

13

I<J4 THE ORIGINS OK IXVENTIOX.

forests around their cabins (Jianguchjs), and in the area thus
opened they plant or sow bananas, coca, maize, yuccas,
beans, maiigoiias, and uncuchm, solanaceous plants ana-
logous to potatoes. The cotton plants spring up spon-
taneously about their houses, as nettles do with us." '

The reader has already been reminded of the beneficent
co-operation of fire in the subduing of the earth. One who
has lived in Canada, or the Western States of the Union, or

Fig 36 —Sum al of ancient fonn of Plough n Span sh agricult

in the colonial possessions of the Great Powers of Europe,
knows how powerless man would even now be without this
generous aid.

"The chief use of the hatchets among the Delaware
Indians of New Jersey," says Kalm, " was to make good
fields for maize plantations. If the ground was covered
with woods, they cut off the bark all round the trees with

■ Ollivier Ordinaire, Kev. d'Etkneg., 1887, vol. vi. p. 271. Payne, Hiu,
of APitrita, Oxford, 1892, vol. i- pt 365 sa^.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 195

their hatchets at the time when they lose their sap. The
trees thus girdled died, and the ground was a little turned
up with crooked or sharp branches." * This attack upon
the tree is absolutely efficacious, even in old forests where
the amount of undergrowth that savages could get together
would not be sufficient to burn the life out of the giants. .

In the line of inventing the plough, Livingstone calls
attention to a double-handled hoe used by the women in
Portuguese Africa. It consists of two limbs of a tree joined
by a short piece of the trunk, into the grain of which the
shank of the hoe is driven. The implement is worked by a
dragging motion, and in the excellent figure given there are
knobs cut on the extreme ends of the handles which might
well serve to attach traces for these primitive draught
animals.^

Naturally the question would arise, why all regions are
not alike ready to receive the hoe and the plough. In this
search de Candolle will be of great service. He says, ** The
various causes which favour or obstruct the beginnings of
agriculture, explain why certain regions have been for
thousands of years peopled by husbandmen, while others
are still inhabited by nomadic tribes. . . . Into Australia,
Patagonia, and even in the south of Africa the plants
of the north temperate zone could not penetrate by reason
of the distance, and those of the intertropical zone were
excluded by great drought or by absence of high tempera-
ture. At the same time the indigenous species were very
poor. It is not the mere want of intelligence or of security
which prevented the inhabitants from cultivating them." 3

The preparation of the ground opens the way to the
simplest fashions of tillage. The Zufii head-man mounts
the top of his house every morning and gives his orders to
each member of the clan about what to do in the peach

* Kalm, Travels i <Sr»f., London, 1771, vol. ii. p. 38.

* Livingstone, Trav, &»c.f in S, A/r,, New York, 1858, p. 442, figured.
3 De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants, New York, 1885, I^- A.

& Co., p. 3.

iq6 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

orchard, the pumpkin patch, the cornfield. The hoeing is
indeed very scanty, but one thing cannot be intermitted ;
rapacious animals and birds are ever on the alert. There
is no genus or species of scarecrow that they are not
familiar with, so the Zuni farmer has a hard time of it. His
prayers, his vigilance, and his labours never cease until the
crop is safely in his stomach.

The African farmers are equally alert. Most of the
agriculture is woman^s work ; it is of the African woman
that it might be written, ** Woman^s work is never done."
More than in the Western Continent, the great beasts and
small trample down and eat up the crops. The fence, there-
fore, derives its origin quite as much from a desire to protect
plants as from a military motive. Almost all the pictures of
African and Indo-Pacific home life include this feature, and
the Pueblo peoples know how to stand poles on end and
fasten them together by strong withes in twined weaving.

There are many things that sorely try the patience of the
Dyaks as they watch with unflagging interest the growth of
their crops. It is true the pigs and deer are excluded by
means of the wooden fence, but nothing short of the most
untiring vigilance can keep out the climbing and winged
pests such as monkeys, squirrels, rats, and sparrows, some of
which are sure to visit the farm as the paddy is ripening.*

The elaboration of mechanical devices and methods of
ingathering began with mere plucking, just as animals do.
The many inventions for climbing trees are really harvest-
ing apparatus. The savage appliances for going to the
great harvest-fields of Nature would be just as useful for the
ingathering of cultivated crops. Knives of stone were the
first sickles, and human backs were the earliest farm
waggons. Very old forms of bronze sickles are also to be
seen in European museums. Many of those who read these
pages will have seen a scarcely improved one of iron in use
in Norway and Sweden.

The same is true of threshing and winnowing, or the

* Ling Roth, /. Anthrop, Inst., London, 1892, vol. ii. p. 23.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS.

197

separation of the chaff from the grain. In America, fire is

universally used for this purpose. A mass of gathered

heads is placed in a conical basket and rubbed with the

hands. Then the mixture of seed and chaff is put into a

" roasting tray," which is a large flat basketry dish. Then

red-hot stones are laid on the mass by means of wooden

tongs. The seeds are

parched to a turn and

the chaff is burned

The first flail was the

commonest kind of a

stick, the first fanning

mill was a forked stick

co-operating with the

wind. These were all

primarily used with the

wild seeds. The trans

ition from the dropping

of grain seeds naturally

to the intentional

planting of them was

not difficult to learn

Neither did the thresh

ing and winnowing of

the crops from planted

seeds need or receive

any change of treat

ment.

On the advent of
domestic animals two

styles of threshing came into vogue ; the one was simply
driving donkeys or other animals over the straw ; the other
was the use of the mowrej or tribtilum, not yet gone out of
use in North Africa and South-western Asia.

"^he common mode of threshing in Palestine," according
to Thomson, " is with the mowrej, drawn by a yoke of oxen,
until the grain is shelled out and even the straw is ground

198 THE ORIGIKS OF INVENTtON.

into chaff. Bits of rough lava are fastened into the bottom
of the mowrej and the driver sits or stands on it. The
construction of the floor is very simple. A circular space,
from thirty to fifty feet in diameter, is made level, and the
ground smoothed off and beaten solid. The entire harvest
is brought to them and there threshed and winnowed, and
the different products carried to I heir respective places.
The Egyptian mowrej has rollers which revolve on the
grain. In the plains of Hamath I saw this machine much
improved on by having circular saws attached to the rollers.
On some floors here at Yebna, there was no machine of any
kind ; but boys rode or drove donkeys and horses or oxen
round upon the grain. No one continued long in the same
direction, but each changed every few minutes to keep the
animals from becoming dizzy. The grain as it is threshed
is heaped up in the centre of the floor, and when the wind
blows the mixture is thrown up with shovel and fork to
have the dust and chaff and straw blown away." '

Of scarcely less importance in the art of feeding on the
vegetable kingdom is the storing of food. The preservation
for future use demands a knowledge of the nature of the
crop and the ever-present danger of destructive animals and
decay and thieves called for eternal vigilance on the part of
the owners.

In the Chapter on Fire reference was made to the drying
and cooking of animal and vegetable food. Many seeds
may be kept indefinitely by excluding moisture, others, like
the succulent roots, are preserved in cold, damp caches. But
the most important invention in this respect is the granary.
The animals taught men to build granaries. Not only the
ant has something to say to the sluggard. In California
the woodpeckers bore holes in trees, and store in each one

* Thomson, The Laiid and the Book^ New York, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 149
to 155. Five excellent illustrations. The reader will again notice that all
the intricate invention in the modem thresher is not in the working part,
which remains practically the same, but in the manual part which sub-
stitutes machinery for man or beast.

200 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

an acorn for futuie use. The Indians, in times of scarcity,
actually rob these acorn stores to supply themselves. Bees
may be mentioned whose stores are also appropriated, and
there are a thousand and one animal and vegetal gums
and resins of which men help themselves. The natives of
every land commence their life of true economy by
invading the stores of their animal neighbours. Not
content with killing and snaring the creatures they proceed
also to administer on their effects.

The gleaning of the fields and of the waters really
supposes the use of storehouses. William Strachey says,
" Their corne and indeed their copper hatchetts, howses,
beades, perle, and most things of value they hide in the
grownd within the woods, and so keep them untill they
have fit use for them." ^

Granaries or public receptacles were by the people in
Florida built of stone or earth, and roofed with palmetto
leaves and clay. They served as depositories for maize,
fruits, nuts, nutritious roots, dried fishes, alligators, deer,
dogs, and other jerked meats. Hoards of corn, nuts, and
meat are frequently mentioned in the early narratives as
existent among the primitive peoples of this region.^

" The general storehouses of the Muskhogean tribes were
circular in form — their walls constructed of stone and' earth,
and their roofs fashioned with the branches of trees, grass,
clay, and palmetto leaves — were located in the neighbour-
hood of streams and in retired spots, where they were
protected from the direct rays of the sun. They were built
and furnished by the common labour of the tribe, and in
them were stored corn, various fruits, and the flesh of fishes,
deer, alligators, snakes, dogs and other animals, previously
smoked and dried on a scaffold." 3

Among the Nutka Indians of Vancouver Island, in

* Hist, of Travaile into Va.^ London, 1849, Hakluyt Soc, p. 1(3.
' Cf. Jones, Smithson. Kep.^ 1885, vol. i. p. 900.

3 Jones, So, htdiansy New York, 1873, p. 12, refers to pi. xxii., xxiii.,
xxiv. in Brevis Narratis, also p. 35.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 20I

addition to stores of oil, dried fish, and spawn, several
varities of seaweed and lichens, as well as the camass and
other roots were regularly laid up for winter ; while berries,
everywhere abundant, were gathered in great quantities in
their season, and at least one variety preserved by pressing
in bunches.'

The Hurons of Canada, according to Cartier, 1535, had
good and large fields of corn, which they preserve in
garrets at the tops of their houses. Champlain speaks to
the same effect (16 10)."

According to Bandelier, Mindeleff, and other explorers of
the Pueblos, the rooms of the ground storey in ancient
times were used for granaries and storage. Even the roofs
were used for the temporary storage ; " and in autumn,
after the harvests have been gathered, the terraces and
copings are often covered with drying peaches, and the
peculiar long strips into which pumpkins and squashes
have been cut to facilitate their desiccation for winter use."
In another Pueblo a bin was built upon a ledge in a corner
of a room by means of slabs and clay. ** In many houses,
both in Tusayan and Cibola, shelves are constructed for the
more convenient storage of food." Another device for the
storage of food is a pocket or bin built into the corner of a
room.3

Schweinfurth says that granaries for corn, resting on posts,
are in use in the whole of Central Africa as far as the
tropical rains and white ants extend. In the example and
figures of the author there is nothing left out which would
be thought essential in modern storehouses. They are secure
from dampness below and rain above, vermin and thief
proof, and universally have a look-out on the top.4

* Bancroft, Native Races^ vol. i. p. 187.

* Referred to with other references by Lucien Carr, Ky, Geol. Survey,
vol. ii. p. 14.

3 Victor Mindeleff, Eighth An, Rep, Bur, EthnoL, Washington, 1891 ;
consult index sub voce ** Storage."
^ Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae, London, 1871, pi. vi. fig. i.

202 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

An ingenious granary is built by the Sehre negroes,
neighbours of the Niam Niam, embracing the three ideal
characteristics of such a structure, namely, protection against
moth and rust and thieves, — ^in this case termites and ver-
min, dampness and thieves. A post is set in the ground and
peeled, and on the top of this the receptacle for corn is made,
vase shaped, from the clay taken from the mushroom-form
structures of the Termes mordax. Over the clay structure a
thatched roof is built in a very tasteful manner.'

Cisterns as granaries are of very ancient date. In lime-
stone countries, no sooner did men begin to lay up provisions
than they discovered ants and mice and rats. The cisterns
of Palestine were proof against dampness as well as from
vermin and plundering robbers. Indeed, the owner of the
crops has taken refuge in them, and there also has he
incarcerated his enemies. In the old sieges, lasting many
years, the preservation of grain must have been a study.
Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that the ability to pre-
serve grain for a long time, as in Mexico, Peru, and Egypt
was a factor in the early and more rapid development of
their populations. At any rate, the oldest of historic
nations elaborated early the granary.*

There was no such thing as a food-safe in the economy of
the ancient Hawaiian house, and to preserve victuals from
pigs, dogs, and rats, it was necessary to suspend the gourds
that contained them beyond their reach. Usually a pole
was fixed in the floor of the house, and to the top was fitted
a notched cross-bar, from which a number of gourds might
be hung.

Before the introduction of cats the Hawaiian used a bow
and arrow to kill rats and mice. But they never employed
this weapon in war.3

The Kyan, Kinah, and Lanahan Dyaks stow their paddy

* Schweinfurth, Aries Africanae, London, 1875, pi. xx. fig. 4.
' Wilkinson, Afut, Egyptiaiis^ quoting the Bible, Diodorus, and other
writers; index, sub voce, "Granaries."

3 Brigham, Cat, Bishop, Mus,, Honolulu, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 23, 31.

Primitive Uses of plants. 203

in barns built for the purpose. The floor is six feet above
the ground and the posts are encircled with wooden discs to
keep off the rats.'

Compare this with the more primitive device of the
Fijians, cut from a solid block of wood. In form it re-
sembles a clumsy spindle, with shaft and whorl of one piece.
By the part above the whorl the apparatus is suspended.
At the lower end of this axis any number of hooks are cut,
and from these all sorts of food are suspended. The wooden
disc prevents vermin crawling down the shaft.

Plants were early used in healing disease. It is well
understood by all ethnologists that disease is thought by
savages to be the possession of the individual by evil spirits.
The cure of maladies, therefore, would be akin to sorcery,
and the doctor is exorcist, seer, conjurer, fortune-teller, and
physician all in one. But, with this knowledge fully before
us, we are bound to own that a deal of experimental medicine
and surgery were early developed in spite of such wrong
theories. When a Florida Indian doctor scarified the fore-
head of a patient with a shell and sucked therefrom the
demon of disease, he was cupping and leeching his sick man
and nothing short. When, again, he compelled the patient
to inhale the smoke of tobacco or other medicinal herbs, he
was fumigating him, and unwittingly discovering a little in
bacteriology. These same doctors had found out purgatives
and emetics and astringents to drive away with disgust the
evil spirits he had in his mind ; but the disease departed
quite as soon for him as for us, when he gave the proper
medicine. Bathing, sun-baths, exercise, massage, and even
faith-cure had a part in this practice. ** The Inhabitants
giue great credit vnto their speeche, which oftentimes they
finde to bee true." ^

The number of medicinal plants in the pharmacopoeia ot
any savage people is surprisingly large. Many of them

* Ling Roth,y. Anthrop, Inst.y London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 30.
^ Hariot, quoted by Jones, So, Indians^ pp. 30-34. See Max Bartels*
interesting work, Medicin der Naturvolker, Leipzig, 1893.

204 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

remain in use ; but in the forests are many more, which
they have taken once and abandoned for ever.

Not enough has been here said about the improvement of
plants under domestication. The inventive genius of early
man is shown most remarkably in this industry, if the reader
will consider the fact that the very earliest historians and
poets and myth-makers record the names of all the well-
established fruits and vegetables. No grain is a better
evidence of this than maize. Payne says, " That the maize
as we now have it is practically the creation of human
labour and ingenuity is proved not only by the insignificant
size of the euchloena grasses, the cognate wild species, but
by its rapid deterioration if allowed to become feral; the
first step of which is the familiar sodden corn of the American
farmer." '

And this brings us, in the second place, to consider woods
or timbers. Wood-workers at first began with the use of
saplings, and as their descendants became more clever they
attacked small trees and then larger ones. Where the sap-
ling would not serve the purpose, there was always abundance
of fallen timber, and the Arctic peoples relied upon drift
wood. The savage woman was a collector of faggots, which
she broke for her fire with her hands or with the great stone,
ever near. Both she and her man early learned to sever
the slender tree trunk by means of fire or a sharpened stone,
whether to make a club, a tent-pole, or a handle.

The very first settlers in New England observed that
"The Indian houses are made of poles, large end in the
ground, in a circle and bound at the top with the bark of
walnut-trees, covered with sedge sewed together with the
splinter of bone of a Cranes legge. Leaving several places
for doors which are covered with mats which may be rolled
up and let down with pleasure." ' These sewed mats will
be referred to again under textiles. They are mentioned by

* Payne, Hist, of America^ New York, 1892, vol. i. p. 337.
^ Morton, New English Canaan y 1632, p. 19 ; also Bozman, Mary land ^
p. 70.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 205

John Smith, and are now made by the Indians of Washington
State.

Concerning the natives of North-west Canada, Hearne
relates, " Agreeably to the Indians* proposal, we remained
ten days, during which time my companions were busily
employed (at their intervals from hunting) in preparing small
staves of birch-wood, about one and a quarter inch square
and seven or eight feet long. These serve as tent-poles all the
summer while on the barren ground, and as the fall advances
are converted into snow-shoe frames for winter use. . . . All
the wood-work was reduced to its proper size for the][sake of
making it light for carriage.'* '

None of these incidental avocations interfere with or
retard the Indians in their journey, for they always take
advantage of every opportunity which offers as they pass
along, and when they see a tree fit for their purpose, cut it
down, and either strip off the bark, if that be what they
want, or split the trunk in pieces, and after hewing it roughly
with their hatchet, carry it to the tent, where in the even-
ings or in the mornings before they set out they reduce it
with their knives to the shape and size which is required."

The prettiest wood-working is done by the South Sea
Islanders upon their clubs, paddles, and ceremonial adzes.
To dig up the tree of the proper size, cut it off, dress it
down, and prepare it for the carver was the work of the
digging-stick, the adze, the scraper, and the sharp-grained
rubbing-stone. As soon as the wood was sufficiently seasoned
it was further hardened and dried by means of fire. The
surface was heated enough to destroy the grain of the wood.
The engraver then with a shark's tooth etched upon the
surface a lace-work of geometric patterns, varied now and
then with a bit of true sculpture.

The Panamint Indians of California make their bows from
the desert juniper {Juniper us calif ornica utahensis). The
Indian prefers a piece of wood from the trunk or a limb of
a tree that has died and seasoned while standing. At low

» Hearne, yiwrw^y, <5r»f., London, 1795, p. 87. « Ibid,, op, cit,^ p. 280.

306 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

altitudes in these desert mountains moist rot of dead wood
never occurs. A mature tree subjected to the intensely
drying heat of the region is in perfect condition for this use.
The bow rarely exceeds three feet in length, and is strength-
ened by glueing to its back a cover composed of strips of deer
sinew laid lengthwise along it. The string is made of twisted
sinew, or sometimes of cord prepared from Indian hemp.
Arrows are made from the stems of the reed (Phragmites
vulgaris) and from willow shoots. The shaft is about three
and one half feet long. Nearly mature but still green leaves
are cut, their leaves removed, and the stems dried and

straightened m the hands before a fire In the straightening
process use is often made of a small stone, across the face of
which have been cut two grooves large enough to admit an
arrow shaft. This stone is heated, and a portion of the
crude arrow is laid in one of the grooves until it is hot.
The cane is then straightened by holding it crosswise in the
teeth and drawing the ends downward. By repeating this
process throughout the whole length a marvellously straight
arrow is produced. The head of the arrow is a pin of very
hard wood, taken, I believe, from some species of Atriplex,

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 20?

or grease-wood. It is about five inches long, and tapers
evenly to a blunt point. The base is inserted about three-
fourths of an inch into the hollow of the reed, and rests
against the uppermost joint. It is bound in place by a thin
band of sinew. At each joint of the arrow-shaft is burned a
ring of diagonal lines. The base of the shaft is notched and
feathered with three half feathers, bound on with sinew, and
slightly twisted to give the arrow a rotary motion. Willow
arrow-shafts are " sand-papered by drawing the stick back-
ward and forward in the angle between two flat stones held
in the palm of the hand." ^

The drums of the Dinka are made by stretching a cleansed
goat-skin over the broader, open end of a scooped-out piece
of the trunk of a tree (mostly of the tamarind), and in the
fashion of our drums, tightened by means of cross-straps
strung together by a second skin covering the lower, massive
end. Kettle-drums of similar build and identical shape
are much used in the East Indies. Nor was ancient Egypt
destitute of them.^

The " dug-out " drum has a very wide distribution. In
looking over a large collection of musical instruments the
reader will find that the dug-out drum was first a sonorous
log, then a hollowed piece, then with one head, afterwards
provided with two heads of membrane, and finally with
tightening apparatus, while the cylinder underwent adaptive
modifications.

Besides the making of holes through wood, described in
the Chapter on Tools, the ancient wood- workers needed often
the help of a tube.

In many of the Eskimo and North-west Coast pipes,
the long stems are frequently crooked, and the problem
is to bore, a curved or bent hole for the smoke. In some
cases two holes are bored, one from the mouthpiece, another
from the other end, these holes meeting about half way and

* Coville, op. city p. 360.

» Schweinftirth, Artes AfrUanae^ London, 1875, Sampson Low, p. i and
fig. I.

208 THB ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

near the underside, making a very obtuse angle with each
Other. The meeting of these holes is generally so near the
underside of the stem that a small piece of ivory or wood is
there let in, and may be removed to clean the pipe. At the
butt-end a third hole is bored down upon the main perfora-
tion to connect with the cavity in the bowl and the main
perforation, and from this point outward is stopped with a
plug. Another device of these cunning savages for per-
forating their crooked pipe-stems is to split the stem and cut
a half-round gash or furrow in each, so that when the two
halves are brought together the gashes form a continuous
tube. In so doing the carver at the same time often brought
the cuts so near the surface at one place in the underside of
the stem that a little trap-door could be let in neatly, and
removed for the purpose of cleaning the pipe. When it is
remembered that the boring of savages is generally done
from two sides, it will be seen that we have only to elongate
the auger bit to get the result.

The sarbacan, or zarabatana, is made of two separate
pieces of wood, in each of which is cut a semi-cylindrical
groove, so that when they are placed in contact they form a
long wooden rod pierced with a circular bore. The native
use in this work the incisor teeth of rodents. The bore
being carefully smoothed, the two halves are laid together
and bound by means of a long, flat strip of jacita-wood
wound specially around them. To the lower end is fastened
a mouthpiece with a trumpet-shaped opening. Cement is
then rubbed over the whole weapon, and it is ready for
use.\

The manufacture of the blow-tube called pucuna is thus
conducted in Guiana. The gigantic reed, Arundinaria
Schomburcku\ furnishes the material. A straight piece,
varying from eight to fourteen feet in length, is cut between
two widely-separated nodes, and is thoroughly dried, first by
the fire and then in the sun. To obviate warping the
straight, slender stem of a palm is bored throughout its

» Cf, Wood, Unciv, Races ^ Hartford, 1870, vol. ii. p. 583.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 209

length with a long pointed stick, and within this tube the
reed is inserted to keep it straight. Peccary teeth are some-
times fastened close together and parallel on the outside for
sights. The darts for these tubes, and the curious manner
of carrying and discharging them, will be described else-
where.'

This blessed partnership between man and some special
natural product is well explained by a note of Wallace con-
cerning the bamboo : " Almost all tropical countries produce
bamboos, and wherever they are found in abundance the
natives apply them to a variety of uses. Their strength,
lightness, smoothness, straightness, roundness, and hollow-
ness, the facility and regularity with which they can be
split, their many different sizes, the varying length of their
joints, the ease with which they can be cut, and with which
holes can be made through them, their hardness outside,
their freedom from any pronounced taste or smell, their
great abundance, and the rapidity of their growth and in-
crease, are all qualities which render them useful for a
hundred different purposes, to serve which other materials
would require much more labour and preparation. The
bamboo is one of the most wonderful and most beautiful
productions of the tropics, and one of nature^s most valuable
gifts to uncivilised man." ^

The midribs of the immense leaves of the sago palm in
Ceram, and other Malayan islands, supply the place of
bamboo. They are twelve to fifteen feet long, and often
as thick in the lower part as a man^s leg. They are light,
consisting entirely of a firm pith covered with a hard,
thin rind. Entire houses are built of these ; they form
excellent roofing poles for thatch ; split and well supported
they do for flooring; and when chosen of equal size and
pegged together they make neat panels for houses. In

* Cf, im Thurn, op, city p. 3CX); cf. Wood, Unciv, Races ^ Hartford,
vol. ii. pp. 583-90.

^ Wallace, Malay Archipelago, New York, 1869, p. %T\ with many
references to the plant and its uses.

14

2IO THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

place of boards they do not shrink, require no paint or
varnish, and are not a quarter the expense. When care-
fully split and shaved smooth, they are formed into light
boards, with pegs of the rind itself.'^

The bark of trees was a standard material among savages,
for cloth and textiles, as will be seen, for all kinds of
vessels used in housekeeping, for roofs, and for boats. The
cedar, elm, and birch tree were indispensable to the tribes
of Canada." In the tropical parts of South America the
natives were very skilful in taking off enough bark to make
a boat from a single piece, but the North American bark
canoe was usually constructed of many pieces sewed together,
and caulked with gum and pitch. The following detailed
account is from Hearne : —

"Immediately after our arrival at Clowey, the Indians
began to build their bark canoes, and embraced every con-
venient opportunity for that purpose ; but as warm and dry
weather only is fit for this business, which was by no means
the case at present, it was the 1 8th of May before the canoes
belonging to my party could be completed. On the nine-
teenth we agreed to proceed on our journey ; but Maton-
abbee^s canoe meeting with some damage, which took near
a whole day to repair, we were detained till the twentieth.
Those vessels, though made of the same materials with
the canoes of the Southern Indians, differ from them both
in shape and construction ; they are also much smaller and
lighter, and though very slight and simple in their con-
struction, are nevertheless the best that could possibly be
contrived for the use of those poor people, who are fre-
quently obliged to carry them a hundred, and sometimes a
hundred and fifty miles at a time, without having occasion
to put them into the water. Indeed, the chief use of these
canoes is to ferry over unfordable rivers, though sometimes,
and in a few places, it must be acknowledged that they are of

' Wallace, Malay Archipel^ New York, 1869, p. 382.
' See HiAd*3 Canadian Red RiVer^ 6r»f., London, x86o, vol. i. pp. 200,
203 ; vol. ii. p. 63, for tents covered with birch bark instead of skin

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 211

great service in killing deer, as they enable the Indians to
cross rivers and the narrow parts of lakes ; they are also
useful in killing swans, geese, ducks, &c., in the moulting
season. All the tools used by an Indian in building his
canoe, as well as in making his snow shoes, and every other
kind of wood-work, consist of a hatchet, a knife, a file, and
an awl, in the use of which they are so dexterous that
everything they make is executed with a neatness not to be
excelled by the most expert mechanic, assisted with every
tool he could wish."'

The lightest and most easily-made boats in Guiana are
" woodskins," made of the bark of the locust {Hymencea
courbartl)^ or the purple heart (Copaifera puhiflora). A
strip of bark of sufficient length is first carefully taken from
a tree and cut to an oblong shape, the natural curve being
accurately preserved. About two or three feet from each end
a wedge-shaped piece, or gore, is cut from either side of the
bark, the ends bent up until the edges of the gores meet,
when they are sewed together with " bush rope/' This
process raises the bow and stern at an angle, while the body
of the craft floats parallel to the water-line. Sticks of
strong wood are sometimes fastened around the gunwale.
Pieces of squared bark are laid on the floor to serve as seats
for passengers or rests for goods, and the craft is ready*
These canoes are so light as to be portable around falls or
obstructions to navigation. When not in use they are sunk
in the water to prevent splitting or warping under the
action of the sun. Paddles are hewn out of solid block or
out of the board, like natural buttresses of the paddle tree
{Aspidospermum excelsum). These paddles differ in form
from tribe to tribe." On the Columbia river the Callispels,
and on the Amoor the Giliaks, cut the gor6 so as to make
the canoe bow and stern pointed under water.

To make a bark canoe the Dyak goes to the nearest
stringy bark tree, chops a circle round it at its base, and

* HQZxTiQy Jour f ley i 6-'^., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 96.
' Cf, im Thurn, Ind, of Br. Guiana, London, 1883, p. 2964

212 THE ORIGINS OK INVENTLON.

another circle seven or eight feet from the ground ; he then
makes a longitudinal cut on each side and strips off as much
bark as is required. The ends are sewed up carefully and
daubed up with clay, the sides being kept in position by
cross pieces. The steering is performed by two greatly
developed fixed paddles.'^

The natives of Gippsland, Australia, make a boat of a
single sheet of the Eucalyptus strberiana^ the ends being
tied up. The interior people use for the same purpose the
bark from the convex side of a crooked tree, and stop the
ends with balls of mud. They are propelled by poles and
by means of a circular piece of bark, six inches in diameter,
which is used as well to bail out the canoe. Two men with
six hundred pounds of flour will cross a lake in one of these
frail craft.^

The lumbermen among savages were no mean craftsmen.
They knew the quality of every kind of tree around them^
and what its bark and timber were good for. Their art
consisted in felling the trees, splitting them into the proper
lumber, working this down to the desired object, and
transporting either material. Their work was felling,
riving, dressing, excavating, boring, smoothing, and carving
wood. The Indians, the Negroid races, and the Malayo-
Polynesians were, each in its way, most excellent wood-
workers. Living on the sea or in the interior, they achieved
remarkable results.

" When the American Indians intended to fell a thick,
strong tree," says Kalm, ** they set fire to a quantity of wood
at the roots of the tree. But that the fire might not reach
higher than they would have it, they fastened some rags to
a pole, dipped them into water^ and kept continually wash-
ing the tree a little above the fire.

" Whenever they intended to hollow out a thick tree for a
canoe they laid dry branches all along the stem of the tree,
as far as it must be hollowed out. Then they put fire to

* Ling Roth,y. Anthrop. Insi.y London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 51.
^ Consul-General Wallace, quoting Rev. John Bulmer.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 213

those dry branches, and as soon as they were burnt they
were replaced by others. Whilst these branches were
burning, the Indians were very busy with wet rags, and
pouring water upon the tree to prevent the fire from spread-
ing too far. The tree being burnt hollow as far as they
think it sufficient, or as far as it could without damaging
the canoe, they took their stone hatchets or sharp flints, or
quartzes, or sharp shells, and scraped off the burnt part of
the wood and smoothened the boats within. A canoe was
commonly between twenty and thirty foot long.*' '

Dr. J. F. Snyder, who in 1850-1852, was living in Cali-
fornia, saw the Indians of the north-western portion of the
state fell a tree with stone axes. They began by hacking in
through the bark, and a few of the annual layers with the
edges of the axes, above and below a scarf two feet wide.
With the butt end of the same axes they bruised these
annual layers all around until they could work off a thin
slao oy means of elk-horn wedges. They then hacked in as
far as possible at the top and bottom of the scarf, pounded
with the butt of their axes, as before, and removed another
slab. This process they continued until the tree was felled.
The work was done by the combined and continuous labour
of many men.

The joiner comes from a very ancient stock. In the
Chapter on Tools mention is made of the inventions for
clamping things temporarily, and also of the methods of
effecting the permanent union of separate parts of an
industrial product. Furthermore, the excavation of wood
for all purposes was more fashionable at the first. This is
so far true that all the north-west tribes of America do not
make the sides of a box of separate pieces, but having taken
a piece of board long enough for all the sides, they divide it
by bevelled kerfs, cut crosswise nearly through. They then
steam the board, bend it so as to have the kerfs inward,
and unite the ends carefully with pegs. The work is very
neatly done, so as to make the outside seem continuous.

* Kalm, Travels^ <Sr»f., London, 1771, voL ii. p. 38.

214 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The carpenter and the whole class of house and furniture
makers must look a long way back for ancestors. One of
the most instructive chapters upon the savage man in part-
nership with Nature in the evolution or elaboration of an
invention is that upon house building among the Guiana
Indians by im Thurn. " The houses are everywhere equally
simple in structure, for the materials are everywhere much
the same. Such differences as exist have evidently arisen
in consequence of natural efforts to meet the special require-
ments of each kind of situation. Three chief types of houses
are distinguishable. The Warrau built on piles over water ;
the Arawak and Caribs, sheltered from cold winds by the
surrounding trees, built wall-less houses ; on the open savannah
the Macusi erected habitations with thick walls of clay as a
protection against the cold winds from the mountains. On
hunting expeditions the natives erect temporary shelters or
benabs, which may be a few leaves of some palm, laid flat
one upon another, and the stalks, which are bound together,
are stuck in the ground at such an angle that the natural
curve of the leaf affords some shelter. A more pretentious
benab is made by sticking three poles upright in the ground
in the angles of a triangle, joining the tops by means of three
cross-sticks, and laying over these a bunch of palm leaves.
Thus it is easy to trace the development of house building
among these Indians.

" Their refined knowledge of plant craft is shown in the
selection of the plants for thatch. The different leaves used
do not signify different tribes at all, but each is the most
easily attainable in its district. A trade was once carried
on between the Indians and planters for the troolie palm
(Manicarta sacciferd) leaves. It is a significant sign of their
profound botanical knowledge that the savages have learned
to adulterate the laths to which the leaves are attached by
substituting the booba for the manicole palm because the
former is more easily procured." ^

House building was a distinct trade in Samoa. On an

' Jm Thurn, Ind* Br* Guian,^ London, 1883, cap. ix,

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 2IS

average one among every three hundred men was a master
carpenter. He had under him ten or twelve journeymen,
who expected pay from him, and apprentices learning the
trade. When a young man took a fancy to the trade he
had only to go and attach himself to the staff of a master
carpenter, and when he could point to a house that he
had built, that set him up as a professed contractor. If
a person wished a house built he offered a fine mat to a
carpenter. If the latter accepted the mat he undertook the
job. At an appointed time the carpenter came with his
journeymen and apprentices, armed with axes and adzes
having blades of shell and stone. The house owner pro-
vided board and lodging, and he, assisted by his neighbours,
did the carrying and lifting. No price was fixed beforehand ;
it was left to the judgment, generosity, and means of the
employer ; but it was a lasting disgrace on any one to have
it said that he treated the carpenter shabbily. The entire
tribe or clan was his bank, upon whom he might make
demands. If the carpenter from any cause decamped, no
other carpenter would finish it. The employer must come
to terms with the contractor.'^

An example of aboriginal versatility is furnished in the
efforts of the Tahitians to improve their dwellings to suit
the exigencies of their new mode of life under the missionary.
Ellis describes the lime-burning from coral in open ovens
like those used in cooking in the Leeward Group. ** It was
no easy task for them to build houses of this kind. Every
man had to go to the woods or the mountains and cut down
trees for timber, shape them into posts, &c., remove them
to the spot where his house was to be built, then erect the
frame with doorway and windows. This being done, he
must again repair to the woods for long branches of hibiscus
for rafters. The leaves of the pandanus were next gathered
and soaked and sewed on reeds, with which the roof was
thatched. This formerly would have completed the dwelling,
but he had now to collect a large pile of firewood, to dig a
' Cf, Turner, Samoa^ London, 1884, P* "^^1*

THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION,

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 21 7

lime pit, to dive into the sea for coral rock, to burn it, to
mix it with sand so as to form mortar, wattle the walls and
partitions of his house, and plaster them with limes. He
then had to ascend the mountain again for trees which he
must either split or saw into boards for flooring his apart-
ments, manufacturing doors, windows, shutters, &c.

Their invention and perseverance overcame the lack of
nails, and they constructed their doors by fastening together
three upright boards by means of three narrow pieces across
by strong wooden pegs. The substitutes for hinges were
also worthy of the most primitive inventors. Ellis's descrip-
tion of the new style of architecture in progress is equal to
Virgil's account of New Carthage.'^

The cabinet-maker and the wood-carver in house-building
were actively at work in the polished stone age at least. An
excellent example of fully-developed, geometric ornament is
to be seen in a paper by James Sibree on types of carved
ornamentation in wood employed by the Betsileo Malagasy
in their burial memorials and their houses.® In discussing
this paper Mr. Balfour said that " an examination of a large
number of examples may reveal an interesting series of
transitions, showing the evolution of the conventionalised,
purely meaningless though decorative forms." But these
earlier forms were not forthcoming, so the series appeared
as the end of a development.

In the great timber belt of South-eastern Alaska and
British Columbia were developed handy lumbermen, and,
indeed, the same is true of any other well-timbered area
lying near the sea. The houses of these various stocks are
communal. They are built of immense logs and puncheons.
The trees, after being felled, were carefully split into planks

' Ellis, Polynesian Researches ^ London, 1859, p. 345-49. The Navajo
Indians have been modifying their hogans to harmonise with the fashions
set by different army headquarters built about their reservation. .

^ Sibree,y. Anthrop, Inst., London, 1892, vol. xxi., pis. 16 and 17. These
marvellous patterns should be compared with those of Polynesia and middle
America.

21 8 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

and dressed down with adzes and chisels of stone. The
carpenter and the wood-carver had full opportunity for the
development of their talents. But it was upon their canoes
that the natives spent most time and skill. Among the
boat-building Californians and West Coast people, as soon
as the tree was felled, the top was burned off at a proper
distance to allow plenty of log for the dug-out canoe.

The outside of the craft was hewn to proper shape by
means of stone axes and adzes, and all who have seen the
work of these stone tools have been astonished at the regu-
larity of the little polygonal scars looking like an engraving
over the entire surface.

The hollowing out was done by burning. Fat pine knots
were gathered in the greatest abundance, and little fires
were kindled on the upper surface of the log. To feeS them,
to check their course by means of green bark and mud and
water, to remove the fires when the ashes at the bottom
checked their course, to broom away the debris of the
flames, and, with flat, circular, or leaf-shaped flints, to dig
out the charred portions down to unburnt wood, constituted
a round of labour whose quick repetition would rough out
the canoe.

Nowadays we should proceed with augers instead of little
fires, and adzes of steel and mallets and chisels ; but every
one of us has seen the country blacksmith boring holes with
a hot iron rod, and, furthermore, there were no augers in
those days. The borer with fire had to come before the
auger.

The log once hollowed, or during the last steps in hollow-
ing it, the naval architect busied himself about his lines. He
knew by a kind of cruel " selection " which the sea had been
practising upon his ancestors that the fittest crafts survive.
He did not reason it out in that way ; he thought that his
gods required him to build thus and so, or they would be
angry with him and send him to the bottom. It amounts
to the same thing ; the voice of Nature is the voice of God,
and the ship carpenter went to work to shape his craft. An

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 219

old sea captain, J. W. Collins, of the United States Fish
Commission, who is considered the best authority in the
world on the building of fishing vessels, informed the writer
one day, as we were looking at a splendid specimen of these
West Coast cedar dug-outs, that he could hardly improve
on her lines for the water in which she had to work.

To effect this object, that is, to get the hollow log into
ship-shape, the boatwrights required these — plenty of water
and hot stones. The log was filled with water, and all her
chinks stopped with shredded bark and hot pitch. Red-hot
stones were thrown into this queer cauldron, and the water
kept at the boiling point until, with spreading and contract-
ing, the gunwale had exactly the right curves at every point,
and was securely lashed. The water and stones were removed,
the vessel dried out, and the polishing and painting com-
pleted the operation. This craft was moved by means of
paddles with crutch handles, giving the rower great power
as he dug his way through the water. The number of
rowers was limited only by their convenience in standing
or kneeling. No rudder, was used, and generally no steering
paddle different in form from the rest. For sails, mats made
of the shredded bark of the cedar, similar in form and texture
with those laid on the floors of the long houses, were fastened
to a cross-yard, and at their lower corners were held by
sheets of cedar bark rope. These sails were used only in
going before the wind, and the navigators were never so
expert as those of the Polynesian Islands. The outfit of the
craft will be noticed in a chapter on the capture of animals.
It will be sufficient to say that the fish-hooks are carved
from wood ; and the club for killing halibut is often a work
of art. The lines are excellent twine of native hemp and
cedar bark and spruce root. The boxes for holding imple-
ments and clothing and the images of the gods on the bow
and the stern of the boat do credit to the skill of the cabinet-
maker and the sculptor.

** The probable cause of the absence of boats in Central
California is the scarcity of suitable, favourably-located

220 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

timber. Doubtless, if the banks of the Sacramento and the
shores of San Francisco Bay had been lined with large
straight pine or fir trees, their waters would have been filled
with canoes.*^ ^

In the canoe or pirogue country of Columbus and his
compatriots, the wood-workers were men. The axes, scrapers,
and chisels of stone, which once formed their whole stock
of wood-working implements, have given place to the steel
axe, the cutlass, and the knife. And the Indian is capable
of building a house, hewing a beautiful neat boat, stool, or
other such article from a block of wood without the use of
any other implement beyond his axe and cutlass. When a
canoe is to be made a suitable tree is carefully sought in the
forest, often as much as two miles from the nearest water.
The tree is felled, and roughly hewed on the spot into the
shape of the required canoe. It is then hollowed partly by
* chopping and partly by burning. A path through the
bush to the waterside is then cleared and laid with cross
pieces as runners, or like a corduroy, and the canoe is dragged
to the waterside. The sides of the boat are forced apmrt in
several ways. Sometimes the canoe is inverted over a
fire till the action of the heat spreads the sides ; sometimes
it is filled with wet sand, the weight of which eventually
forces the sides outward ; and sometimes the canoe is sunk
in running water, and when the wood is pliant, the sides
are forced asunder by driving large wedge-shaped pieces of
timber in between them. As soon as the sides have been
spread, bars of hard wood, about an inch and a half in
diameter, are fixed firmly across within the canoe from side
to side, so as to prevent the sides from approaching each
other. Two triangular pieces of plank-like wood are then
cut and fitted into the gaps at bow and stern. The sides
and ends are raised by the addition of a plank or extra
" streak." The seams are caulked with shreds scraped from
the inner bark of certain trees, and patched with resin
(from Icta hetaphylld) or with karamanni, an adhesive

» Bancroft, Native Races^ New York, 1874-6, vol. i. p. 385.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 221

pitch or glue from the Siphonia bacculifera. The Caribs of
St. Vincent make canoes in much the same manner.*

The making of a canoe, from the first act of selecting a
tree in the wilderness to its final consecrating and launching
when fully rigged, was in Hawaii, at all times and at every
step, under the watchful eye of the kahinia^ whose duty
it was to see that no pains or expense was spared, no
ceremony omitted, to propitiate the favour of the gods who
had the power, if so desired, to bring good luck to the waa
and all who might sail in it.

It should be borne in mind that the various migrations
or hekes of the ancient Polynesians, and their progenitors,
must have been accomplished in canoes, and that the
waa^ the pahi^ &c., of historic and modern times are the
lineal descendants of the seagoing craft in which the early
ancestors of these same people made their voyages genera-
tions ago.^

The Polynesian canoe is described by Ellis. The keel
was formed with a number of tough pieces of temanu
wood ijnophyllum callophyllutn) twelve or sixteen inches
broad, and two inches thick, hollowed on the inside and
rounded without, so as to form a convex angle along the
bottom of the canoe ; these were fastened together by lacings
of tough elastic cord made from the fibres of the cocoanut
husk. On the front end of the keel, a solid piece, cut
out of the trunk of a tree, so contrived as to constitute the
forepart of the canoe, was fixed with the same lashing ;
and on the upper part of it, a thick board or plank pro-
jecting horizontally in a line parallel with the surface of the
water. This front piece, • usually five or six feet long, and
twelve or eighteen inches wide, was called the nose of the
canoe, and without any joining comprised the stem, bows,
and bowsprit of the vessel.

The sides of the canoe were composed of two lines of

* Cf, im Thurn, Ittdians of British Guiana^ London, 1883, p. 292.
^ Consult N. B. Emerson, " The Long Voyages of the Ancient
Hawaiians," Hawaiian Hist* Soc, May 18, 1893. Papers, No. 5.

222 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

short plank, an inch and a half or two inches thick. The
lowest line was convex on the outside and nine or twelve
inches broad : the upper one straight. The stern was
considerably elevated, the keel was inclined upwards, the
lower part of the stern was pointed, while the upper was
flat, and nine or ten feet above the level of the sides.

The whole was fastened together with sennit, not con-
tinued along the seams, but by two, or, at most, three holes
made in each board, within an inch of each other, and
corresponding holes made in the opposite piece, and the
lacing put through from one to the other. A space of nine
inches or a foot was left, and then a similar set of holes
made. The joints or seams were not grooved together, but
the edge of one simply laid on that of the other, and fitted
with remarkable exactness by the adze of the workman,
guided only by his eye ; they never use line or rule. The
edges of the plank were usually covered with a kind of
pitch or gum from the breadfruit tree, and a thin layer
of cocoanut husks spread between them, which swell when
in contact with water, and fill any apertures that may
exist.

The two canoes were fastened together by strong curved
pieces of wood, placed horizontally across the upper edges or
gunwales, to which they were fixed by strong lashings of
thick coiar cordage.*

In Samoa any one could make a common fishing canoe
to hold one or two men. But the keeled canoe was the
work of professed carpenters. The keel was laid in one piece
twenty-five to fifty feet long, and to that boards were added,
by sewing each close to its fellow, until the sides were raised
about three feet from the ground. These boards were a
number, of pieces and patches eighteen inches to five feet
long, as the wood split up from the log might suit. Each
board was hollowed like a trough, leaving a rim all round the
edge which was to be inside. And through these rims

' Ellis, Polynes. Researches , London, 1859, vol. i. p. 155, with further
account of the varieties of canoes and of the manner of propulsion.

PRIMITIVE USES OF PLANTS. 223

where they joined they bored holes, and with sennit they
sewed one board to another. The sewing, therefore, appeared
only on the inside. All was well fastened together, and, with
the help of gum from the breadfruit tree, made perfectly
water-tight. Timbers, thwarts and gunwale were added to
make all firm, and a deck built over the bow and the stern,
under which things could be stored. As the width of the canoe
was only eighteen to thirty inches an outrigger was necessary.
This was made by fastening beams across the canoe, so that
they might project some distance out from one side. To the
end of each projecting beam were made fast small sticks
descending toward the water, and to their lower ends was
fastened a long thin piece of wood sharp at the end to cut
through the water, and floating on the surface parallel to
the boat.

The canoes were propelled by paddles, not by oars, the
rowers facing the bow. The sails of matting were triangular,
set with the base upward. Rows of white shells were used
in decorating the craft, and carved images of human beings,
animals, or mythic beings, formed the figure-head.^

The Dyaks hollow their canoes out of a single log by
means of fire and adzes. They are guided only by the eye.
When the shell is completed thwarts are inserted, and
planks or gunwales are stitched to the sides, the seams
being caulked with sago stems which are porous and swell
when wet. Each of the gunwales is laced on by flaxen
cords, and united to the opposite plank by the thwarts.
The canoe is alike at both ends, which are pointed and
curved upward. There is no keel, nor ribs, nor figure-head.^
Man states that the average time spent on the Andamanese
dugout canoe is that of about eight men for a fortnight.

' Cf, Turner, Satfioa, London, 1884, chap. xiv.

^ Ling Roth,y. AtUhrop, InsL^ London, 1892, chap. xxii. p. 51.

CHAPTER VII.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY.

" Who can find a virtuous woman ? for her price is far above rubies.
She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
She layeth her hand to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff."

Proverbs of Solomon,

The Apaches call the Navajos spiders, in allusion to their
beautiful weaving ; and on the breasts of skeletons in the
mounds of Tennessee have been found shell gorgets upon
which spiders are engraved.^ It is not known that the
person whose skeleton was there entombed had been really
a weaver, but copper implements wrapped in coar«e cloth
were found hard by, and on much of the pottery exhumed
from the Tennessee graves are marks of basketry. There is
no objection to calling the spider gorget the trade badge of
the dead one.

The textile art is older than the human species. For not
only spiders and many caterpillars drew out extremely fine
threads, but birds wove nests long before man^s advent on
earth. And, most significant of all, in tropical lands
especially, trees and plants fabricated cloth, which men
have worn from time immemorial, and on it they have also
preserved their thoughts. There is no reason to doubt that
the very first women were weavers of a crude kind, and that
the textile art has been with us always in one form or
another.

' For illustration of spider on shell gorget, see Holmes in Third An,

Rep, Bur, Ethnol,^ p. 466, fig. 141.

224

tHE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 22 S

This department of industry is to be studied in its
materials, in the tools and processes employed, in its pro-
ducts as to their form and use. Without committing our-
selves to any theory of evolution in the art, it will be
convenient to notice first the various types of bark cloth,
basketry, and matting as not involving the spindle. Then
the textile art proper may be considered under the topics of
yarn, thread and braid, weaving, looping, netting, and
embroidery. All of this will serve to show that the savage
has not been idle in the development of fibres.

Mela says that the Germans were clothed in winter only
with the sagtim (a kind of poncho), or with the bark of
trees. ^ It is difficult to understand what is meant by this
phrase. The Germans lived too far north to be successful
in making their shirts from the bast, or inner bark, of trees
indigenous to Northern Europe. The Aryan race as a whole
are not known to have clothed themselves thus. The bast
of temperate zone plants, hemp, flax, cedar, has a fibre that
shreds easily into filaments which may be spun.

Bark cloth may be seen in any museum from Central and
South America, from Africa and from Polynesia. The art
of pounding the bast, or inner bark of a tree, whose fibrous
strands do not lie parallel, as in textile plants, but are inter-
laced inextricably, is of very wide extent racially. Three
out of the five great types of mankind practice it — the
American, the Negroid, and the Malay o-Polynesian. The
cloth, so called, manufactured in this way is quite durable,
and much more expeditiously made than any produced by
weaving.

In Polynesia the bast of the paper mulberry and of the
breadfruit is chiefly used. The process involves several
discoveries and inventions worthy of notice. The outer
rind was scraped off" with a shell ; the inner bark was then
slightly beaten and allowed* to ferment, or was macerated in
water. Upon a long, smooth log the bast was then beaten
with a heavy mallet of Casuarina wood. This mallet was

* Mela, De Situ Orbisy vol. iii. p. 3.

15

^i6 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

square in cross section, and each side grooved — one with very
coarse, the opposite with fine ridges ; a third side was some-
times plain, a fourth cut into checker patterns. Each of these
sides was useful in spreading out the texture, removing the
pulpy matter, and giving the appearance of textile work.
The cloth was dried and bleached in the sun. For colouring
a variety of vegetable dyes were used. Nature supplied the
pattern. The natives selected some of the most delicate
and beautiful ferns or the hibiscus flowers. When the dye
was prepared the leaf or flower is laid carefully on the dye.
As soon as the surface was covered with the colouring matter
the stained leaf or flower was fixed on the cloth and pressed
regularly down. Many of the patterns were printed on in
regular designs, worked out on a surface of palm leaf with
little bits of stem sewed on in geometric figures. The
stronger kinds of cloth were covered with a brown or black
varnish, which made the texture tougher, and also water-
proof.^

For colouring their bark or tapa cloth, the natives of the
Society Islands used a variety of vegetable dyes. Among
them the bark of the Casuarina and Alcuritcs^ giving a
dark red or chocolate colour. Brilliant red was prepared by
mixing the milky juice of the berry of Ficus prolixa with
the leaves of a species of Cordia, When prepared the dye
was absorbed on the fibres of a kind of rush and dried for use.
When covered with a varnish of gum it retained its bright-
ness until the garment was worn out. Yellow was prepared
from the inner bark of the root of Morinda ciirifulia. An
infusion of the bark in water was made, and the cloth soaked
therein and then dried in the sun."

The tapa beating of the Hawaiians is minutely described
in a catalogue of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. The
material is the bark of the paper mulberry (Brouaaonctia
papyri/era)^ but half a dozen other plants are occasionally

' Ellis, Polynes* Res»y vol. i. pp. 17S-185, giving a detailed and excellent
account of tapa beating.

^ Ellis, op. ctt,y vol. i. p. 182.

THE tE^dTiLE Industry. 4^7

substituted. The apparatus consisted of a log or aiivil, a
series of mallets, calabashes of water and of mucilage, dye
stuffs, and tools or stamps for decorating. The anvil was *a
log of hard wood, about six feet long, hewn to a flat surface
three inches wide at top, and hollowed longitudinally under
neath. This was supported on two stones. Of clubs there
was a variety ; round for the first beating, and flat for the
finishing. Ornamented beaters had longitudinal grooves cut
at varying distances apart on the four sides, and in others
these parallels were cut by othet* grooves at right angles, or
undulating patterns were engraved. From scions of the
paper mulberry the bark was stripped in lengths of about six
feet, and two inches wide. These strips were dried until the
sap was wholly evaporated, and they were then stored for
future use, either with the outer bark still on or after this
had been removed by scraping on a smooth board with a
plate of shell or of bone.

When to be used the strips were soaked in water and
beaten with the round club on a smooth stone until the
fibres were felted together. The strips were then soaked
again and beaten on the log, strip was welded to strip until
sheets of a surface 125 square feet was obtained. The
peculiar '* water marks ''to be seen in tapa were given by
the patterns carved on the decorated beaters. The colour-
ing of the tapa was effected in various ways. Previously
pulped material of various colours was beaten in, or the
fabric was dyed after it was beaten. When the pigments
were to be applied locally they were ground in oil in a stone
mortar and applied by cords, by pens, by brushes, and by
dies. Waterproof kapa or tapa was saturated with the oil of
the cocoanut.^

The Hawaiians excelled all other peoples in the world
in their bark cloths. This remark applies to the fine-
ness of the product, the diversity of lines beaten into the
texture, and to the variety of ornamentation added to the
surface. Many of the varieties have special names, and a
C/l Brigham, Cat, Bishop MuseUfU^ Honolulu, 1892, p. 23.

228 THK ORIGINS OK INVEXflOX.

collectiuii of them all would fill an enormous album, giving
one page to each.

The bark cloth of Africa and of Tropical America are
much simpler in construction than that of Polynesia. In
neither of the continents is there any overlaying or uniting
of pieces. Each garment is made, so to speak, of the whole
piece. *'The Warraus of Guiana make the lap and the queytiy
the breech clout and the * fig leaf ^ apron, of the inner bark
of the Lccythis ollaria^ which is beaten until it is compara-
tively soft, and of the texture of thick rough cloth." ^ All
over the Andes the tribes use this bark cloth as a body on
which they sew feathers, teeth, beetles^ wings, bones, and
other decorative objects.

In making the African varieties a piece of bark about six
feet long, and as wide as possible, is detached from the
trunk of a tree. The outside rind is pared off with a lance-
head used with two hands, like a cooper's drawing knife.
The bark is then laid upon a beam oi wood, on which it is
hammered with a mallet grooved in fine cuts, so that the
repeated blows stamp the bark with lines somewhat re-
sembling corduroy. This cloth turns brown by exposure,
and is dyed or ornamented in black with water from iron
springs. Uganda is celebrated for this curious production.'' ^

By the general term " basketry " is meant all kinds of
woven vessels in which the materials are not spun. But
there is also a large class of flat textiles, made up precisely
after the same fashions as basketry, commonly designated
" matting." Basketry and matting together constitute a
most important division of savage invention. They are the
one art that is more beautiful among the uncivilised.
Enlightened nations express their aesthetic conceptions in
lace and cloths and embroideries, the savage woman gives
vent to her sense of beauty in basketry.3

* Im Thurn, Indians of British Guiana, London, 1883, p. 194.

= Sir Samuel W. Baker, IsmaUia, New York, 1875, pp. 328, 350.

3 For a minute description of all the styles of savage basketry see the
author's paper in Smithsonian Report^ 1883, part ii., pp. 291-306, pi.
l.-lxiv.

THE TEXTILE IXDITSTflV. 229

To the unobservant, a basket is a basket, and that is all
there is about it But to the technographer the materials,
methods, and products of this art form an excellent guide to
peoples or tribes. Almost every type of basketry is con-
fined to a single tribe, or to a very restricted area. From a
textile point of view baskets are divided into two great
classes — the woven and the sewed or stitched — and it will
be necessary to look with a little care at each to comprehend
how much original human thought has been bestowed
upon this industry, both in very ancient times and in our
own.

The most simple form of
woven basketry can be seen
in the work of the Algon-
kian and Iroquoian Indians
of the Eastern United States,
made of thin strips or
splints of ash, beech, oak,
or hickory, all of uniform
thickness and width, and
forming a rude warp and
woof like the threads in
common Manchester cotton
stuff.

Improvement on this
very plain style, seen to perfection in the cedar-bark stuffs
of North-west America, may be made by varying some of
the strips or splints in width and colouring a portion of
them. This would give the beautiful Polynesian palm and
pandanus ware, a great deal found in America, besides much
of the mat-work the world over.

The next step, the next patent we should say, consisted in
carrying the weft splints over and then under two or more
warp splints at a time. Beautiful examples of this are to be
found in Guiana and Northern South America, and it is
exquisitely done in African matting. The Salishan tribes of
Washington make thin, narrow splints of birchwood, froni

230

THR ORlCrlNS OF INVENTION.

which to weave their waltets for holding fish ; while the
Cherokees, Choctaws, and other Southern Indians of the
United States employed the split cane dyed in two colours.
But they all understood the overlapping, producing a
diagonal or diaper pattern.

Still keeping within the limits of plain weaving, there is
a quite different effect, called wicker-work, which one may
see, in some material, in any market-house in the world.
It seems to be the universal heritage from savagery.
This work consists in using a rigid warp and a flexible
weft as in corded silk weav-
ing. The Moki Indians of
the Pueblo of Oraibi gather
the twigs of the "grease
bush" and strip off the
rough bark. This yields
filaments only a few inches
long, but by colouring these
and weaving them in and
out over a warp of twigs
the Moki produce a basket-
tray which is highly prized
by collectors ; but the mani-
pulation is precisely similar
to that in our coal and oyster
baskets and the old-fashioned farm crates, or the wicker-
work around a demijohn. The Zufii Indians make their
peach-baskets in a similar fashion, and there is little doubt
that they and the Moki were instructed by the same teachers.
It is a fact worthy of attention here that this one Moki
Pueblo of Oraibi in North-eastern Arizona is the only spot
west of the Rocky Mountains where this wicker-work is
practised. The people belong to the Shoshonean stock,
who, outside this Pueblo, practise another style. In fact,
the Oraibi Indians make two kinds of baskets essentially
different from those of their blood kindred, the Utes, and
they do not weave the Ute basket at all.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. ajl

There is a style of woven basketry that a patent examiner
might declare to be derived from the wicker just described.
Indeed, it is a kind of double wicker. But its stitch or
mesh is found on the oldest pottery, in very ancient graves,
and in the Kilima-Njaro country, as well as all over
America. The most simple and rudimentary specimen of

this type is the wattling fence, in which two pieces of brush
are woven among a row of stakes and twisted into a two-ply
rope at the same time. In basketry this is called twined-
weaving. Two weft fillets or twigs are carried along at the
same time between the warp elements, only they alternate
in passing each other above and below so as to make a
twine. If all the warp sticks were pulled out, these two

232 THE ORIRINS OF I\'\"FNTION.

weft strands would be twined together, as in a two-ply
thread, continuously from beginning to end.

If the elements are whole, or split osier or other twigs,
the work will be open and strong, as in the Pacific Coast
large basket. If the elements are fine root, or grass, or bast,
or spun thread, or yarn, the work wilt be fine and close, like
doth, and will hold water.

The Eskimo of the Peninsula of Alaska and the Aleuts
produce most dainty ware in this stitch from the stem of
the Elymiis, while their coarser work resembles so closely
specimens brought
home by Dr. W. E.
Abbott from Kilima-
Njaro that only an ex-
pert would detect the
difference by the mate-
rial employed. From
the Mandingo country
also rigid baskets are
in the same style.

The North Ameri-
can Indians, living
wherever the Apocy-
num cannnbiimm grew,
Fig. 4S.~A1eutian Basketry, showinfi twined "^^^ ^^'^ pliable sacks
weaving on split watp filamenls. Or wallets in this stitch,

and impressions of it
are found on pottery fragments from the Atlantic states,
and robes of turkey down and of rabbit skin in the same
pattern come from the cHff dwellings. But the most
exquisite productions in this stitch are to be seen on the
West Coast of the United States, from Mount St. Elias to
the Bay of San Francisco, where it suddenly gives place
to a variety entirely different in structure.

The T'lingit ware about Sitka may be taken as the best
representative of twined basketry. It is made of the roots
of the spruce, carefully cleaned and split. Those who have

mmimm

/i|/f/|i'|/l:|T!T'l'l;!

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 2'^'^

seen the operation say that the women use no other tool
than a mussel-shell and no other gauge than their thumb-
nail to secure uniformity in the splints. This is almost
incredible, so regular do the surfaces of the best pieces of
basketry appear. The warp is set up with a view to the
size and form of the wallet to be made. The weft splints
are then twined between the warp splints and pushed as
close home as possible, producing a watertight structure.
Bands and lines of ornament are produced by means of dyed
splints. When two strands of different colours are worked
together the alternate appearance and disappearance of each
one gives a spotted line, and the management of the
succeeding lines with respect to this one gives the artiste an
unlimited resource of decoration.

But this is not the end of her tether. An inspection of a
piece of this ware will show that every stitch in the weaving
is double, one part being outside, the other inside, the warp
splint. It is possible, therefore, by means of coloured
grasses and bark to embroider the outside of the vessel
without affecting the inside, and this indeed is done in such
manner as to produce most wonderful effects.

The tribes of Vancouver Island and of Cape Flattery vary
from this style somewhat, in that they have three sets of
elements ; but two are rigid and only one is flexed in
weaving. The process is exactly that of wire bird-cages.
An upright series of fillets form the warp, a second piece
is carried around inside and coiled against the warp, and the
third is wrapped around the other two spirally at every
point where the coiled piece intersects one of the warp
pieces. This gives to the outside the same appearance as
is to be seen on the back of a watch. By using different
coloured grasses, geometric patterns of great variety and
beauty are produced.

In all the range of basketry there is none other so pretty
as that of the northern tribes of South America, made
nowadays by men. The beauty of the work lies in its
extreme chasteness of design and colour. The body is done

234

THE ORIGINS OK INVFWTION.

in Splints of the reed-like stem of maranta {rtchnostphon).
These are very uniform in size and are woven in diaper and
diagonal fashion, the brownish or amber-colour of the wood
being variegated with simple but very decorative geometric
figures in black. There are multitudes of tribes in other
parts of the world who make finer baskets and put more
work upon them, but for chaste beauty those of this region
excel.

The Andaraanese basket is made of the rattan or cane of
the country. The stalks are cut into lengths of about four
feet, the cuticle is peeled
] off and divided into
■ strips of uni-
,■ form width, and the
remainder is split up
into convenient pieces.
The .style of weaving is
similar to the Ameri-
can. The maker gives
a " kick " to the bottom
of his basket by scoop-
ing a hole in tlie
ground, pressing the
framework into it with
his heel until he has
proceeded far enough,
the frame sticks are
then reversed and the work goes on to completion. The
rims are finished off with a piece of Uvaria micrantha,
and the handles made of the bark of Melochia vclutina.^
The second class of basketry work is the coiled or sewed
ware. Its afllinities are not with weaving at all, but with
sewing. The savages, in making garments of skin, whip
two edges together, as carpet -sewers do, by means of sinew
thread. That is, the sewing progresses in a continuous
spiral of thread.

' Mnn, a( jw^ra, p. l6z.

Fig. 46.— Detail of " Birdcage " Slitch ir
Basketry, Vancouver Island. (U.S.Nat.
Museum.)

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 23 5

After this fashion the peoples of the Far East, of every
stock in Africa, and in all parts of America make coiled
basketry, the material each time modifying the method of
working and the appearance. The best idea of this class
of work can be gathered from the simplest examples, the
first patents, to use the modern phrase. These may be seen
in Further India or in North-western Canada among the
Athapascans. The elements are a stiff root or rod for the
fundamental coil, and a soft splint or strip of the same material
for the sewing. In making her basket, the woman starts
in the centre of the bottom, coiling the rod and wrapping it
as she proceeds with the split root or rattan, so as to bind it
to the preceding turn, drawing her splint between the
spirals. When the rod comes to an end, she neatly splices
the end to that of a new one and proceeds as before, care-
fully concealing the joint. When the splint is exhausted,
the end is tucked in behind the spiral and another one
started in the same manner, but so carefully joined as to
defy detection. The Siamese do not decorate ware of this
kind, and much of the spruce-root coiled ware from Canada
and Alaska is severely plain. But further south in British
Columbia and Washington, bits of birch-bark, straw, or
quill are doubled over the splint on the outside of the
basket and the two ends concealed under succeeding stitches
so as to give an imbricated effect in many colours. Nothing
in basketry could be more beautiful, and when it is re-
membered that every stitch is covered by one of these loops,
some conception may be formed of the immense number in
a single piece.

Now, to vary the foregoing, some tribes insert a strip or
tough material between the coiled rods and reeve the sewing
splint between this and the preceding coil. This makes a
water-tight joint ; so ware of this sort is commonly used for
boiling food by means of hot stones. The Eskimo use a
small wisp of grass for a rod. The Oregon Indians use osier
and rhus^ and the California tribes, who make the most
beautiful ware in the world, employ Vilfn^ sciri>ns^ snh'x^

236 THE ORIGINS OF IWEXTIOX.

and pine-roots. All their basket botany has not been made
out.

The wonderful uniformity of the coil and the sewing
splint in the California basketry is not due to the possession
of delicate machinery for dressing the material. Delicate
machinery was devised to make things cheap. Knack and
a strong thumb-nail achieve the result, A bone awl is the
needle, a true eye, a genuine pride in her work, and a
skilful hand do the rest. Patience indeed has her perfect
work, for there is one of these beautiful baskets in the
United States National
Museum which employed a
I Hupa woman every spare
I moment during three years
k to finish it. In the Moki
\ Pueblos, all over Middle
J America, and throughout
I Africa, finely stripped yucca
palm-leaf is used in sew-
. ing, but the method is the
same. Decoration is effected
by dyeing portions of the
-.J. 47-De.ailofCoilo<lB^ketr>-, strips used in sewing, by
Soulh-weslern United .States. (l^.S. employing the front and the
JVh/. Mmeiim.) ijg^.^ gf certain leaves alter-

nately and by choosing straws and leaves and other sections
of plants of different colours. Maidenhair fern, martynia
pods, rushes, grass stems, fibre soaked in muddy water, and
all sorts of expedients are resorted to in order to produce
the greatest embellishment.

A variety of stitch is carried out in the spiral sewing by
taking a half-turn around the splint or fillet at each round
between the coils. This is seen not only on pretty
Japanese lunch baskets, but also on the fish-baskets made
of rushes by the Fuegians, They are the only American
savages who employ this style of basket-work.

" The Panamint squaws, in Death's Valley, California^"

I'riE fKXtlLE LNDUStKY. ^3/

says Covillc, '* make their -basketry at the cost of a great
deal of time, care, and skill. The materials are the year-old
shoots of tough willow {Sah'x lasiandni) and aromatic
sumac {Rhus tnlobata)^ the horn of the mature pods of
the unicorn plant (Martynia prohoscidea)^ and the long red
roots of the tree yucca ( Yucca hrcvifolid). These give three
colours, the red, the black, and the white. Sumac and
willow are thus prepared. The bark is removed from the
fresh shoots by biting it loose at the end and tearing it off.
The woody portion is scraped to remove inequalities, and
is then allowed to dry. These slender pieces are for the
warp or foundation. The weft splints are prepared from
the same plants. A squaw selects a fresh shoot, breaks off
the too slender upper portion, and bites one end so that it
starts to split into three nearly equal parts. Holding one
of these parts in her teeth, and one in either hand, she
pulls them apart, guiding the splits with her fingers so
dexterously that the whole shoot is divided into three
equal even portions. Taking one of these, by a similar
process she splits off the pith and the adjacent less flexible
tissue from the inner face, and the bark from the outer,
leaving a pUant, strong, flat strip of young willow or sumac
wood. The weaving of the basket is begun at the bottom
with two layers of warp twigs fastened by their middles at
right angles. The free ends are bent upward, and in and
out between them the splints are woven. [Mr. Coville
fails to notice that the twined style of weaving is followed.]
The free ends are bent upward and concealed in the
weaving. As the basket widens new warp twigs are in-
serted. Ornamentation is produced by retaining the back,
or by staining them, and by varying the manipulation in
the weaving. A squaw commonly occupies an entire month
constructing one basket." '

The Panamints make their pot baskets and plates as
follows : they are built up with willow and sumac strands
as above described, but narrower and of finer quality.

* Coville, Am, Anthrop.'i Washington, 1893, vol. v. p. 358*

238 THE ORIGINS OF LWENTlOW

Similar strands of martynia pods, and the long-jointed,
slender stems of a native grass (Epicampcs rigens) are
also needed. The grass is particularly adapted to the use
from its firm texture and the fact that the portion above
the uppermost joint is very often eighteen inches long.

Starting from a central point, a bundle of two or three
grass stems and one very slender withe are -sewn by a
willow splint to the part already finished. At the proper
point the bundle is drawn more tightly, so that the
remainder of the spiral forms the sides of the basket. The
punctures for the sewing are now made with an iron awl,
but the aboriginal tool is a stout horny cactus spine from
the devil's pincushion [Echinocactus polycephalus)^ set in a
head of hard pitch. The grass stems, when the stitches are
drawn tightly, make a perfect packing, and the basket when-
finished is watertight. Patterns are produced by substi-
tuting strands of martynia pod for willow in the sewing.'

Mr. Coville is here describing the method of making
coiled basketry. If the sewing takes place always on the
outer edge of the finished part of the coil, the work will
be flat like a mat. But these textile artistes understood
narrowing, by sewing always a little above the outer edge
making the tour a little shorter. The consequence is a
bowl, a jar, or a pot, just as the maker wills. I have else-
where described minutely the cleverness with which these
savage women secure a water-tight vessel, light and
strong.

Mat'-making, hat-plaiting, and all such work as does not
require a loom, is in the nature of basketry. The Chilkat
Indians of Alaska weave a ceremonial blanket of cedar
bark, and wool from the mountain goat. These are covered
with totemic devices in yellow, black, and white. But
there is no shuttle employed. The warp threads are set
up in a frame, and the weft is wrought in by twined work,
after the manner of a tapestry worker. It is, in fact, the
T'lingit twined basketry in pliant material. All over the

* Coville, op cit, , p. 359.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 22,9

North American continent cloth and matting were thus
produced.

Hand-weaving, without the aid of loom or frame of any
kind, was perfected among the Polynesians. Besides the
beaten or tapa cloth they made robes and sleeping mats,
with or without fringe or pile from the bark of the hibiscus
and Phormium tcnax. The bark was peeled from young
shoots in strips four or five feet long. These were scraped
with a shell and dried. From these ribands split the mats
were woven, the work commencing at one corner, and a
fabric nine feet long and four feet wide being wrought by
the fingers of the workman alone. These were of a beautiful
white colour, and were worn only by men.'

The so-called Panama hats and similar work from Africa,
though looking like the work of a loom, are produced by
hand. Either in Mexico or in Africa the natives may be
seen seated on the ground with the split filaments at their
sides working away almost unconsciously, and scarcely
looking at what they are doing. The method of drawing
the working filaments alternately above and below what
may be called the warp is ingenious. Each filament is
doubled near the point of working, and the nimble fingers
place one warp strand above and one below as the loop is
drawn along so dexterously that the eye can with difficulty
follow the operation.

The true textile art begins, however, with spinning or
the making of yarn. This involves the separation of the
fibrous tissue from starchy and other foreign matter, and
the twisting of the fibre so as to make a strong yarn. Or
it involves the removal of hair or wool from animals, and
subjecting them to the same operation.

In its beneficial results this art is surpassed by none other
invented by savages. When one considers the millions of
flying spindles now whirling in all the factories of the
world, he does not wonder that the Fates or controllers
of human destiny were worshipped in the form of three

' Ellis, Polynes. Researches ^ London, vol. i. p. l86.

240 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTIOX.

very plain women, one making yarn, the second spinning
it out, the third with the fatal shears. It is easy to believe
that the first yarn was twisted between the palms of the
hands or on the thigh by means of the palm. The cobbler,
in untwisting his thread, keeps alive the latter process.
But the spindle is a very old device. The simplest form in
use to-day is a stick or rod of wood. The one who used it
sat on the ground with legs extended. The yarn was
fastened by one end to the middle of the stick. The
spinner held the bunch of fibre in the left hand, and rolled
the stick along on the thigh quickly with the right hand,
catching and carrying it back to the groin, where it stopped
twirling. The spun yarn was wound on the stick as soon
as it was sufficiently twisted, and this made a sort of fly-
wheel.

It was a very easy step in advance to put some weighty
object upon this stick, inventing thereby the spindle-
whorl. And if the spinner wished to get up and walk
around, it would be necessary to have a spindle-stick with
a hook or notch on the upper end. Stick, whorl, notch —
that is all there is in spinning. All further inventions were
for the purpose of doing the work faster and finer. Indeed,
in Finland the spinning-wheel is nothing more than a large
spindle laid horizontally, and worked in two upright sticks
that serve for bearings.

Every region of the earth has its own string. The Arctic
peoples prepare thread and twine of sinew, some of them
as fine as our best cotton, only very much stronger. The
Japanese make excellent string of the mulberry paper, and
the Chinese, as well as many peoples south of them, use
bamboo splints, while the silkworm goddess is the patroness
of the Far East. All over the Pacific Islands the coir, or
prepared fibre from the outer husk of the cocoanut, is the
staple from which string is made, not by twisting, but
chiefly by braiding. This braided coir serves every con-
ceivable purpose. Houses, boats, and implements are tied,
not nailed or rivetted together. Its preparation occupies

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 24 1

the leisure of men and women, and great rolls of black and
brown sennit, for that is the native name, may be seen in
museums. In Mexico and South America the pita fibre
and cotton furnish the principal staples, but all over
temperate North America the Apocynum cannabtnum^ or
Indian hemp, was made into yarn and twine, and woven
into cloth. The hair of ruminants and of the dog easily
lent itself to the spindle, and among some tribes skins with
the fur on were cut into very thin strips, and these were
twisted and woven into blankets. Bast from trees is fre-
quently twisted into a kind of single ply twine, and used
even for bow strings.

Sinew dressing is a textile art. The long and tough
bundles of sinew are removed from the legs of the larger
mammals, very carefully cleaned of any flesh or fat and
dried. At convenient seasons these bundles are shredded
just as men and women pick oakum. This shredded sinew
is used without further preparation for seizing or wrapping
thousands of things together. For instance, when a savage
would firmly attach the feathers to an arrowshaft, he takes
the shaft under his left arm with the nock end in his left
hand. He then puts a shred of sinew in his mouth, while
he lays on his feathers carefully. As soon as the sinew
shred is thoroughly softened, the wrapping is neatly done
by holding the shred tight with the right hand and
revolving the shaft with the left. At both ends the shred
is tucked under and rubbed down so as to render the
fastening invisible.

This shredded sinew answers another purpose, namely,
for strengthening the backs of bows. A quantity of this
material is well moistened and mixed with animal or fish
glue, and little by little built up on the back of a wooden
bow previously prepared. This is so neatly done as to
resemble the bark of the wood, and must be very carefully
managed to avoid overstraining the wood backward in
drying, and to give at the same time the elasticity
demanded. Some of these bows will do terrible execution.

16

w

242 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The sinew, when very finely shredded and combed out,
makes an excellent yarn or thread or cord. The eastern
Eskimo very seldom twist the sinew except for bow strings,
but the western Eskimo are extremely clever in its manage-
ment. They have invented a kind of swift which enables
the spinner to run out a much longer filament than can be
done by hand. The spindle is seldom used in sinew twist-
ing. For bowstrings and cord where strength is needed, the
North American Indian had no substitute for this.

The shredded cedar and willow bark and some grasses 01
the Pacific coast of America make excellent twine for nets,
fishing lines, or domestic use. The hackling is done with a
very dull bone knife in the shape of a kitchen chopper, and in
some cases the filaments are quite short. The twining is
done altogether with the fingers, and very skilfully, after the
manner of twisting a whip-cracker. The woman holds the
twined part in her left hand between thumb and forefinger,
and presses her middle finger against the ball of the thumb
to hold a strand, while with her right hand she gives the
other strands a few turns. She deftly turns the strand,
passes it to the middle finger of the left hand to hold, at the
same time seizes the other strand, gives that a turn or two,
twining the two strands each time. It is said that Sicilian
women make twine for chair bottoms in the same way from
rushes.

The basket-makers of Guiana are men, but the spinning
and weaving, with slight exceptions, are done by women.
The string is of three kinds of fibre — cotton, tibisiri (Man-
ritia flexuosa fibre), and crowia {Bromeh'a and Anannassa
fibre). Cotton is grown and spun by almost all Indians, but
especially by the Arecunas. The fibre having been picked
and freed from the seeds is pulled out into a long, uneven
loose band, and this is wound around the right wrist. One
end is attached to the end of a common spindle and the
thread is carefully drawn out and twisted and wound about
the spindle shaft. In making twine two or three of these
spindles are used, as in common twine. The gathering of

* THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 243

tibisiri is a unique process. The young leaf spike furnishes
the fibre. Each leaf or spike is taken singly, a sharp
dexterous rub at the top separates the outer skin, and the
whole is then torn off. It is further prepared by boiling,
drying in the sun, and twisting into strings by means of the
palm of the hand and the thigh, after the manner of the
cobbler. The fibre from a dozen spikes is suflScient to make
a large hammock.

The crowia fibre is thus obtained. A noose or slip-knot
is passed over the end of a leaf tightly, the other end of the
string being attached to a tree. The Indian then takes the
point of the leaf in his hand and forces the fibrous portion
through the noose by a sudden and strong pull. The green
skin and soft matter are removed by the loop. The fibre is
then washed and dried in the sun. The crowia is also twisted
on the thigh by means of the palm of the hand. Mr. im Thurn
explains the existence of thigh-twisting and spindle-twisting
in the same area by the statement that the latter is confined
mostly to Carib tribes, and that the thigh -twisting is probably
the aboriginal method, and that subsequently the stocks had
borrowed customs from one another.^

These Indians construct their hammocks by netting the
tibisiri fibre after the manner of an old-fashioned silk purse.
The square wooden frame on which they are made lies
on the ground, and the whole is netted of one continuous
string. The Caribs weave their cotton hammocks in a frame.
After setting up the warp, they weave at intervals or braid
bands across with three shuttles, taking up the warp strands
alternately in the plait. The work on these is done by
women, from the planting to the finishing off in the loom,
but the " scale lines are put on by the men."

The Andamanese cordmaker uses the bark fibres of trees and
shrubs for material. For harpoon lines and turtle nets he
resorts to the Melochia velutina^ removes the bark, and with
a Cyrena shell scrapes the cellular integument until the
fibre which it encloses is laid bare. These are then placed

' Cy*. im Thurn, Indians of British Guiana^ London, 1883, pp. 283-290,

\

244 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

in the sun to dry. When ready for use the ropemaker ties
several of the filaments to his toe and winds another strand
round them spirally, adding fresh lengths when needed.
When about thirty yards have been made, a large portion of
yarn is wound around the kutegbo, or reel made of two cross
sticks. The operator then seats himself, stretches his legs
apart, places a stick or cane between his two big toes, and
over it passes his reel. His yarn or fibre is placed at his
right side and drawn behind his neck and over his left
shoulder as he proceeds. The man converts himself thus
into a kind of ropewalk.

The women of this race also make a less durable twine
for fishing-nets and sleeping mats. And bowstrings ape
manufactured by twisting fibre on the thigh. Even in net-
making the finger is used as a mesh stick, though the
netting-needle of bamboo is in vogue. No sewing, as we
understand the word, is to be seen. In repairing their dug-
out canoes they bore holes above and below the crack and
reeve strips of cane through these, filling the interstices
with wax of the black honeycomb.

Dr. Faurot says that among the idle men about the village
on the island of Kamarane, south of Arabia, may be seen
some walking about and spinning. The spindle consists of
a shaft and a whorl on top, the latter pierced near the outer
border and having an eyelet extending above the centre.
The spinner holds the thread high up with the left hand,
and with the right palm sets the spindle whirling by striking
the palm against the edge of the whorl.' Livingstone
observed the same implement in Africa, and in the first
volume of his explorations refers to a figure of Wilkinson's.
In the Egyptian group women are doing the spinning, one
twirling as just described, a second is rubbing the shaft
against her thigh, as a shoemaker does now, and a third is
using both palms, having suspended the thread from the
fork of a tree.

' Dr. L. Faurot, Rev. d^Ethnog,, Paris, 1887, vol. vi. p. 435. Compare
with Tibetan spindles, Rockhill, Smifhson, Rep., T892.

ZUK[ WOMAN V

{PAoft in U.S. AW. Museum.)

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 2^^

r

Livingstone says that the markets or sleeping-places of
Angola are well supplied with provisions by great numbers
of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with
a spindle and distaff. A woman is scarcely seen going to
the fields, though she may have a pot on her head, a child
on her back, and the hoe over her shoulder, but she is
employed in this way.'

Among the Mendi negroes on the Niger, the men do the
heavy work and clear the bush, they also weave, sew, and
make their own clothing. The women till the ground, fetch
water, go fishing, prepare and cook food. They spin cotton
thread, dye it, and make mats.-'

The Polynesian race, as well as the negroid peoples ol
Oceanica, make a braided cord from the husk of the cocoa-
nut. In Samoa, the sennit is braided chiefly by the men.
They sit at their ease in their houses and work away very
rapidly. At political meetings also, where many hours are
spent in formal palaver and speechifying, the old men take
their work with them. 3

Loom-weaving is a savage invention. In the Mexican
Codices a mother is pictured giving instruction to her
daughter in the art of weaving.^ The warp is fastened to
sticks at either end and the alternate threads are lifted and
depressed by means of a very simple harness. The Africans
also had looms, as well as the Polynesians, involving in a
primitive way the parts and the processes of our more preten-
tious machines. One of the latter, however, will do the work
of one hundred savage women, and a well-equipped factory
would weave more cloth in a day than ten thousand African
experts.

The simplest form of weaving is a plain checker in which
the same kind of thread is both warp and woof, and both

* Livingstone, Travels ^ &^c., in South Africa^ New York, 1858, p. 433,
with drawing copied from Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians,

* Garrett, Proc, Roy, Geog, Soc, London, 1892, p. 436.
3 Turner, Samoa^ London, 1884, p. 170.

^ Bancroft, Native Kacesy New York, vol. ii. p. 484, with authorities.

246 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

are drawn equally tight so as to appear on either side. As
before mentioned, this is a very common style of basket-
making, but it is not so easy to manage in a rude loom,
as we shall see. In many parts of the world, savages set up
frames, very much like the old-fashioned quilting frames,
only of very rude sticks laid parallel on the ground or
fastened to some stable objects just as far apart as the fabric
is to be long. In a continuous long spiral they wind the
warp yarn backward and forward around these two sticks
until the warp is as wide as the blanket or other fabric
is to be. The threads are thus adjusted at equal distances
on the sticks above and below. A long rod is then laid
against the warp, and by means of a continuous yarn this
harness is made fast to the warp threads farthest from it, the
back threads, if the loom is standing. This can be done by
simply winding the yarn round the stick and passing it
between Che front warp fillets and around the back ones, as
a hurdle or heald, until every back thread is attached to the
harness stick. The yarn of the weft is wound on a long
stick by wrapping it around one end once or twice, carrying
it to the other end, wrapping it there and so on, backward
and forward until enough is wound. The weaving consists
in drawing the harness stick toward the weaver, which pulls
the back set of warp threads forward between the other or
front set. The primitive shuttle is then passed between the
two sets of warps, the end of the yarn having been fastened
to the outside warp, and enough yarn unwound to go across.
With the two hands this first weft fillet is drawn taut, any
inequalities adjusted with a pointed bone or stick, and then
it is driven home by a wooden sword, lightly if the texture
is to be plain, with some force if it is to have a corded
appearance. The sword is then withdrawn, the harness
stick slackened, the back set of warp threads forced into
their places by the sword and another weft thread carried
across. This constitutes the action of the most primitive
loom. There is no machinery of much importance in
savagery, so we must not look for flying shuttles of the

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. ^47

most primitive sort. But the harness does become more
complicated. However, so long as there are no true heddles
the weaving must necessarily be of the plainest kind.
Different colours are easily introduced into this work by
having sets of bobbins or reels for each colour and drawing
them through the requisite number of stitches each time.
The apparatus cannot be set for such performance, but the
weaver must carry Kbr pattern in her mind and count
properly at each turn. Stripes are easily made, but geo-
metric patterns require great skill and close attention. A
curious harness is found among the North American Pueblos
and in Finland. It consists of a number of small wooden
rods, or heddles, made into a rack by lashing their ends
to two parallel rods, after the manner of a ladder, only the
rounds are so close together as just to allow the warp thread
to pass freely from one cross-bar to the other. The small
rods or heddles are all perforated in the middle to form the
eyes or **mails.'^ When the warp is set up, threads are
passed through the " mails " and between the rods. This
enables the weaver to push, or " shred *' one half of the
warp threads past the other half quickly. It also allows the
weaver to " darn " the weft thread through the warp threads
that are uppermost and create geometric figures and diaper
effects ad libitum. The Chinese have a large block of wood
with saw cuts inclined so as to throw the warp up and down
in weaving the Canton matting.

In the African grass and palm fibre looms a harness is
made by a single set of heddles acting precisely as do the
perforated rods in the Zuni belt- weaving.^ In the manufac-
ture of the garters worn in their ceremonial dances the
Pueblo Indians turn their bodies into a very convenient
stretching frame. The woman sits on the ground with legs
extended, and holds one of the warp bars with her two great
toes while the other rests against her stomach, and is made
fast to a belt passing around her back. By moving her toes

* Matthews, •• Navajo Weavers," Third An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol.y
Washington, 1884, pp. 371-391, pi. xxxiv.-xxxviii., figs. 42-59.

248 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

outward and straightening her legs she gets all the tension
she desires, and can relax it instantly.

The first attempt at weaving cloth in a long piece, after-
wards to be cut up, finds its counterpart in the cotton looms
of Liberia and other portions of West Africa. The warp is
measured off by driving stakes in. the ground and walking
around them with the thread as often as there are to be fila-
ments in the narrow cloth. Sometimes it is necessary to go
around the house or the whole group of structures. The
warp is held taut by a large stone, and the narrow strips are
afterwards sewn together. It is not here affirmed that this
is altogether a native art, but native processes have survived
in it sufficiently to make the study instructive.

A style of weaving controlled largely by the abundance
of cat-tail and other great rushlike stems remains to be
described. A number of the stalks laid parallel and very
close together were joined by sewing at short distances
a cord of native hemp straight through the whole series.
The slender wing-bones of birds served as needles, and a
double crease following the lines of the uniting threads gave
an ornamental effect to the surface. This style is described
in Smith's History of Virginia^ and examples of the work
with all the apparatus were sent to the United States
National Museum by Mr. Willoughby from Washington
State.

Plain sewing among the lowest peoples is an affair of the
skin dresser. They do not, as has been said, make cloth in
long pieces to be cut up and sewed into garments and other
useful things. This being the fact, the best tailors ought to
be sought in the Arctic regions. And this is true as any
one knows who has examined the garments of caribou skin,
of seal-skin, of the pelts of the little fur-bearing animals, of
the intestines of the larger mammals, wrought by the
Siberians and the Eskimo.

Parkas or blouses, trowsers or boots, are cut out with
stone or metal knives. The edges of the parts are whipped
together with sinews so as to be water-tight. Bits of

The Textile industry. 249

different coloured fur are inserted for ornamentation, and,
frequently, to save every scrap, the sempstress will have
a hundred pieces of skin in a single garment. Her needle
is a tough bit of bone working like an awl, and her sinew is
drawn through with a true needle made of bird bone. Her
thimble is a bit of tough seal hide drawn over the end of the
forefinger, though in modern times they imitate in ivory
the white woman's thimble. Lighter goods, such as the
intestines of seals and the more delicate skins are run
together by a basting stitch of wonderful uniformity, and
bits of feather are caught between the parts of the seam for
ornament. As far south in America as the country of the
loom weaver and the bark -cloth beater, sewing women
abounded. Especially in modern times were they skilful
and active in the buffalo country, where they constructed
by hundreds the huge teepees or tents as well as the clothing
of their tribes. Indeed, the whole work of skin-dressing
and manufacturing devolved on them.

Netting among savages is difficult to study because there
is much dispute as to whether it has been introduced among
them ; but any one who has examined the knots of Poly-
nesians, of Eskimo, of the ancient Peruvians, has no diffi-
culty in believing savage textile artisans capable of making
any kind of nets. The costly feather cloaks of Hawaii are
founded upon nets, the quill of the feathers being caught
systematically into the knot of each mesh. In a collection
of Eskimo objects will be seen netting needles, shuttles,
bobbins, spacers for meshes of all sizes and materials, wound
with twine and babiche, or fine raw-hide string.

Net-making for salmon in Polynesia was an affair of state.
" The salmon net is seldom possessed by any but the
principal chiefs ; it is sometimes forty fathoms long and
twelve or more feet deep. As is customary on all occasions
of public work, the proprietor of the net required the other
chiefs to assist in the preparation. Before he began two
large pigs were killed and baked. When taken from the
oven they were cut up and the governor's messenger sent

250

THE ORIGINS OP INVENTION.

with a piece to every chief. If it was accepted, the chiet
agreed to perform the part assigned him. The cord was
about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and made with the
tough bark of the niat^ (Ficus prolixa), which, next to the
romaha, or flax, is considered more durable than any other
vegetable substance. The cord was twbted with the hand
; the knee in two or
tra ids or threads The
re about four inches
ade with a needle
nl k those employed by
p a workmen As the
1 rought n their por
tl ch ef and his men
i tl em tf^ether The
wtre dried pieces ot
■:, and the bottom was
ulh smooth stones en-
veloped in pieces
of the matted fibre
of the cocoanut
husk tied together
at the ends, and
attached to the
lower border of
the net." '

Loopwork is a
fabric made by the
tiG 49 —Mohave Burden Basket, w<,R simply interlocking of

wrapped aboui the warp (breads. Compare i „ ■,. ,,.:„

AnJinan patterns. ^ ^ 'o^PS '" * contin-

uous string, like
crocheting. Hammocks are often thus constructed. There
are uo knots as in netting nor double motion as in knitting,
but the loops are drawn through as in spiral basketry, and
the row now forming is kept from ravelling by having the
next row of loops drawn through it. The best and purest
' Ellis, Palpus, Res., London, 1859, vol. i. p. 141.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTKY. 251

forms of this work are to be seen in the wsllets and open
net sacks of the African tribes. The same stitch may now
be seen in Central America, and the query is whether the
negroes taught the Indians the stitch. When the work is
done with a bone needle and a rod for a spacer, the end

KiG. SO.^rima Burden Ifcisket, Arizona, Delaii showing
Ifcu'inings of lace making, or loopwork. (U. S. Nal.
Museum.)

may be drawn through the loops and form a link between
looping and netting.

Ill addition to the weaving of feathers among their cotton
fabrics, the ancient Mexicans practised to perfection an art
which may be called feather- mosaic. Even in our day
attractive examples of this work may be bought in Mexico,

2S2 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

but these bear no comparison with those made by the
ancient. To prepare for the feather-painting, the amanltca^
or artist, arranged his feathers in small earthen dishes,
stretched a piece of cloth on a board before him, and pro-
vided himself with a pot of glue and a pair of tweezers.
His design was sketched on the cloth, and then the feathers
were carefully glued on one at a time with exemplary
patience.*

In Hawaii, feather-hunting was a special vocation, and
much labour and patience were spent in catching the birds.
Nets and snares were sometimes used, but, more frequently
birdlime, composed of the gum of the breadfruit or the viscid
milk of the arboreal lobeliads. Hunters are said to have
transplanted strange trees to the midst of the forest to excite
the birds' curiosity. To obtain a pair of tail feathers of
the Koae {Phaeton rubrtcauda)^ the hunters climbed the
steep palis where the birds nested and plucked the long
feathers.2

Embroidery was also a savage art long before the coming
of the whites. The surfaces of textiles were covered with
beads of shell, with finely stripped and dyed quills of birds
and porcupines, with hair of moose and other mammals, not
rejecting that from human heads. A little above the lowest
savagery, as soon as people became weavers, by omitting
weft threads, by splitting warp fillets and changing the parts
included in rows of twined weaving, by a figure of eight
weaving alternating with skipping of warp threads, by what
is technically called *' drawn work,'' and other devices, they
established styles of embroidery that are imitated by the
most cultured.

Superconscructive features, so important in the decoration
of fabrics are the result of devices by which a construction
already capable of fulfilling the duties imposed by function
has added to it parts intended to enhance beauty, and which

' Bancroft, Native Races^ referring to many authors, chap. ii. p. 488, seq.
Also Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, in Peabody Museum Papers.
^ Brigham, Cat. Bishop Museum^ Honolulu, 1892, p. 10.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 253

may or may not be of advantage to the fabric' They
constitute one of the most widely used and effective resources
of the textile decorator, and are added by sewing or stitching^
inserting^ drawings cutting^ applying^ appending^ &c.
These methods of over-laying and added decoration are
seen in their perfection among the northern skin-workers.
The weaving people of Peru and Mexico had come to this
stage of their art, but plain weavers had not. But the
clever little Eskimo woman could herring-bone with
shredded quill, let in a gore cut from the ankle of the
caribou, and cut out parts or " pink " the edges of a
garment according to her mind.

In all primitive weaving definite reticulated patterns are
produced by variations in the spacings and other relations of
the warp and woof. The production of reticulated work is
the especial function of netting, knitting, crocheting, and
certain varieties of needlework, and a great diversity of
relieved results are produced, no figure being too complex,
and no form too pronounced to be undertaken by ambitious
workmen.*

The decoration of basketry and textiles is, after all, a kind
of chess playing. Each stitch is restricted to a definite area,
and if the maker has been skilful, the area may be indefi-
nitely small. The decoration of basketry is the develop-
ment of geometry, producing straight lines on wallets and
curved lines on true baskets and jars. These lead on to the
creation of triangles and rectangles and polygons of every
sort, to herring-bone, chevrons, and frets or meanders, in
short, to everything that can be made out of dots and small
figures and lines. Basket-making also introduces and keeps
before the mind the elements of arithmetic. It would be
very difficult to find another savage occupation which
exacted so extended a count and such a ready use of figures.
The basket-maker must hold in her memory and count in
a twinkle any number of stitches, certainly up to twenty.

^ Holmes, Sixth An, Rep, Bur, EthnoLy pp. 211-232. With many
illustrations. ' Ibid,^ p. 210.

254 THE ORIGINS OF IXVKNTIO\.

The Zuni belt-weaver, introducing the same design over
and over after an interval of ten or a dozen passes of her
shuttle is a tolerably fair mistress of rapid counting.

This primitive counting and geometry laid the foundation
for decorations innumerable on other material. The potter
has never ceased to copy them though the transfer has been
accomplished with the greatest difficulty, and has led to
modifications made possible by the softness of the material.

On the other hand, the ambitious basket- weaver, working
in extremely fine stitches, and instinctively guessing that a
curved figure is only a polygon with infinite number of
sides, soars away from right-lined geometry, and attempts
animal forms. These animal forms, curtailed and abbre-
viated^ become at first a quaint pictography, which is lost
by and by in other geometric forms of a higher order.
These are borrowed and multiplied from land to land, and
form the stock-in-trade of the diesigners.

It is of the utmost importance that the stitch in basketry
and the mesh in weaving be correctly understood in their
relation to art in textile and also in pottery, which, as was
seen in Chapter V., is a child of basketry. The one thing
sought after by the skilful weaver in savagery is uniformity
of dimensions in the stitch. The most cultivated persons
have marvelled in looking at a Yuki Indian's or a Congo
negro's textile work to see the uniformity of the plaiting
or the weaving. Children and young women struggle and
struggle on until they acquire the knack, and become old
in the pursuit until they attain it. This once learned with
any degree of nicety, the young artist is ready for the
second lesson, that is, to give variety to the surface by
means of shading or by colour. The Panamint Ute woman
working with splints of rhus or willow, and with the split
pods of Martynia, which are jet black, has now the means
of branching out into form. But do not forget that the
exigencies of her material and of her method preclude the
possibility of her ever achieving aught but geometric figures.
It is one, two, three in black, and then as many more in

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 255

white, and the thing is done. The next time she comes
around, the blacks and whites will face opposite colours in
the preceding row. That is all there is in it to begin with.

The colouring of textiles, both basketry and weaving, is
an ancient art. In the first place. Nature assisted the
weaver by supplying brown, black, red, green, yellow fila-
ments in a multitude of shades. The rest is art or inven-
tion. Some vegetable substances assume new colours when
buried in marshy places. Others are changed in contact
with mineral or vegetal or animal substances. The Cali-
fornia Indians immerse splints in muddy places, and secure
a permanent chocolate brown ; but everybody knows that
vegetal dyes need the addition of a mordant to make the
colouring matter adhere. This part of the art of colouring,
however, was worked out in savagery.

The Navajo Indians make their native dyes as follows :

Black, — Rhus aromatica^ yellow ochre, gum of the
pinon {Pinus eduh's). The sumac leaves and stems are
boiled five or six hours. The ochre is . finely powdered, and
roasted to a light brown colour. It is then mixed with
an equal quantity of piiion gum, set on the fire, and stirred
until the mass is reduced to a fine black powder. When it
has cooled somewhat it is thrown into the decoction of
sumac, when it instantly forms a blue-black fluid, the
tannic acid of the sumac combining with the sesquioxide
of iron in the roasted ochre, the whole enriched by the
carbon of the calcined gum.

Yellow, — The flowering tops of Bigelovia gravcolens are
boiled until a decoction of deep yellow is produced. Some
almogen (an impure native alum) is heated over the fire
and added to the decoction, and the wool is put into the
mixture to boil. This produces a tint nearly a lemon
yellow.

A second process consists in crushing the fresh root of a
plant, as yet undetermined, upon a metate, and in using
the almogen as a mordant. The cold paste is rubbed
between the hands into the wool.

256 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Red. — A reddish dye is made of the bark of Alnus
incana^ var. virescens (Watson), and the bark of the root
of Cercocarpus panifolius^ the mordant being fine juniper
ashes.^

The Lacandons of Guatemala used as dyes, indigo for
blue, cochineal for red, and indigo mixed with lemon-juice
for black. The Nicaraguans obtained a highly prized
purple by pressing the valve of a shell-fish found on the
seashore. They take the material to the seaside, and, after
obtaining a quantity of fresh colouring matter, dip each
thread singly into it, and lay it aside to dry. From the
aloe and pita they obtain a very fine thread. Reeds and
bark give material for coarser stuff, such as ropes and nets.^

The ancient Mexicans, in preparing dyes and paints, used
mineral, vegetal, and animal substances. Of plants, they
used the wood, the bark, the leaves, the flowers, the fruits,
and many of their dyes have, since the conquest, been intro-
duced throughout the world. Chief among these was the
cochineal, nochiztli. The flower of the matlalxihuitl
supplied blue shades ; indigo was the sediment of water
in which branches of the xiuhquilipitzahuac had been
soaked ; seeds of the achiotl boiled in water yielded the
red, the French roucou ; ochre, or tecozahuitl^ furnished
yellow, as did also the plant xochipalli^ the latter being
changed to orange by the use of nitre ; other shades were
produced by the use of alum ; the stones chimaltzatl and
tizatlalli being calcined, produced something like Spanish
white ; black was obtained from a stinking mineral, tlaliac^
or from the soot of a pine ocotL In mixing paints they
used chian-oil, or sometimes the glutinous juice of the
tzanhtii. The numerous dye woods of the tterra caliente^
now the chief export from that region, were all employed
by the native dyers.3

The oldest books speak of cloth and nets and embroideries

^ Matthews, Third An, Rep. Bur. Ethuol.y p. 376.

« Bancroft, Native Races, New York, 1874, vol. i. p. 699.

3 Ibia\, vol. ii. p. 487.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 2 57

and dye stuffs. Indeed, there are some types of hand-work
in the textile art that no machinery can be made to imitate.
This body of industries, Hke others of which we have been
speaking, seems to have been invented and developed long
ago, and when the curtain rises on the drama of written
history, the spindle, the distaff, the loom, the needle are
there on the stage in place. This chapter relates especially
to woman^s work throughout. It ought not to depreciate
the inventors of the textile art in the eyes of cultivated
women when they learn that the delicate stitches and
patterns which they employ were invented so long ago by
their own sex.^

' Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman ^ London, 1894, Waller Scott \
O. T. Mason, WomanU SJiare in Primitive Culture, London, 1894,
Macmillan.

17

CHAPTER VIII.

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

«

" Listen to the words of warning
From the lips of the Great Spirit !
I have given you lands to hunt in ;
I have given you streams to fish in ;
I have given you bear and bison ;
I have given you roe and reindeer ;
I have given you brant and l^eaver ;
Filled the marshes full of wild fowl,
Filled the rivers full of fishes."

Longfellow, Hiawatha, i.

In his contact with the animal kingdom, the primitive
man developed both militancy and industrialism. He
occupies two attitudes in the view of the student, that of
a slayer, and that of a captor and tamer. Omitting now
the inquiry whether the very first men were carnivorous or
vegetarian, we may apply our thoughts to the general
subject of man in his relation to the animal world. It is
important to ask how our species came to be masters of
the brute kingdom, and what intellectual advantages were
gained in the struggle.

The first of our species were poorly provided with
apparatus for contending with their fellow-creatures, or
even for defending themselves therefrom. The lower forms
of terrestrial and marine life were accessible to them, and
the young of many higher mammals ; but the conflict must
have been slowly and feebly waged at first.

The creatures- potentially useful to early man in ways

258

\

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 259

innumerable, belonged to every family of the zoological
kingdom. There was no want of his that could arise which
there was not some being to serve.

The account of the ways along which this animal world
has gradually succumbed to our species would involve the
whole history of civilisation. All this conflict and enter-
prise was in front of the first men. No other animal
started ever on such a mission. And yet men could not
fly, like the rapacious birds ; nor burrow, like the bear, the
fox, or the mole ; nor swim, like the fish. They had no
hairy covering, their teeth and nails were the weakest ;
most animals were more fleet than they. The bear, the
lion, the tiger, the wolf, the serpent, the gorilla, could
easily overpower them.^

Their problem was to invent missiles that could fly faster
than the objects of their pursuit ; to create apparatus for
digging and burrowing, and for compelling underground
animals to quit their dens ; to pursue the aquatic creatures
in their own element ; to lay tribute on all hairy and
fur-bearing species ; to devise engines that would strike
harder than the paw of the lion, pierce deeper than the
tiger's fang, wind their victims in more deadly folds than
the embrace of the serpent, and burn more effectually than
the stings of all venomous beings combined.

Just as the modern inventor is ever seeking for sharper
eyes in his optical instruments, more delicate muscular
sense in his refined metric apparatus, the genius of the first
men was engaged in adding speed to their feet, momentum
to their fists, the strength of withes and ropes and thongs
to their grip.

By and by they turned the artillery of Nature on her-
self. The dog raised a flag of truce and came in to join the
hosts of man against the rest. The mountain sheep and
the wild goat descended from their rocky fortresses, gave up
the contest, and surrendered skins and fleece and flesh and
milk to clothe and feed the inventor of the fatal arrow.

' Cf. J. Hampton Porter, Wild Beasts ^ New York, 1894, Scribner.

26o THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Tired of deadly weapons and decoys and snares and pit-
falls set by the most cunning of enemies too long ago for
any historian, the llama, the camel, the horse, the ass, the
elephant, the cow entered into a solemn and everlasting
treaty to lend their agile feet, their patient backs and necks
and shoulders, their milk, their flesh, their hides, their hair,
their very bones, to minister to men's wants. How well
this treaty has been observed on both sides let all domestic
creatures bear witness.

Those that refused to enter in any way into these stipula-
tions are doomed sooner or later to extinction, and many
species have already disappeared or withdrawn to the waste
places of the earth in despair.

Savagery, barbarism, civilisation, the three general periods
into which sociologists divide the evolution of culture, may
well be marked off in the progress of men in relation to
animals. It is possible to follow any one animal up through
the three periods, or to mark the increasing number ox
genera and species that have been thought necessary to
human happiness at each stage of its upward career, or,
finally, to note how many parts of the animal frame may be
brought into the industrial currents, and the multitudinous
functions which a single part of the animal may come to
serve.

From the lowest savagery to the highest civilisation ot
men and animals, the progress of both from nature to
artificialism, in culture and domestication and breeding, is
now studied seriously as one of the most promising divisions
of anthi;opology. It will be seen that both the quality and
the rapidity of refinement have always been conditioned by
the animals in the foreground.

It is a false notion that savage or primitive men knew
little or nothing of zoology. Inasmuch as their brains were
nearly equal to ours, as their pulses beat as fast and their
senses were normal, as they passed their daily lives in pur-
suing or escaping from the animals, their knowledge con-
cerning them was extensive. The author has lately gone

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 26 1

carefully over the list of the higher animals known to North
American savages, and the result is astonishing. The
Indians were not naturalists in the modern sense, but they
had uses for all the species they knew.'

To have a proper conception of the time when the
contest began between men and beasts, it is necessary to
imagine a state of things when there were no sportsmen
nor professional hunters, no peltry and plumage collectors,
no lighthouses nor locomotive headlights nor telegraph
wires, no great field and forest fires, no smoky and noisy
cities. The natural food and places of refuge for the
animal creation were disturbed only in the smallest degree
by man, who simply helped himself in an unobtrusive
manner.^

In addition to its destructiveness, the gun wrought incal-
culable changes in the psychology of the animal kingdom.
Sir John Lubbock quotes Mr. Galton on the subject of con-
scious danger among animals in a savage state as a type of
the anxious life which savage man lived. If ** every antelope
in South Africa has literally to run for its life once in every
day or two, and starts under the influence of a false alarm
many times a day " 3 simply through fear of its natural
enemy, one may imagine, at least, the quadrupling of this
dread which adds the terror of the ear to those of the eye.

In this very connection, continuing the study of the
seeming impassable gulf between the wolf and the faithful
dog, one may wonder whether wolves themselves were as
savage once as they are now, and whether on the destruction
of their abundant natural supply their suspicions have not
increased their ferocity. Lately this subject has been
reviewed by a writer in the Popular Science Monthly ^^ and
taken up in Science by Theodore B. Comstock.s

» Report U, S. Nat, Museum, 1888-89, P» 555-
^ Consult Gibbs, Science, New York, Sept. 30, 1892, p. 183.
3 Galton, Trans, Ethnol, Soc, vol. iii. p. 133, quoted in Lubbcck, Preh,
Times, New York, 1872, p. 595.
* Notes, Sept., 1892, p. 719, New York,
s Science, New York, Sept. 16, 1892, p. 155.

262 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Mr. Hudson, in his Naturalist in La Plata^ says that
''the puma never attacks men except in self-defence. In
the pampas, it is said, a child may sleep on the plain unpro-
tected in equal security." Mr. Comstock says " the puma,
or American panther, and the jaguar, its South American
representative, are not regarded by experienced hunters as
animals to be feared, excepting under circumstances which
leave no avenue of escape open to the beast.'* He also says
that venomous reptiles and insects — such as the rattlesnake,
tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes — have reputations beyond
their desert for bloodthirstiness. The boa-constrictor, the
alligator, bears, skunks, and other dreadful creatures all
come in for a good word.

In addition to ferocity awakened by being cornered, there
is no doubt that the pairing season works the sarne change
in animals. In America those who have tamed carnivorous
and ruminant pets know what watchfulness has to be exer-
cised over their pupils at such times. The female in charge
of her young also learns that man may be a coward, and
gathers reassurance from her own fright. The point I am
making is that the psychological endowments of wild
creatures were profoundly modified by man even before he
began to domesticate them. Killing them, taking away
their natural supply, corralling them on reservation increased
their savagery. The gun, more than all other causes com-
bined, puts birds to flight, causes the mammalia to hide
away in terror, and even reptiles and fishes and insects have
taken on new and artificial behaviour. Finally, the better
qualities of animal nature are reassured in civilisation or
zootechny, and the artificially cruel manners of beast and
bird, first intensified by man, become afterwards dormant,
and are bred out of them in succeeding generations.

The popular superstition concerning the venomous nature
of many insects may be recalled. **In Arizona," says Com-
stock, "the bite of a certain small species of skunk is very
much dreaded, owing to the belief that hydrophobia is a
probable result.'' The writer can recall when he was a

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 263

child the constant dread of his life in which he lived from
all sorts of creatures, several species of snake among them,
which his brother used to carry about and handle with
impunity. Dragon-flies, the cicada, the common lizard of
Virginia, the garter snake — all were really as harmless as a
fly. Overcome by these superstitions and tales, young and
old pursued these creatures remorselessly, until hunger,
surprise, fear, danger, and all the category of ills made them
revengeful.

On the contrary, the prejudice against taking life of any
kind and for any purpose has been the cause of many thou-
sands of people dying from snake-bites in India and other
Buddhistic countries. Indeed, the prejudice against taking life
of any kind has curiously modified the industrial aspect of
all regions where Buddhism has once had full sway.

The great migrations of men by which they have finally
distributed themselves over the earth as we see them have
been governed largely by the distribution of animals. If
any one will consult the Fish Commissioner's map of the
United States for the places where food fishes most resort
for spawning, he will at the same time be on the track of
the most prolific old Indian camp sites. Men have migrated
at the beck and call of animals ; they have also been driven
from vast regions of the earth by pestiferous insects.

This most intimate association of man with animated
nature is well exemplified in a remark of Boas concerning
the movements of the Eskimo in Baffin land. " All depends
on the distribution of food at the different seasons. The
migrations or the accessibility of the game compel the
natives to move their habitations from time to time, and
hence the distribution of the villages depends to a great
extent upon that of the animals which supply them with
food. In Arctic America the abundance of seals found in
all parts of the sea enables man to withstand the inclemency
of the climate and the sterility of the soil. The skins of
seals furnish the material for summer garments and for the
tent ; their flesh is almost the only food, and their blubber

264 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

the indispensable fuel during the long, dark winter. Scarcely
less important is the deer, of whose heavy skin the winter
garments are made, and these enable the Eskimo to brave
its storms and cold." ^

To overcome the animals whose bodies they desired,
primitive men set out to kill them by brute force. For
this purpose they first invented weapons for despatching
or seizing their prey ; after that they gave their thoughts
to devices by means of which the animal would be its own
destroyer or captor.

The apparatus employed in this pursuit may be classified
in accordance with the manner of using it, or in accordance
with the result upon the victim. The latter is preferable in
this connection as the chief concept, the former being used
in subdivision. In this case the following arrangement
results : —

IMPLEMENTS OF THE CHASE AND OF FISHING.

1. Implements for striking.

2. Implements for cutting.

3. Implements for piercing.

4. Implements for seizure.

5. Entangling apparatus.

6. Baited apparatus.

7. Co-operative hunting and accessories.

As to their operation, each device may be either held in
the hand, thrown from the hand, or left to do its own work.
These classes are arranged somewhat in an evolutionary
series, the last of the series indicating the greatest ingenuity
and the procurement of the largest result with least effort.

In a bulletin published by the Director of the United
States National Museum, Dr. G. Brown Goode, to illustrate
the animal resources and fisheries of the United States, a
list of the animals beneficial and injurious to man is given.
The wonderful part of this enumeration is that nearly al!

' Boas, ** Central Eskimo," Sixth An, Rep, Bur, Etknol.y p. 419.

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, 265

the Species there enumerated were known by name to the
aborigines, wlio had invented some ingenious way to capture
or slay them. There is also in the same publication, pre-
pared by a corps of able assistants, a classified catalogue of
the apparatus employed in the destruction of these animals."

The beginning of this series of inventions is a club. Mr,
Swan says that every fisherman in Alaska carries a club,
and, on hauling a fish to the surface,
knocks it on the head to prevent it from
jumping about in the canoe,'

But the old-time fishermen, before there
were any canoes, knocked both beasts and
fishes on the head and broke their bones
with sticks. From that rude starting-point
the hunting club, for striking and for
throwing, was differentiated. In the
chapter devoted to warlike apparatus, it
becomes a whole class of important imple-
ments for bruising flesh and breaking
bones of men.

Hand implements for cutting include
hunters' knives and fishermen's knives.
The history' of the hunter's knife, as dis-
tinguished from the dagger, commences
with the flint flake. The leaf-shaped blade,
when hafted at the point or butt, may be
either a stabbing or a skinning knife. The p,„ „_ii FJi„t
most primitive hafting of this sort is a Knife mounted in
long strip of fur wrapped carefully around ^o^^" ^'^^'^^.'"^
one end.3 Other examples occur, in which a longer handle it
one point is driven into the end of a piece ^ould be u spear,
of wood or antler and further secured by M/'/Afusmm.)' '
gum. And in still other examples a " saw
cut " is made in the end of a handle, the truncated blade
let in and secured by lashing or glue.

■ Goode, Bnlleiin 14, U. S. Nat. Afmetim, Washington, 1879,
' Bulletin U. S. Nal. Mustu/u, 27, p. 833. 3 See p. 35.

z66 ^

If the leaf-shaped blade be let into a handle laterally, it
gives the universal and indispensable scaling, scraping, cut-
ting knife used by women, especially about both game and
fish, and called by the Eskimo, "ulu." As soon as trade
brought savage men in contact with civihsation, iron blades
took the place of those made of stone. These knives must
have been universally used, because they have come down
to us in the kitchen mincmg knife and the saddler's round
knife,

. Implements for piercing game ma\ be divided, according
to the length of the handle, or grip, mto hunting knives

■ 52.-

and spears.. Despatched from the hand, they are classed as
javelins and arrows. In some examples the idea of retriev-
ing is superadded, but these will be considered separately.
In its simplest form the piercing implement is a staff
hardened in the fire and ground sharp, or, simpler still,
a bit of hard wood ground sharp.

Many African tribes affix the horn of the antelope to a
pole, and the American savages had no end of chipped
blades, with sizes varying for the deer, bear, buffalo, and
whales. Their bayonets were also tipped with ivory, antler,
and bone. The simple lance has no retrieving function.
Its purpose is to penetrate the soft, vital organs of the game

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 267

at such distance as to place the hunter beyond the reach of
teeth and horns and murderous claws. It lengthened the
arm.

A moment's reflection will show that all savages had a
practical knowledge of anatomy. They knew where to
strike with the club to paralyse the brain, to slash with
the cutlass for the shallow arteries, to pierce with the spear
to reach the fountain of life.

Among the Central Eskimo and Athapascans, the method
of hunting the deer is to attack it in the ponds when
swimming from one side to the other. In many places
the natives lie in ambush with their kayaks at the narrow
parts of lakes, where the animals are in the habit of swim-
ming across. In other nlaces thev are driven into the water
by the Eskimo, and attacked by the drivers or by hunters
stationed on the lake. Favourite places for such a chase
are narrow peninsulas. The Eskimo deploy into a skirmish
line, and slowly drive the herd to the point of the peninsula,
whence the deer, the retreat being cut off, take to the water.

If the shore be too straight to permit this method of
hunting, they drive the deer to a hill stretching to the lake.
A line of cairns is erected on the top, intended to deceive
the deer. They take to the water as they see no retreat.
If there are no hills, a line of cairns is erected on some part
of the plain.

As soon as the deer are in the water, the natives pursue
them in kayaks and kill them with the spear. Sometimes
the wounded deer will -turn upon the boat, in which case
the hunter must escape with the utmost speed, else he will
be capsized, or the skin of the boat will be torn to pieces by
the animal's antlers.

In some of the narrow valleys with steep faces on both
sides, the deer are driven towards the hunters, who lie in
ambush.^ If the deer cannot be driven into the water, the
Eskimo either stalk them or shoot them from a stand. In
a plain where the hunter cannot hide himself, it is easier

* Boas, Sixth An, Rep, Bur. Ethnol., 1888, p. 501.

268 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

to approach the herd if two men hunt together. They
advance, the second man hiding behind the first one by
stooping a little. The bows or guns are carried on the
shoulder, so as to resemble the antlers of a deer. The men
imitate their grunting and approach slowly, now stopping
and stooping, now advancing. If the deer look about sus-
piciously, they sit down, the second man lying almost flat
on the ground, and both at some distance off" greatly re-
semble the animals themselves.'

" The common deer are far more dangerous to approach
in canoes, as they kick up their hind legs with such violence
as to endanger any birch-rind canoe that comes within their
reach ; for which reason all the Indians who kill deer upon
the water are provided with a long stick that will reach far
beyond the head of the canoe." ^

This assertion of Kearneys is in a line with the previous
remarks that the ingenious savage knew just how long he
should make his arm to give the deadly thrust and keep
•himself out of harm's way. Practically in these expeditions
one man manages the canoe, while the other, standing in
front, handles the lance.

"When the Central Eskimo hunt the musk-ox," says
Boas, "the dogs are let loose as soon as a track is found.
The musk-oxen form a circle of defence, in which they are
kept at bay until the hunter approaches. While the dogs
continue attacking and dodging, the musk-oxen try to hit
them with their horns, and do not heed the Eskimo, who
assail them at close quarters with a lance to which a thong
is frequently attached. When an ox is wounded it makes
an impetuous attack on the hunter, who dodges to one side.
The dogs being at hand again immediately keep it at bay,
thus enabling the hunter to let fly another arrow or throw
his lance again. Thus the struggle continues until the

' Boas, Sixth An, Rep, Bur, EthnoUy 1888, p. 508 ; quoting also Ross,
Second Voyage^ London, 1835, Webster, p. 252; and Parry, Secofid Voyage,
p. 512.

^ Heaxnei Journey, &'€., London, 179S, Strahan, p. 257.

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 269

greater part of the herd is killed. In rare instances an ox
dashes out of the circle and escapes from the pack." '

It is worth while to notice here the dog coming in as a
helper of mankind in running down and killing his own
fellow-creatures. The cheetah^ or hunting leopard {Felts
iuhaid)^ of the Deccan, will also occur to readers in this
connection. Hunter says, "The speed with which it
bounds from the cart after the antelope exceeds the swiftness
of any other wild animal." ^

The Central Eskimo pursue the polar bear in light sledges,
and when they are near the game the traces of the most
reliable dogs in the team are cut, when they dash forward
and bring the bear to bay. As the hunter gets sufficiently
near, the last dogs are let loose, and the bear is killed with
a spear or with bow and arrow. The best season for hunt-
ing bear is in March and April, when they come up to the
fjords in pursuit of young seals.3

For killing elephants the Batonga tribes, on the Zambesi,
erect stages on high trees overhanging the paths by which
the elephants come, and then use a large spear with a
handle nearly as thick as a man's wrist and five feet long.
When the animal comes beneath they throw the spear, and
if it enters between the ribs above, the motion of the handle,
aided by knocking against the trees, makes frightful gashes
within, and soon causes death. They kill them also with
the dreadful spear inserted in a block of wood suspended
above, and released by a cord stretched across the path.

To the simple lance the ingenious savage added many
devices. Chief among them was the hand-rest or stop on
the side of the shaft, to prevent the cold or gloved hand
slipping on the shaft when the plunge is made.

* Boas, Sixth An, Rep. Bur, Ethnol., 1888, p. 509.

* Imp. Gazetteer of India ^ London, 1886, Triibner, vol. vi. p. 653.

3 Boas, Sixth An. Rep. Bur, Ethnol.y 1888, p. 509. For the ingenious
apparatus of the Central Eskimo in hunting deer, musk-ox, and bears, see
Boas, Sixth An. Rep. Bur, JEthnoJ,, 1888, pp. 508-10, figs. 438-51.
Piercing weapons of the Pt. Barrow Eskimo are exhaustively treated by
Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol.^ 1892, pp. 240-44, figs. 238-45.

1^0 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

An elaborate device is to be seen on many Eskimo whale
lances as well as on the harpoons, which astonishes every
one who sees it for the first time. The iron blade of the
lance is inserted in an ivory tang or blade-piece, which is
rounded at the inner end to fit into a shallow socket in the
ivory socket-piece at the end of the shaft. When the tang
is in place a raw-hide line is passed through both tang and
shaft once or twice, so that when dry it holds the head
straight out. But when the weapon is driven home into a
large sea mammal, and much thrashing about in the water
precedes death, the tang is slipped out of its shallow socket
and the breaking of the shaft prevented. In later times,
the boar spear, the lance, and even the bayonet are the
descendants of these primitive devices for thrusting through
the game. But every one of them is simplicity itself com-
pared with the intricate apparatus devised by the Arctic
Highlanders.

Each one of the classes of weapons before-mentioned may
become missiles. The Moki Indians have a rabbit stick,
which they throw at the legs of game running from them.
The Australian has his boomerang and club, and the African
his knobbed stick.

Some of these have edges for cutting, but the African
throwing-axes, under various names, are marvels of casting
and slashing weapons. The Plains Indian and the trapper
hurl their hunting-knives and tomahawks with great
dexterity.

Among ancient missiles for destroying animals none can
compare with the arrow. The bow and the arrow have
been the pride of the warrior also, and the inventions of
the bowyer and the fletcher might better be described in
the Chapter on War.

The bow is the same in both activities, excepting that the
Eskimo, who are most ingenious bowyers, never go to war.
But the arrow on American soil has been more highly
developed in the arts of hunting and fishing. The possible
parts of a most complex arrow are shaft, fore-shaft, barb-piece,

WAK OX THE ANIMAL

head, feather, and iiock.
In addition to these parts
occur the seizing, blood-
streaks, shaft men t-streaks,
and owner-marks. The
simplest arroiv is a mere
rod or scion of wood, with
blunt head for knocking
down birds. Each tribe
of savages, and each kind
of hunting and fishing,
and each region has its
peculiar arrow. The most
complicated form in
America was the sea-otter
arrow of the Alaskan
Indians, which might be
thus described ; shaft of
cedar, thirty inches long
and three-eighths of an
inch thick ; fore-shaft of
bone, six inches long ;
feathers three, daintily
laid on and trimmed ;
'' cock - feather," white ;
nock large, bulbous, and
deeply notched ; head, a
dainty little barb of bone
or native copper, fitting
loosely into the outer end
of the fore-shaft, pierced
on ■ the shank for the
fastening of a braided
martingale of sinew-cord ;
martingale tied into the
head at one extremity and
at the other divided for

272 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION,

three feet into two parts, the end of one part tied to the
shaft near the fore-shaft, the other end made fast near the
feather. When this arrow is shot at the otter, the little
barb is driven quite under its skin and is pulled from the
fore-shaft. The sinew martingale unwinds, the bone fore-
shaft sinks in the water, the tell-tale feathers bob about in
the air, the shaft acts both as drag and buoy, aiding the
hunter to follow and retrieve his game.'

" The bows of the Deer Horn (Athapascan) are formed of
three pieces of fir, the centre piece alone bent, the other
two pieces lying in the same straight line with the bow-
string ; the pieces are tied together with sinew.*' *

This compound bow is even in our day framed on the same
principle, though in some examples the elasticity is in the
limbs and not in the central piece. The horn of the caribou
is often used, and even whalebone in place of the fir-wood.
The limbs are securely lashed to the central piece by means
of sinew-cord, and the whole weapon is always clumsy.

Among the Plains Indians bows were made from the
wood of the Osage Orange {Bots d^arc)^ and long journeys
were often taken to obtain it. Only the best stocks were
selected, straight, and as free from knots as possible. The
seasoning process was slow and thorough, a little scraping
and cutting and shaping, then a rubbing with fat, and
it was laid aside for weeks. Each warrior had several in
different stages of completion.

The bow-strings were made of sinew, cut out in full
length, shredded as fine as possible and then spun and
twisted into a string, perfectly round, and uniform in size. 3

*' The making of an arrow," says Dodge, "requires more
labour than that of a bow. The Plains Indians used any
hard, tough, straight-grain wood. It was scraped down to
the proper size and shape. Under the most favourable

' See the author's minute description of North American bows, arrows,
and quivers. Smithson. Rep.y 1893, many figures.
" Franklin, Narrative y &'c,, London, 1824, vol. ii. p. 180.
3 Dodge, TAe Plains of the Great West, New York, 1887, p. 348*

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 273

circumstances the most skilful Indian could not hope to
complete more than a single arrow in a hard day's work.
In a short fight or an exciting dash after game, he will
expend as many arrows as will keep him busy for a month
to replace." '

Something in the nature of a land harpoon, arrow, or
retrieving apparatus for burrowing creatures is found in
both hemispheres. The Indians of Arizona and Southern
California make barbs on the side of the arrow-shaft near
the head, so that when a prairie dog is shot and runs into
his hole he may be retrieved. The Utes make a hook
which they thrust into the hole to fish out small mammals,
and the Australians do the same. Though made to capture
fruit and not animals, the Andamanese hook on a pole
fifteen feet long, to pull down jack-fruit, is in the same line
of invention. It lengthens man's arm, and enables him to
retrieve things out of his reach.

Colonel Dodge declares that the Plains Indians had not
the slightest knowledge of trapping. They seem to be the
only aboriginal people in the world who have not some pit-
fall, spring, or native trap. They had no knowledge of
angling. The Indian had no " necessity," and his invention
was therefore never born. I attribute this lack to the
plentiful supply of large game.

The same author describes graphically the pursuit, of this
large game. " With his head covered by a cap of grass or
weeds, the Indian will lie for hours on his belly, noiseless as
a snake, watching the game ; now perfectly motionless, now
crawling a few feet ; no constraint of position, no fiercest
heat of the sun, seeming to affect him in the least. He will
lie for a whole day at a water-hole, waiting for the game to
come to drink, in such position that the wind will not
reveal him.

The Plains Indian hunts but little in winter. Every year
" the great fall hunt " is made for the purpose of killing and
curing the supply of meat for winter's use. Great prepara-

' Dodge, Plains of the Great IVest, New York, 1887, p. 349.

18

274 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

tions are made in advance. Runners are sent out to seek
the most eligible position for the camp. It must be near
water, there must be timber for tent-poles and drying scaf-
folds, and level sward for the stretching and drying hides,
and the location must be, above all, in the centre of a region
abounding in game. The spot being decided on, the whole
band move to it, and everything put in order for work.

The " dog soldiers " are masters now. All things being
ready the best hunters are sent out before dawn. The herd
is selected for slaughter whose position is such that the
" surround " will least disturb the others. A narrow valley
with lateral ravines is favourable. If the herd is unfavour-
ably situated the hunter waits for it to go to water, or by
discreet appearance at intervals drive it to the best spot.
During all this time the whole active masculine portion of
the band is congregated out of sight of the buflalo, silent
and trembling with excitement.

The herd being in proper place, the leaders tell off the
men and send them, under temporary captains, to desig-
nated positions. Carefully concealed, these parties pour
down the valley to leeward, and spread gradually on each
flank of the wind until the herd is surrounded, except on
the windward side. Seeing that every man is in his place
and all ready, the head hunter rapidly swings in a party to
close the gap, gives the signal, and with a yell that would
almost wake the dead, the whole line dashes and closes on
the game.

The buffaloes make desperate rushes, until, utterly be-
wildered, they almost stand still and await their fate. In a
few moments the slaughter is complete.

When bows and arrows were used each warrior, knowing
his own, had no difficulty in positively identifying the
buffalo killed by him. These were his property, except
that he was assessed a certain portion. If arrows of different
men were found in the same dead buffaloes, the ownership
was decided by their position.

Since the use of firearms the identification of the owner

WAR ON THF, ANTMAI. KINGDOM. 275

has been impossible, and new laws of division have been
invented.

The slaughter completed, the " soldiers " retyrn to camp,
while the women skin, cut up, and carry to camp almost
every portion of the dead animals. As soon as the women's
work is done other " surrounds " are made until enough meat
and skins are obtained. The work
of the woman is most laborious
during the ^11 hunt. If the bufla-
loes are moving the success of the
hunt may depend upon the rapidity
with which she performs her work
on a batch of dead buffaloes. These
animals spoil very quickly if not
disembowelled. The men do not j-
wish to kill in any one day more '■
than the squaws tan skin and cut ■
up on that same day.

No sooner are the buffaloes dead I
than the squaws are at work. The
skin is removed with marvellous
celerity. The meat is cut from the
bones, tied up in the skin, and
taken to the camp. The entrails,
emptied and eaten raw, form the
principal food during the hunt.
Marrow-bones and ribs roasted on
the coals serve for delicious suppers.
All these are prepared by women
and brought to camp. f,g, 54.— sioux Skin-dress-

The meat is thoroughly dried '"S Tool, made fron> an
on the pole scaffolds until it is as %at!'^^aimA"'
hard as 3 rock. It is then pounded

into meal by means of stone mauls, and packed in cases
made of raw-hide (parfleche cases). Melted tallow is poured
over the whole, which is kept warm until the mass is
thoroughly saturated. When the meat, now called pem-

276 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

mican, is cold, the parfleches are closed and tied up. The
contents so prepared will keep in good condition for several
years.

The skins, as soon as they are emptied of their freight of
meat, are spread, flesh-side upward, on a level piece of
ground, small slits cut in the edges of each, and it is
stretched and fastened down by wooden pegs driven through
the slits.

The buffalo hide received three different kinds of treat-
ment at the hands of these aboriginal skin-dressers. No
tannin was used, and no leather was really made. The
thickest hides were selected for shields, parfleches, &c. The
hair was removed by soaking* the skins in water in which
wood ashes, or other alkaline substance has been mixed.
The skin was then cut into the required shape and put on
a form while green. When it became dry raw-hide, it
retained its shape, and was almost as hard as iron.

The second mode of treatment is the production of the
buffalo robe. The skin in its natural condition is much too
thick for this purpose, being un wieldly and lacking plia-
bility. This thickness must be reduced one-half, the
remaining portion must be uniform throughout, and as soft
as a piece of cloth. When the stretched skin has become
dry and hard from the action of the sun, the woman goes to
work upon it with a small iron instrument, shaped like a
carpenter^s adze. It has a handle of elk horn, and the blade
of chipped stone or of iron is lashed on with raw-hide, so as
to allow of its easy removal for sharpening. With this she
chips at the hard skin, cutting off a thin shaving at each
blow. The skill in this process is shown in cutting the skin
and not cutting through it, and in obtaining a perfectly
smooth and even inner surface and uniform thickness. To
render this skin soft and pliable, every little while the
chipping is stopped and the surface smeared with fat and
brains of buffalo, which are thoroughly rubbed in with a
smooth stone.

The third process on the buffalo hide is for making

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 277

lodges. The hair is taken off, the skin reduced in thickness,
and the whole made pliable as above.

In addition to the buffalo hide work, the same tribes dress
the hides of deer beautifully, producing soft and indispen-
sable material for clothing.*

The differentiation of aboriginal work is well shown in
the foregoing description. The men appear as organised,
intelligent, obedient to a leader, observant, self-possessed,
quick-sighted, brave, strong, enduring. The women assume
the industrial rdles of butchers, meat-packers, cooks, pur-
veyors, carriers, hide-dressers in three forms, tent-makers,
clothiers, trimk-makers, shoemakers, modistes, common car-
riers, and house-builders.

The apparatus of the Andamanese for pursuit are the
S-shaped bow, with its arrows of five varieties, the pig spear,
recently introduced, and the fish or turtle spears. Their
arrows have no feather, and are held steady in flight by a
fore-shaft of hard wood. They use no arrow straightener
but their teeth and fingers to keep the shafts in line. Mr.
Man draws attention to one " improvement " which would
now entitle them to a patent. In one style the blade of
the arrow, the barbs, and the seam into which the tang
is inserted, are in the same plane, and the seam is used as a
" sight. '^ In the seamless arrow the barb which is most in
line with the blade is placed uppermost in shooting.

In the Malay Archipelago the Sumpitan^ and in South
America the Sarbacan (Zarahatana)^ and the Pucuna stand
in the place of our air-guns and rifles. They both discharge
projectiles from a tube by means of the sudden expansion of
a gas of some kind. The ingenuity of the savage is put to
its most efficient exercise in this apparatus.

Nature supplies the Indian with material for blow-pipes
all over America where canes of any kind grow. In the

* Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, The Plains of the Great West^ New
York, 1877, pp. 353-359. This quotation is necessarily abridged, the
whole account should be read. Parkman, in The Oregon Trail y gives
splendid accounts of old-time buffalo hunting.

278 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Southern States of the Union the Muskhogean stock were
familiar with them, and the Attacapas and Chetimachas
lashed several reeds together, thus anticipating the revolver.
" The quiver for the darts is a neat affair generally, in shape
of a dice-box. Attached to the quiver is a lid made of the
tough hide of the tapir. Inside the quiver is a bundle of
darts, the lower jaw of a perai fish (Serasalmo niger)^ for
preparing the missiles and some crowia fibre for wadding.
The darts, each about eight inches long, are made of
splinters of the woody midrib of the cockerite palm (Maxi-
miliana regid)^ as sharp as needles, which are dipped in
urari poison. These darts are fastened together, palisade
fashion, by means of two parallel plaits of string, and wound
around a spindle, on the top of which a few sticks are tied
together in the form of a wheel. This is to protect the
hand from any chance of contact with the poison-smeared
points of the darts. When about to use the weapon the
Indian withdraws one of the darts, wraps around the butt
end enough wadding to fill the end of the tube cleverly, and
then, pointing at his game, with a quick puff of his breath
he drives the dart from the tube. In the lands where noisy
guns have not frightened the life out of birds and beasts, it
is easier to steal close upon the game, so as almost to bring
the point of the tube in contact with its body." ^

The blow-tube is a tropical invention, confined to areas
where the cane abounds. Though it was used by Indians
of the Southern States of the Union, Colonel Lane Fox is
correct in saying that the two areas of the full development
of the apparatus are South America and Southern Asia.
Four varieties are mentioned by him, the Zarahatana
and the Pucuna^ in South America ; the Sumpitan^ of
Borneo, and the Tomeang. Each of these, as will be seen,
has reference to the work to be done and the materials at
hand. The Zarabatana is formed of two separate pieces of

* Cf. im Thurn, Ind, of Brit. Guiana^ Londun, 1883, p. 300. Com-
pare Wood's Uncivilised Races ^ Hartford, 1870, vol. ii. pp. 465; 583-587.
Good figures in Wood, though rather dark.

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 279

wood, in each of which is cut a semicircular groove by
means of the incisor teeth of rodents, so that when they are
placed in contact with each other they form a long wooden
rod, pierced with a circular bore. The two halves are
bound together by means of long stripes oi Jacttara wood.
The arrow is made of the leaf rib of the Concourite palm,
wound round at the near end. with wild cotton, in order to
make it fit the bore. It is pointed by scraping it between
the sharp teeth of the Pirai fish. The arrow is poisoned,
and before shooting it the Indian cuts the shaft almost in
two near the point. The Yameos are said to shoot thirty
or forty yards with them.*

The Piicuna is constructed of two portions, the inner
reed, called Our ah consists of the first joint of the Arundi-
naria Schomburgkh) which grows on the sandstone ridge of
the Upper Orinoco. This is inserted in an outer tube, called
Samourahy which consists of the stem of the palm Ireartta
setigera^ the interior pulp of which is previously removed,
and the spaces between the inner and outer tube tamped
with a black wax made by a wild bee and mixed with
a pitchy substance. There are varieties of both these
classes, for the weapon is a widely diffused one in Tropical
America.*

The blow-pipe of Borneo, called Sumpitan^ is of one
piece, constructed of various kinds of wood, bored with great
care, like a gun-barrel. The arrows are made of the thorn
of the sago palm and have a conical piece of pith, or soft
wood, either solid or hollow, attached to the barbed end.
The arrows are poisoned and are carried in a bamboo
quiver.

The Tomeang is the blow-tube of the Mautras — aborigines
of the Malay peninsula. It is made, after the fashion of the
Pucuna^ of two bamboo tubes, one inside the other. The
outer one is usually ornamented.3

In Copan even the children go armed with a sarhacan^

' Lane Fox, Catalogue^ 6^^., pis. i. and ii., p. 148.
* Ibid.^ pp. 148-149. 3 Ibid,^ p. 151.

28o THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

or blow-tube, an instrument which they use very dex-
terously and which they have inherited from their earliest
ancestors.'

Fish and fowl inhabit elements inaccessible to man. He
cannot seize them if he would. As for insects and many
smaller land mammals, he may pick them up with his
hands. The first seizers were hands. When men desired
to take their game from the air or from the waters, they
had to elongate their arms with poles and to put fingers of
bone or wood at the end with palms of network. Savages
were good swimmers and knew how to dive into the depths
to bring up their treasures, but they also knew how to make*
rakes for oysters and clams and even for pearls.

But for the fish he had to devise the dip-net, and uses it
still. Moreover, with longer hands he secreted himself
where the migratory birds congregated in vast quantities
and dipped them from the air much as an entomologist
secures his insects. In the good old days when wild fish
were plentiful it was only necessary to wade in the water
with almost any kind of basket or network to secure a
dinner. The Quilleute Indians of Cape Flattery make a
scoop-net like a great barn shovel. On the appearance of
the fish they rush into the surf and press the outer edge of
the net down firmly on sand or shingle, the swash of the
breaker forces the smelts into the net ; then as the water
recedes the fishermen turn round quickly and hold the net
so that the undertow will force more smelts into it. In this
way at least a bushel are taken at a single scoop. This is
rather better than picking up things with the hand. The

* Morelet, Travels in Central America^ New York, 1 87 1, p. 334,
quoting, Taladran sutilmente las zabraUnas con ptias muy largas,
Herrera, Dec. iv., 1. x., c. 14. Also, "Among the presents which he
[Montezuma] sent to Cortez were a dozen of these implements, painted
with considerable skill, &c." Lorenzana, I. ii. p. 100. See also Bancroft,
Native Races of the Pacific States, for the use of the blow-tube after the
manner of the modern peashooter, vol. i. p. 627 ; for the style of poisoned
arrows in vogue on the Isthmus, vol. i. p. 762 ; on clay pellets as blow-
tube missiles in Guatemala, vol. ii. p. 720.

282 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

dip-net is used by savages quite as often as by civilised man
in taking fish from the surface of the water after they have
been drawn up or captured by the hook. Whatever length
of arm or kind of artificial fingers were demanded they
were forthcoming.

The Dyak women join in the sport of wholesale fishing
and scoop up the small fry with their nets. The scoop-net
is used chiefly by the women, who are fond of wading up
the shallows, net in hand and basket slung from the
shoulder, scooping up the prawns and periwinkles, &c., that
come in their way.' The most recent modifications of this
simple process are terribly destructive of marine life. The
great purse seines worked by steam for gathering fish to be
used as fertiliser have played havoc with one food supply,
though they do put back on the land in this way a deal of
waste from cities.

Among implements of seizure the hook stands pre-
eminent, and nothing would be more interesting than a
series of fish and animal hooks arranged by a patent
examiner and an ethnologist. The evolution of the hook,
the adaptation of structure to function, the control of
environment over material and form would furnish an
interesting topic for a natural history study.

The simplest form of a hook is really a barb, though barbs
on hooks come later. In the same way the Makah Indians
of Cape Flattery attach a hook to the end of a long pole
which is held down in the water until a salmon is felt
against it, when with a quick pull the fish is hooked and
hauled on board. The modern fisherman cannot dispense
with the gafF-hook, which is only the savage method im-
proved.

The negroes of the Southern States, and perhaps their
kindred elsewhere, split the end of a stick, run it into a hole
wherein a coon or an opossum is hiding, and having twisted
the fork into the long hair of the animal withdraw it from
its hiding-place with ease. It used to be said in plantation
* Ling Roth,/. Anthrop^ Inst.i London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 50,

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 283

days that the same implement was useful in stealing cotton
from the warehouse through crannies and knot-holes.

For the purpose of securing a great many candle-fish or
oulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) at once, the Salish tribes
about Port Townsend employ a rake or coarse comb with
many teeth at the end of a long handle. The fisherman
draws the rake steadily through a school of the fish and
impales several at once. The catch is shaken from the
teeth quickly into the boat and the process repeated. The
squid gigs of our civilised fishermen are in the same line of
invention.

The barbed spear for fishing is used by the Passama-
quoddy Indian. In this case we have two motions, a thrust
and a pull. The Fuegians employ a similar apparatus with
a detachable barbed point set in a socket and fastened by a
lanyard to the head of a long shaft. In many Oceanic ex-
amples the barbed point of a long spear points to the double
function of thrusting and retrieving. There is no reason
why this device may not have been useful on land, but it
blossomed out more vigorously on the sea, and led to the
invention of many-pointed spears in great variety. The
Norton Sound Eskimo employ a salmon spear having three
points attached to the head of the shaft. The central point
is a plain piece of ivory, but the lateral points are barbed.
As we follow down the West Coast of America, each region
presents some curious modification of striking and retriev-
ing, adapted to the depth of water, the game and the
material available. Some allowance must be made for
intelligence in the tribes, but it is difficult to conjecture
how they could have done better, though the Indians of
this coast represent a great variety of linguistic stocks.
The Makah Indians of Puget Sound attach as many as
five barbed points to the head of a long slender pole for
killing ducks. ^'At certain times during stormy weather
the wild fowl congregate in vast numbers in Neah Bay.
The Indians go out in their canoes with a bright light from
torches of pitchwood placed in the stern. The canoe is

284

THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

paddled stern first among the flocks of wild fowl. The
birds, bewildered by the light, are killed in great numbers.
The prongs of the spear get entangled among the feathers
and hold fast. A bird is hauled in the canoe, its neck
wrung, and others in succession are quickly speared.

Sometimes as many as a hundred
canoes will be out at the same time
and the light from the torches is an
interesting sight.*

There is a class of hunting and
fishing implements which forms the
connecting link between those for
striking and retrieving and the class
of missiles. Indeed some of the har-
poons are held in the hand when the
thrust is made, others are hurled in
some fashion.

As to their heads, this class of
weapons is divided into toggle har-
poons and barbed harpoons. The
latter are very simple, consisting of a
slender shaft, a fore-shaft of bone or
ivory, a barb fitting loosely into a
socket in front of the fore-shaft, a
line running from the barb and
attached to the shaft by a " bridle *^ at
two points. These are either plunged
into the seal or other game, or hurled
from a " throwing-stick." The barb
fastens under the skin and slips from
the fore-shaft. The line unrolls from
Fig. 56.— Toggle Har- the shaft and the latter stands up in

poon of Salish Indians, , , . , 1 t_

complete and dissected, the water to act as a drag and a buoy.

A similar device is used by fishers
after swordfish, only a keg serves for float and a flag for the
buoy. The whalers substitute also the explosive power of
gunpowder for the kinetics of the arm.

' Swan. Smithsotu Cofitributiom^ \oV. x\\.

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

The toggle-head harpoon is
a most complicated affair. Its
parts may be shaft, fore-shaft,
loose shaft, toggle-head, ice-
pick, assembling line, toggle-
head becket, leader, hand-rest
and float. The shaft is a stout
staff of wood, one end of which
is attached to the ice-pick or
spud, and to the other the fore-
shaft of ivory or bone. Upon
this shaft will also be found
the hand -rest and the line-
hook. The loose shaft is a
rod of ivory, dull pointed at
both ends, the one fitting into
the socket of the fore-shaft,
the other into that of the
toggle-head. It is also se-
curely held in place by a line
passing through a perforation
near its base, and one through |
the fore-shaft. The object
of this most ingenious piece
is to assist in mounting the
toggle-head for action, and to
prevent the breaking of the
weapon by a sudden lateral
strain, in which case the loose
shaft slips from its shallow
socket. The toggle-head is the
part that enters the body of
the animal, is turned at right
angles by the line passing
through a hole in its middle,
and acts as a toggle in pre-
venting escape. This line is

286 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

sometimes carried back and attached to the shaft, in which
case the shaft acts as a drag, and a buoy at other times, or
the leader is made fast to a long walrus-hide line at the
extremity of which will be one or more seal-skins blown up
for floats. The variations from these general featuries are
innumerable, and constitute the natural history of the im-
plement. Some of the heads are of tiny proportions, while
others weigh a pound. In one locality the whale is the
game, in others the walrus, the seal or even the sea otter.
The shaft proclaims also poverty or abundance of wood or
ivory, contact with white men, and even trade with Indians
inland. There is no better piece of savage mechanism on
which to compare the workings of different aboriginal
minds aiming at perfection. And this seemed to have been
attained, for until the coming of gunpowder and explosive
bullets, the white man copied implicitly the work of the
savage. Economy begetting caution is set forth in the
" assembling line," which is a raw-hide string, passing from
ice-pick to toggle-head, making knots and half hitches at
short intervals to insure the salvation of the parts if the
weapon be broken.*

The Dyoor capture the crocodile with an apparatus
resembling the harpoon with bone barb of the American
Indians. The apparatus consists of three parts, a barbed
head of iron, a long shaft of wood, with a socket at one end
to receive the barbed head loosely, and a stout line
attached to the middle of its shank and to the long shaft
near the socket. The attachment of this line to the middle
of the shank is very ingenious, since it converts it at the
same time into a toggle-head. ="

The " throwing stick " above mentioned, as a hurler of

' For most elaborate accounts of the harpoon and of seal-hunting, with
many illustrations, see Boas in Sixth An, Rep* Bui\ EthnoLy 1888, pp.
471-501, figs. 390-437; and Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol,^
Washington, 1892, pp. 218-240, figs. 206-240, and compare with von
Schrenk, Reisen^ dfCt im Amur-Lande^ St. Petersburg, vol. iii.

^ Schweinfiirth, Artes African ae, London, 1875, Sampson Low, pi. ii.,
fig. 17.

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 287

the harpoon, is found in both Australia and among the
Eskimo everywhere, as well as in many parts of Middle
and South America. The essential parts of this implement
are the groove for the dart, the hook for the end of the
dart, and the provisions for the fingers. Almost all the
Eskimo specimens are right-handed, while those further
south fit either hand.

With this dart-sling the hunter adds an extra joint to his
arm, and this hurls his javelin with more deadly effect.
Inseparable from this weapon in North America is the
bird trident, which consists of a slender shaft, to the end or
to the middle of which three barbs are lashed. In the latter
case an extra barbed point is placed on the front end. The
purpose of this weapon is to cripple ducks and other birds
on the wing.

The throwing stick is used to hurl the barbed harpoon,
but the Greenland Eskimo attach it to the side of the great
harpoon, which new device indicates that the throwing
stick travelled from West to East.

The sling is of the same nature as the throwing stick,
only the velocity 'is intensified by the whirling of the sling
around the head. Here and there it is in use in pursuit of
game, but it is not found to be a universal favourite in
savagery.'

For the seizure of swift animals, the lasso, in its various
forms, must not be omitted. It is a noose at the end of a
long line. This form of capture occurs also in the series
of traps, where the victim more or less consciously places its
head into a noose. But the lasso is virtually a long
tentacle, which the hunter thrusts out with great dexterity,
and seizes the poor creature by the horns or the legs. It is
known all over the Americas. Even the Eskimo boys
are said to be expert in the use of it. But it is virtually an

' See Mason, Report U, S, Nat, Mus., 1884, and Proc, U, S, Nat, Mm,,
Washington, 1893, p. 219. Both articles illustrated and authorities given.
See also Lane Fox, Catalogue, p. 38; Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep. Bur,
Ethnol,, Washington, 1892, pp. 210-217, figs. 195-205.

i ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

instrument of domestication, and was most probably intro-
duced into the Western World from abroad.
Quite similar to the lasso is the bolas, an apparatus for

tripping or entangling game. The Eskimo tie little balls
of ivory or bone at the ends of strong sinew cords at least a
yard long. Half a dozen of these are joined together at the
ends away from the balls. The hunter whirls one over his

WAR ON THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 289

head and hurls it among a flock of geese or ducks, so that
the balls will spread out in their flight. One of them is
sure to entangle itself around the wing or limb of a bird and
bring it down.*

In South America the balls of the bolas weigh a pound
each, and the apparatus is used on ostriches, the guanacos,
and even upon horses and cattle.

** When the Patagonian goes out hunting he carries no
weapon except a bolas and a knife. . . . Should he see a
herd of guanacos, he makes silently towards them, imita-
ting the cry of the young one in distress. . . . When a
small herd is seen, they can generally be enticed within
range by a hunter on foot who plays various antics, such ad
lying on his back and kicking his legs in the air, waving a
bunch of feathers. The inquisitive creatures seem unable to
resist the promptings of their curiosity, and though they are
really afraid of the strange object, come closer and closer
until the hunter is able to hurl the terrible bolas at them.'* •

One of the curious devices of the seal hunter is his little
probe with which he ascertains the presence of the seal at
the breathing hole. It is a rod of antler or ivory, not
larger than the knitting needles for coarse worsted. A
thread of sinew is attached to one end, and the other end
is allowed to drop down through the hole. The seal
approaching pushes up the rod with its nose, very much as
a perch plays with the fisherman's bait, and informs the
hunter just when and where to strike.

The arrow has some forms in each country devoted to
the exclusive purpose of killing and retrieving fish and
game, and never used to kill men.

The Point Barrow natives have an arrow called *' sleep-a-
night- and-die." It is a long, slender, barbed head of bone
or ivory, very loosely fitted into a socket in the end of the
shaft. Shot into a reindeer or bear, this arrow goes search*
ing for some vital part at each step of the creature, and at

' Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep, Bur, EthnoLy p. 245, figs. 247, ^48.
* Wood, Unciv, Races ^ Hartford, 1870, vol. ii. p. 532.

19

I I

290 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

last rankles in the wound until the game succumbs. Fishing
arrows with barbs are universal. The South American
turtle arrows combine some of the features of the Eskimo
barbed harpoon, only in the South American turtle arrow
j ! the socket is in the barbed head. This barbed and socketed

head is found on fish spears along the )jVest Coast of the
United States.

The Aleutian islanders have an arrow which operates in
precisely the same manner as the barbed harpoon with a
bridle. Nothing could exceed the delicate complexity of
this apparatus with its bulbous nock, its neatly trimmed
feathers, its slender fore-shaft, into which fits a dainty barb
of bone or native copper attached to the shaft in two places
by a line and bridle of beautifully braided sinew cord. Of
course the Papuan arrows are more ornate, but these are
the most highly finished projectiles in the world.

Among the Siouan as well as among other tribes
dwelling on the plains of the Great West, men went out
singly or in small numbers to hunt. But there existed,
besides this method, a more general" practice of co-operative
hunting worthy of mention.

In the first place, these expeditions had their special
seasons, when the corn and pumpkins had been planted, the
beans gathered, and the like. They terminated, says
Dorsey, when the wind blew upon the sunflowers, which
was about the first of September. It was then the whole
people camped in the tribal circle on the open prairies.
The fall or winter hunt was organised first in accordance with
the weather, or, some would say, the weather gave form to
the autumn hunt. Again, the state of the game had some-
what to say along this line, for it was then that the hides
were covered with thick hair, or at this season the food was
in good condition.^

In the next chapter will be studied the conflict of mind
between men and animals.

* Consult Dorsey, Third An. Rep. Bur. Ethfiol.yioi an extended account
of the Omaha hunting customs, pp. 283-302.

CHAPTER IX.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS.

** The nature of wild animals doesn't change like the nature of men ;
we have grown wiser, while they have remained the same." — IIalsey
Thrasher.

In the foregoing chapter on the killing and seizing of
animals, the inventive faculty was engaged in a duel
between men and brutes. The present chapter will be
concerned with the outwitting and the enslaving of animals,
a branch of our subject which may be called zootechny.
The successful hunter of fish and birds and beasts must
needs know a great deal about their homes, their habits,
their times, and seasons. He is indeed a naturalist. But
he acquires his knowledge for the sake of using force upon
them. In this his intellect is stimulated, inventions are
developed, great rewards are secured, and tribal genius is
established.

But when the hunters or the fishermen had in mind to
outwit their prey and to induce them to ensnare themselves
or commit self-slaughter, the thoughts involved were of a
higher order, the social structures brought about thereby
was more highly organised, the apparatus used had more
parts and came nearer to the idea of machinery. Indeed,
the outcome of this series of activities has been the connec-
tion of animals with machines of many kinds. In the trap-
ping of animals the intellect of the man plays a game of

skill with the instincts and thoughts of the brute.

29Z

292 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

A convenient classification of devices for inducing animals
to offer themselves to human comfort is into tackle and
traps. The former is a general term for apparatus used in
the water, the latter in land pursuit.

For ensnaring water animals the fisherman has two plans
which he follows, namely, (i) to set his meshing or his
labyrinthine nets where the marine animals will uncon-
sciously swim into them in the ordinary routine of their
lives ; (2) to bait his hooks with such things or in such
fashion as to tempt the aquatic epicure to swallow hook and
all.

The savage man's skill in fishing is undoubted, and has
always been the admiration and the envy of the civilised.
The gill-net, the fish-trap, the weir, the pound, the tide-
trap are well known to the aborigines of all the continents.
The fish-hooks of savages are generally without barbs. The
great abundance of these animals before their wholesale
destruction in recent times enabled the fisherman to have
his choice without much trouble. On the coast of California
shell-hooks have barbs, and such is the case with some
Polynesian examples. But in the Madisonville Cemetery,
Ohio, Putnam found only barbless hooks. The usual pat-
terns are the toggle and the angular form made in two
pieces.

In his work on aboriginal fishing. Dr. Charles Rau gives
great attention to fish-hooks. From our point of view, the
baited hook can only be here considered. This is, of course,
a device for assassination. The appetites and habits, the
weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of the animal are thoroughly
studied, and the fisherman comes to his victim as an angel
of light. The bait is eagerly seized, the lurking spine does
its treacherous work, and the fish is high and dry. The full
discussion of the subject involves hooks without barbs, hooks
with barbs, lines, sinkers, floats, reel, line holders, live pens,
and primitive anglers' outfits of every sort.*
The Dyaks have many ways of fishing :

' Cf. Rau, " Aboriginal Fishing," Smith fon Contribution to Knowledge >

rAPTURE AND nOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 2Q3

1. Angling, which they commence at an early age.

2. Diving into rocky pools and pulling fish from the
holes.

3. With scoop-nets, chiefly by women, in shallow pools.

4. With the casting-net.

5. With barbed spear and with pronged spear.

6. With traps, large and small.

7. By torch-light, with spear and with hand-net.

8. With poison.*

Some of these methods are for killing the fish outright, or
for arresting them, and belong in the last chapter ; but the
Dyaks are very ingenious, and some of the processes
described by the author exhibit a careful study of natural
history and habits of mind.

The Samoan islanders in making their fish-hooks cut a
strip off the pearl-shell two to three inches long, and rub it
smooth on a stone so as to resemble a small fish. On the
under-side they fasten a fluke made of tortoise-shell. Along-
side the hook, concealing its point, in imitation of the fins
of a little fish, they fasten two small white feathers.^ This
delicious bit of deception is riot unknown to modern fisher-
men, who find it extremely difficult to devise a more
enticing lure than the pearl-backing of a Polynesian fish-
hook. Ellis tells us that in no part of the world, perhaps,
are the inhabitants better fishermen. He then describes a
variety of hooks, each worthy of study, in that the maker^s
motive is to have the fish catch itself so far as this can be
done, by pandering to the weaknesses and foibles of the
creature. They troll for the bonito as we do for blue fish,
but they had also an invention still more ingenious. " A
pair of light, swift canoes are selected. Between their bows
a broad, deep basket, constructed of fern-stalks interwoven
with the tough fibre of the icie^ is fastened to contain the
fish and not impede the rowers. To the fore-part of the
canoes a long curved pole is fastened, branching in opposite

' Ling Roth,y. Antkrop, Inst,^ London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 50.
" Turner, Samoay London, 1884, p. 168.

294 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

directions at the outer end. From each of the projecting
branches lines with pearl-shell hooks are suspended, and so
adjusted as to be kept near the surface of the water. To
that part of the pole which is divided into two branches,
strong ropes are attached, extending to the stern of the
canoe, where they are held by persons watching the seizure
of the hook. The tira^ or mast, projects a considerable
distance beyond the stern of. the canoe, and bunchies of
feathers are fastened to its extremities. This is done to
resemble the aquatic birds that follow the course of the
small fish, and often pounce down and divide the prey which
the large ones pursue. As the bonitos follow the course of
the birds as much as that of the fishes, when the fishermen
perceive the birds they proceed to the place, and usually
find the fish. When the fish perceives the pearl hook it
dashes after it and is caught. The men in the stern of the
canoe immediately haul up the tira and drag in the fish,
suspended as it were from a kind of shears. When the fish
is removed the shears are lowered and the rowers hasten
after the shoal. ^

The Tahitian outwits the cuttle-fish in the following
manner. " These creatures resort to the holes in the coral
rock and protrude their arms for the bait of the unsophisti-
cated fisherman, while they themselves remain firm within
the retreat. The instrument employed is a rod of polished
wood, half an inch thick and a foot long. Near one end of
this a number of beautiful pieces of shell are fastened, one
over another like the scales of a fish, until it is the size of a
turkey^s egg. This is lowered by a strong line from a canoe.
The fisherman jerks the line until the cuttle-fish darts out
one arm and winds it about the shell and fastens among the
opening between the plates. The fisherman continues play-
ing with the line until the animal has fastened every one of
its rays to the shell, when it is drawn up into the canoe and
secured." *

* Ellis, Polynes* Researches^ London, 1859, vol. i. pp. 147-149, fig. on
p. 148. " Ibid,y p. 144.

CAPTURE AND nOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 295

In Sarawak an " alir " is a stick of tough wood, say ten
inches long, sharp at both ends and grooved around the
middle. To the alir is attached a short bit of line braided
from soft, tough bark, and to the end of this a long rattan
rope, and to the extreme end of the rope a cocoanut-shell
float. A bait covers the alir, and the line is suspended
from a limb so that the former may hang just above the
water. The crocodile swallows the bait, the alir toggles in
his stomach, the cocoanut shows the hunter where to find
his game, and by means of the rattan-line he drags it to
land.'

The Polynesians used to catch the au^ or needle-fish, in
the following manner. They built a number of rafts, each
about fifteen feet long and six feet wide, from the light
branches of the hibiscus wood. At one edge of each raft a
screen was raised four or five feet high by fixing poles laid
horizontally one above another to upright sticks. Men on
the rafts went out so as to enclose a large space of water,
having the screen on the outside of each raft. They gradu-
ally approached until the rafts touched one another, forming
a connected circle in some shallow part of the lake. One or
two persons then went out in a canoe toward the enclosed
space, with long white sticks, which they struck on the
water with a great noise, driving the fish towards the rafts.
On approaching these the fish darted out of the water, and
in attempting to spring over the raft struck against the
screen and fell on the surface of the raft, where they were
gathered into baskets or into canoes outside.^

In the old plantation days the negroes about the Chesa-
peake Bay used to go out in dugouts with torches. The
light attracted the weak fish, as the fishermen called them,
and they were caught in great numbers in trying to leap
over the boat ; and I have heard it said that the torch at
times had to be extinguished to keep the fish from sinking
the craft.

' Hornaday, Tiao Years in a Jungle^ New York, 1885, p. 305, fig. on
p. 307. * C/» Ellis, Polyrus. Researches, London, 1859, vol. i. p. 140.

296 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

** Angling for fish under the ice in winter," says Hearne,
" requires no other process than cutting round holes in the
ice from one to two feet in diameter, and letting down a
baited hook, which is always kept in motion, not only to
prevent the water from freezing so soon as it would do if
suffered to remain quite still, but because it is found at. the
same time to be a great means of alluring the fish to the
hole ; for it is always observed that the fish in those . parts
will take a bait which is in motion much sooner than one
that is at rest." '

No sooner had our savage learned to knit than he began
to entangle the beasts of the fields, the fowls of the air, and
the fish of the sea. That is, he set his nets in the woods
for the beasts, in the fields for the birds, and in the waters

; for the fish. His designs on these creatures may have been

f either to encircle them or to entangle them. In the one

[ case the victim was in a trap, in the other case it was in a

li mesh.

f The operations included in net-making are those of the

spinner, the net-maker, the rope-maker, the wood-worker,

j and the stone-worker, though the savage did not put so

i much labour on his sinkers as he did upon the clever devices

by which he fastened a common stone to his net.

Hearne says the spinning of the twine and forming the

( net is a textile art, and all other parts of the manufacture

have their mechanical side. The drag-net, the purse-net,
s^nd other encircling devices, are ancient. Even the gill-net
is prehistoric. ** To set a net under the ice it is first neces-
sary to ascertain its exact length by stretching it out upon
the ice near the part proposed for setting it. This being
done, a number of round holes are cut in the ice, at ten or
twelve feet distance from each other, and as many in
number as will be sufficient to stretch the net at its full

j length. A line is then passed under the ice by means of a

long light pole, which is first introduced at one of the end

J holes, and by means of two forked sticks this pole is easily

^ * Hearne, /oifntej't <2r»r., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 15.

J

SHAN BASKETRY. {Kep. U. S. Nat. MuseUfH, 1888, pi, nxxii. After Niblack.)

298 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

conducted, or passed from one hole to another, under the
ice, till it arrives at the last. The pole is then taken out,
and, both ends of the line being properly secured, is always
ready for use. The net is made fast to one end of the line
by one person, and hauled under the ice by a second ; a
large stone is tied to each of the lower corners, which serves
to keep the net expanded, and prevents it rising from the
bottom with every waft of the current. In. order to search
a net thus set, the two end holes only are opened, the line
is veered away by one person, and the net hauled from
under the ice by another ; after all the fish are taken out,
the net is easily hauled back to its former station, and there
secured as before/^ ' Every reader will recall the method
of hauling a cable of telegraph wires into a city conduit or
the halyards on a flag. The author has seen gill-nets from
the Saskatchewan country, described by Hearne. They were
made of the wild hemp, willow bark, and from grass fibres
of which the species were unknown. The twine was two
ply, and not over a millimetre in diameter. The netting
was excellent, the threads being joined by the common
square knot.

The trick of asphyxiating fish and catching them before
they recovered their self-possession is very widely spread.
" Among the reefs [of Tahiti] and near the shore many fish
are seized by preparing an intoxicating mixture from the
nuts of the huteo {Be touted splendidd)^ or the hora^ another
native plant. When the water is impregnated with these
preparations, the fish come from their retreats in great
numbers, float on the surface, and are easily caught." ^

This empirical result occurring in many places wide
apart is worthy of careful notice in studying the vexed
question of the origin of similarities in culture, and argues
for a thoughtful ness on the part of savages not usually
accorded to them.

* l^tdLTdty Journey i dr'c., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 16,

' Ellis, Pofynes. /Researches, London, 1859, Bohn, vol. i. p. 140.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 299

The favourite mode of fishing among the Dyaks is with
the tubat root (Memspermum)^ the juice of which is baled
into a stream to poison its waters, and to cause the fish to
rise stupefied to the surface. Basket-work screens are first
erected to prevent the escape of the fish into pure water.
Each person brings a bundle of ttibat root. A reach is
selected where suitable stones abound. It must be two or
three hours' pull from the entrance, or the sport will be
over too soon. The canoes line either bank, and at a given
signal the entire party commence to hammer out the root
and soak it in the water in the bottom of the boats. "A few
minutes later, when all hands are ready, the poisoned liquid
is baled into the stream, and the canoes, after a short pause,
begin to drift slowly down the current, and as the fish rise
to the surface they are speared with fish forks or captured
with hand nets. The women join in the sport and scoop
up the small fry with their nets." ^

As a survival of a very ancient practice the following
account from Thomson relates to a member of the Semitic
stock, all of whose tribes have long since risen above
savagery : " An old Arab sat on a low cliff and threw
poisoned crumbs as far as he could reach [in the sea of
Galilee], which the fish seized, and turning over dead were
washed ashore and collected for market. The natives
around Lake Huleh sometimes cast into the water a fruit
which so stupefies the fish that they are easily caught with
the hand." ^

It is true that they capture one fish at a time, but they
are practising a declining art, and this always degrades the
apparatus and the processes of more vigorous ancestors.
A trap as distinguished from a weapon is a device whose
function is to induce an animal to imprison itself or to
commit self-destruction. The creature does not attack the
trap — there is no war between it and the trap. The appa-

* Ling Roth, J, Anthrop, Inst,, London, 1892, V9I. xxii. p. 51.
' Thomson, The Land and the Book, New York, 1880, vol. ii. p. 394,
quoting Tristram, Land of Israel, pp. 429, 430.

300 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

ratus is the result of study, of induction, of adaptation of
means to ends. The maker does not endeavour to enforce
his ideas on his victim, he practically says, I shall consult
your tastes and your wishes wholly. Indeed, if in the war
of man on nature the destruction of animals by weapons
may be likened to tactics, the capture of animals by any
sort of trap may be called strategy. Every feeling and
every thought of the animal is made to subserve the
end.

Dr. G. B. Goode, in his report on animal resources at
the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, divides traps
into pen-traps, grasping or clutching traps, falling traps,
missile traps, and adhesive preparations. The simplest
of pen-traps is one into which the animal — fish, flesh,
or fowl — enters, but it cannot go out. Pitfalls, salmon
baskets, eel-traps, pockets of all kind, are of this class.
The problem is to foreknow where the game will go
and to take them unawares. No bait is used, but decoys
are frequently employed to attract and absorb the atten-
tion of the unwary. Labyrinthine traps and weirs, lobster
pots, set nets, fykes, and pounds, have all for motive
to get the victim to incarcerate itself. It may be that the
savage mind went no further, but men in civilised com-
munities, as in Virginia, still set box and pen traps for
rabbits, partridges, opossums, and coons, and boys drive
whole flocks of quails into wing nets set in the fields by
riding cautiously to the leeward on horseback.

The clutching or grasping trap is a device for seizing the
victim either by the foot or by the neck. In the former
case it simply sets its foot down into an artificial hand, made
of cord, or other material. In the latter case, driven by
hunger or a refined taste, it puts its head in a position to be
gibbetted, and becomes its own executioner. To this class
belong footpath snares, springes, snoods, spring-traps, and
even our common mouse-traps. The custom of arresting
by the foot and of garrotting are very ancient, therefore,
and both are in full operation in our own day.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 3OI

The fall trap is an apparatus which causes the victim
to imprison or kill itself by crushing, by slashing, or by
piercing. Dead falls, whether sprung by the hunter or by
his victim, are well known to all savages. In some, the
mere passing through a close place releases the fall when
the animal brushes against a trigger. Whether the " figure
four " or some other method be adopted, a stick is brought
very delicately into a position where a nibble or the
slightest touch will cause it to slip from its moorings. This
releases or removes a support, and the whole weight comes
down. An improvement on the use of a mere weight is
seen in that of appliances in which a spear, a harpoon, or
some deadly thing is attached. These last-named inven-
tions are used chiefly in slaying those huge beasts against
which early man^s puny arms were unavailable, beasts that
could never be tamed nor harnessed, but stood in the path
of the higher life.'

The cross-bow trap was little known in savagery. It
belongs to barbarism rather, and culminates in the tiger
gun of Asia. In this line of invention- is a trap used by
the aborigines of Alaska and North-eastern Asia. They
make a loop, or endless rope or becket, of sinew, and
stretch it over the ends of two stakes driven firmly in
the ground about a foot apart. A club of tough wood is
twisted into the rope until not another turn can be
taken, just as in tightening a woodsaw. In the other
end of the wood is a sharp blade of stone or metal.
When the wood is drawn back and fastened with a notched
stick, a bait is set on the other side of the trap. The
fox or other animal takes the bait, the knife is released,
flies over and brains it. The Dyak pete or spring bow
consists of a single bamboo lance attached to an elastic
stem. It is laid in a horizontal direction above the ground
about the height of the animal it is intended to transfix. A
sapling bent for the purpose forms the spring by being held
back. A string crosses the path, the least touch of which

* J. H. Porter, Wild Beasts, New York, 1894, Scribner.

302 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

loosens the spring, which forces the bamboo in a straight
line across the path, and consequently through the animal.^

A Chinese rat-trap in the United States National Museum
is furnished with a spring whose end moves horizontally on
being released, precisely after the fashion of the Dyak trap.
Two pieces of bamboo are hinged at the top like a pair of
dividers. The rat puts his head between these, touches the
bait, the strip of bamboo straightens, and the thief finds
himself in the stocks.

Adhesive preparations like bird-lime were used in securing
birds, chiefly for their beautiful plumage. Such sport would
have little attraction for bustling savages. But in Hawaii,
where the showy feathers were wrought into necklaces,
capes, cloaks, helmets, and shields, the hunters were eager
to catch the birds. In the islands the creatures were scarce.
To slay them was to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Therefore the gum of the breadfruit tree and the viscid
milk of the arboreal lobeliads was smeared on the branches
that the birds frequented.^' It is astonishing how little
resistance will prevent a bird from leaving the perch. The
initial effort of flying is very great, and just a little resist-
ance added to the weight of the bird will keep it at rest.
The Zuni Indians use a little horsehair snood on the top
of a sunflower stalk in place of bird-lime to catch hawks,
as will be seen further on.

The Crees in the Saskatchewan country captured large
numbers of buffalo in pounds. In some enclosed dell at the
end of a long valley they built a circular fence one hundred
feet or more iii diameter. Trunks of trees were laced to-
gether by means of withes, and braced by outside supports.
Leading to an opening in this fence were two diverging
rows of felled trees and bushes, extending some miles into
the prairie. The herd were directed towards these wings by
men in hiding, who appeared for a moment and waved their

' Ling Roth,y. An£krop, Inst,^ London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 46.
^ Cf* Brigham, Cat, Bishop Muieum^ Honolulu, 1892, p. 10.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 303

robes in the right direction. In passing between the wings
the buffalo were kept in their courses by men and women
appearing at openings therein. At the entrance to the
pound there was a log about a foot thick, and on the inner
side an excavation sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo
from leaping back. The animals galloped about the pound,
crushed one another, were shot by the hunters at the fence,
gored one another until the whole number, say two or three
hundred, lay in one common slaughter.' In this example
there is a mixture of assault and strategy, and it marks a
more complex type of inventions.

" When the Indians design to impound deer," says Hearne,
" they look out for one of the paths in which a number of
them have trod, and which is observed to be still frequented
by them. When these paths cross a lake, a wide river, or a
barren plain, they are found to be much the best for the
purpose ; and if the path run through a cluster of woods,
capable of affording materials for building the pound, it
adds considerably to the commodiousness of the situation.
The pound is built by making a strong fence with brushy
trees, without observing any degree of regularity, and the
work is continued to any extent, according to the pleasure
of the builders. I have seen some that were not less than a
mile round, and am informed that there are others still
more extensive. The door, or entrance of the pound, is not
larger than a common gate, and the inside is so crowded
with small counter-hedges as very much to resemble a
maze, in every opening of which they set a snare, made
with thongs of parchment deer-skins well twisted together,
which are amazingly strong. One end of the snare is
usually made fast to a growing pole ; but if no one of a
sufficient size can be found near the place where the snare is
set, a loose pole is substituted in its room, which is always
of such size and length that a deer cannot drag it far before
it gets entangled among the other woods, which are all left

* Hind, Canadian Red River, ^c, London, 1890, Longmans, vol. i.
PP 357-359.

304 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION*

Standing except what is found necessary for making the
fence, hedges, &c. The pound being thus prepared, a row
of small brushwood is stuck up in the snow on each side
the door or entrance ; and these hedgerows are continued
along the open part of the lake, river, or plain, where
neither stick nor stump besides is to be seen, which makes
them the more distinctly observed. These poles or brush-
wood are generally placed at the distance of fifteen or
tAventy yards from each other, and ranged in such a manner
as to form two sides of a long acute angle, growing gradually
wider in proportion to the distance they extend from the
entrance to the pound, Avhich sometimes is not less than two
or three miles ; while the deer's path is exactly along the
middle, between the two rows of brushwood." '

The wolf trap of the Central Eskimo is similar to the one
used to catch deer. The hole dug in the snow is about
eight or nine feet deep and is covered with a slab of snow,
on the centre of which a bait is laid. A wall is built
around it which compels the wolf to leap across it before he
can reach the bait. By so doing he breaks through the
roof, and as the bottom of the pit is too narrow to afford
him jumping room, he is caught and killed there.^

Livingstone gives many ways of overcoming the African
elephant by strategy. They dig deep wedge-shaped pitfalls,
carefully cover them over and plaster them so as to have
the appearance of the rest of the path. Many females and
young are destroyed by this last means. These methods are
often rendered futile by one elephant helping another out
of a pitfall, or by the sagacious beast snuffing danger and
quitting the country. Even when successful it can only be
with one animal, for the others at once forsake the district if
one of their number falls a victim.3

' He&rnQ,/ourfiej/, i^c, London, 1795, Strahan, p. 78.

^ Boas, St'xik An. Rep, Bur. EthnoL^ 1888, quoting Rae, Narrative^
<5r»^., London, 1850, Boone, p. 135.

• 3 Livingstone, y. Ray, Geog, Soc.^ London, 1855, vol. xxv. p. 220; also
Trav, in S. Africa^ New York, 1858, Harpers, p. 82.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 305

A second method described by many travellers for way-
laying the elephant is by means of a log of wood, having a
poisoned spear-head inserted. It is suspended above the
elephant^s path by means of a cord, which is secured to a
small wooden catch on the ground. When the catch is
touched by the foot of the elephant in passing along, the
beam falls on his back and the barbed spear-head remains.
In this case the trust of the hunter lies in his poison, as
well as the hope that the barbed head will rankle in the
wound or move on to reach some vital part.

" In the Dyak pitfall the bottom of the excavation is
staked with bamboo or iron wood spikes, in order to impale
the victim who falls therein." ' In Africa it is common to
leave a cone of earth in a pitfall, or to make the pit double,
so that the victim will rest on the belly and have its legs
dangling on either side away from the bottom. If the
animal is not killed by the fall, the hunter has no difficulty
in despatching his helpless victim.

Somewhat similar in structure and function to the gill-net
is the whole class of snares, snoods, springes, which do for
the land animal what the former does for the fishes, namely,
catch them about the necks and choke them to death.

To snare partridges, the Indians of North-western
Canada, says Hearne, make a few little hedges across a creek
or a few short hedges projecting at right angles from the
side of an island of willows, which those birds are found to
frequent. Openings must be left in each hedge, and in each
of them a snare must be set. The partridges hopping along
the willows to feed are soon caught. But the following
more extended account is excellent, inasmuch as it brings
out the entire details of the intellectual duel between men
and birds : —

" To snare swans, geese, or ducks, in the water, it requires
no other process than to make a number of hedges, or fences,
project into the water, at right angles, from a bank of a river,
lake, or pond ; for it is observed that those birds generally

» Ling Roth,y. Anthrop, Inst., London,. 1892, vol. xxii. p. 47.

20

306 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

swim near the margin, for the benefit of feeding on the
grass, &c. Those fences are continued for some distance
from the shore, and separated two or three yards from each
other, so that openings are left sufficiently large to let the
birds swim through. In each of those openings a snare is
hung and fastened to a stake, which the bird, when en-
tangled, cannot drag from the bottom ; and to prevent the
snare from being wafted out of its proper place by the wind,
it is secured to the stakes which form the opening with
tender grass which is easily broken. This method, though
it has the appearance of being simple, is nevertheless
attended with much trouble, particularly when we consider
the smallness of their canoes, and the great inconveniency
they labour under in performing works of this kind in the
water. Many of the stakes used on these occasions are of a
considerable length and size, and the small branches which
form the principal part of the hedges are not arranged
without much caution, for fear of oversetting the canoes,
particularly where the water is deep, as it is in some of the
lakes ; and in many of the rivers the current is very swift,
which renders this business equally troublesome. When
the lakes and rivers are shallow, the natives are frequently
at the pains to make fences from shore to shore. To snare
those birds in their nests requires a considerable degree of
art and, as the natives say, a great deal of cleanliness ; for
they have observed that when snares have been set by those
whose hands were not clean, the birds would not go into
the nest. Even the goose, though a simple bird, is notori-
ously known to forsake her eggs if they are breathed on by
the Indians. The smaller species of birds which make their
nests in the ground are by no means so delicate ; of course
less care is necessary to snare them. It has been observed
that all birds which build in the ground go into their nest
at one particular side, and out of it on the opposite. The
Indians, thoroughly convinced of this, always set the snares
on the side on which the bird enters the nest ; and if care
be taken in setting tl em, seldom fail of seizing their object.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 307

For small birds such as larks, and many others of equal size,
the Indians only use two or three hairs out of their head ;
but for larger birds, particularly swans, geese, and ducks,
they make snares of deer sinews twisted like pack-thread,
and occasionally of a small thong cut from a parchment
deer-skin." ^

The Similkameen Indians of British Columbia snared
deer by bending down two saplings, one on either side of a
deer run, and suspending a noose between their tops. The
deer w6re then driven down the run by men and dogs.
Bounding heedlessly along, the frightened animal was
involved in the noose, and its struggles releasing the
saplings, the deer was hung by the neck.«

Among the same Indians, remarks Mrs. Allison, before
the days of shot guns, birds were snared in slip nooses set in
trees which they frequented. The Fool bird, a species of
grouse quite deserving its name, was caught with a loop
tied to the end of a long pole. This loop was thrown over
the bird's head, and the victim was " yanked off the tree
or bush on which it sat." 3

The greater familiarity of wild creatures with mankind
before the terrible fright produced by the noise of firearms
is suggested by this statement, and must be always borne in
mind in studying the relations of true savagery to the
animal kingdom.

The Zuiii Indians have a funny way of catching a hawk by
lassoing its foot. Places for lighting are scarce in the fields
where the hawks hunt the field mice. So the Zuiii drive
stalks of sunflower into the ground, on the top of which
they fix horsehair nooses. The hawk comes down and
kindly puts its foot into the noose. As soon as it makes an
eiffort to fly the noose brings it to perch ; it can't let go,
it can't fly, so after an effort or two it waits calmly for the
Zuni to come along and knock it on the head.

* Hearne,yb«r«^^, dr'f., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 275.

^ Mrs. S. S. Allison, y. Anthrop, Inst.^ London, 1892, vol. xxi. p. 306.

3 Ibid.^ p. 307.

3o8 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The eagle feathers are the most dear of all objects to an
Indian^s heart, so in Eastern California he digs himself a little
pit and gets into it, having first put over it a covering of
brush, and on this a dead rabbit or some toothsome bait.
The eagle lights down, and before it can gather up its
powers to fly away, is dragged through the brush and its
heart crushed between the hunter^s knees.

These two methods of taking the eagle involve the same
principle, namely, that of an unseen hand grasping the foot
of the bird at the moment of absolute rest between lighting
and soaring again. This should be compared with the use
of bird-lime before mentioned.

The ancient inhabitants of Copan caught the quetzal bird
in snares, and after having plucked out their beautiful tails
set them at liberty again. To kill them was a crime
punishable by law.^

This custom, as well as that of the Hawaiians, is a step
towards domestication. It belongs to the same series as
the gathering of rubber or maple sugar from the natural
trees, and is one grade upward above the destroying the gifts
of nature irrevocably in the first use of them.

A curious example of capture by noose is one in which
Wallace describes a duel between a Bouru man and an
immense serpent which had invaded the house of the
naturalist in Amboyna. The brute was about twelve feet
long, and capable oiF swallowing a dog or a child. The man
made a strong noose of rattan, and with a long pole in the
other hand poked at the snake, who began to uncoil itself.
The man then slipped the noose over the snake^s head, and
dragged it from the roof ; then catching the snake by the
tail he rushed from the house, and running quickly, dashed
its head with a swing against a tree.^

The Dyaks ensnare deer in a kind of compound noose or
land trawl. It is a long cane cable with a continuous series

* Morelet, Trav, in Cent, Am,y New York, 187 1, p. 335, quoting
Herrera, Dec. iii., 1.x., c. ii.
» Wallace, Malay Archipel^ New York, 1869, p. 303, plate op. p. 304,

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 36^

of cane loops or nooses depending from it. This trawl is
stretched across a narrow neck of land, and upheld so as to
intercept the deer making a stampede into the bush. The
hunting party then divides, some to frighten the animals
toward the jarteng^ as it is called, and others to despatch
them as soon as they are caught.^

The reader should mark this example of borrowing
between arts as a stage of invention. There is not, perhaps,
a savage or civilised people on the earth that does not use
the trawl in fishing. Well does the author remember old
uncle William^s " trot-line " in Virginia, in the days of
slavery. Whether he brought it from Africa, no one can
tell. But he used to stretch a clothes line across the creek
at sundown, with a great many hooks dangling from it
into the water to which he had tied chicken gizzards and
other tit-bits from the kitchen. In the morning, before
" sun-up," uncle William could be seen coming up the
hill with a basket of cat-fish for missus. But the Dyaks,
watching the fishermen, have carried the art over to their
land activities and set ^' trot lines " for deer, substituting
nooses for hooks.

The universal spring is also in use among these people,
who have excellent material not only in the bamboo, for
they also manufacture fine and strong twine from the inner
bark of several kinds of trees.^ After man-power, spring-
power comes second in the list of natural forces to serve
our race.

The Congos have an ingenious contrivance for catching
wild buffalo. A stout stick, one metre long, is strung as a
bow with a double cord ; a stick inserted between the parts
of this double cord is turned several times to increase the
tension, and the farther end then catches on the bow, as in
the old-fashioned device for tightening a wood-saw. This is
planted in the track of the animal, which thrusts its foot
between bow and cord, the recoil throwing the bow

* Ling Roth,y. Anthrop, Inst,^ London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 47.
' Ibid^^ vol. xxii. p. 47.

3iO THE ORIGINS OK INVENTION,

upward.' It is a little difficult to see what advantage such
a device has over the common noose.

All savages are expert in the use of decoys and lures.
They know exactly the dainty things each animal likes best,
and have gone so far as to cut from pearl shell and stone
and bone forms that deceive the very elect. They can
imitate the peculiar whistling sound of the deer, the linnet
and other birds. Even odours known to be pleasing to
certain animals are faithfully reproduced. For every swim-
ming bird forms are created that cannot be distinguished
from the original. Each duck has its separate decoy, and
frequently the savage donned the hide of the animal pur-
sued. The modern hunter, with his wooden plovers and
tin ducks, is only borrowing from the ancients.

In one of their myths called the Mountain Chant, the
Navajo speak of dead-fall traps set at night near the
burrows of small animals, such as rats and prairie dogs.
For each trap they buried a flat stone with its upper side on
a level with the surface of the ground, and on this they
sprinkled a little earth, so that the rat would suspect
nothing ; over this they placed another flat stone leaning
at an angle and supported by a slender stick, to which were
attached berries of the aromatic sumach as a bait. The
author does not say, but it is evident that the creature, in
gnawing the bait, either disturbed the prop or gnawed it in
two, and thus was crushed.''

The old Navajo in the Chant tells his two sons how to
make a decoy for deer. Cut the skin around the neck ;
then carefully take the skin from the head, so as to remove
the horns, ears, and all other parts, without tearing any
part. Leave such an amount of flesh with the nose and
lips that they will not shrivel and lose their shape when
dry. They prepared the skin according to the old man's
directions. To keep the skin of the neck open they put
into it a wooden hoop. They sewed up the mouth, left the

' Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae, London, 187 1, plate v. fig. 12.
* Matthews, Fifth Aft, Rep, Bur, Ethnol.<t pp. 388, 390.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OK ANIMALS. 311

eye-holes open, stuffed the skin with hay, and hung it in
a tree to dry, where it would get smoky and dusty. They
cut places in the neck through which the hunter might see.
The skin of a doe which the younger brother had killed
they painted red to make it look like the skin of an
antelope. They prepared two short sticks to enable the
hunter to move with ease and hold the head (decoy) at the
proper height when he crept in disguise on the deer.
During four days the elder brother practised imitating the
walk of the game.'

Sound decoys are found among all hunting peoples. The
North American Indians imitated the partridge, the turkey,
the deer, the crow exactly. Among the frontier hunters
are men who so cleverly mock all the wild creatures as to
deceive even the oldest.

Morelet tells of one of his companions who could reproduce
to perfection the plaintive voice of the couroucou (quetzal
bird), " a talent possessed in a greater or less degree by all
the hunters of Copan." ^

The Navajo seem to have connected the sweat bath with
hunting in a practical way. Every good hunter knows that
success depends quite as much on removing the things that
offend as in presenting the things that allure. In the
Navajo Mountain Chant myth, the old hunter and his
two sons not only take four good sweats, but they lined the
floor of the sudatory with all the plants on which the deer
like most to browse. After the sweat they cleansed even
their hair with soap rood, and had good success both with
their traps and with their bows.3

The old beaver trappers had many wonderful stories to
tell of their experiences, but the secret revolves itself into
anticipation rather than treachery. The Indians knew that

* Matthews, Fifth Atu Rep* Bur. EthtoL, P* 391* For Eskimo sound
decoys, see Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep, Bur, EthtioLy Washington, 1892,
P- 253.

' Trav, in Cent, Am,^ New York, 187 1, p. 338.

3 Matthews, Fifth An, Rep, Bur, Eihnol,, p. 389.

il2 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

the beaver makes for deep water when he is caught, so he
fastened a heavy stone to the trap, which held the creature
under the water until it was drowned. The hunter also knew
that the beaver would amputate its leg when it found it-
self caught, so he must provide for that. Their objection to
the smell of anything human is also strong, so the most
aromatic substances were mixed with castor to sink the
stronger into the weaker scent. The savages frequently
made a co-operative onslaught upon a village, anticipated
this plunging into the stream by rows of stakes driven
close together, and killed the beaver trying to make its
escape.

To catch a fox it is necessary first to win its confidence,
and this the savage knows. So he prepares a trap that is
perfectly harmless, and lets Reynard walk about over the
ashes or fresh earth or chaff, picking up dainty bits until all
sense of treachery is removed. Now is the time to conceal
the trap. But all vestige of human hand or foot must be
removed, and the apparatus must be cleaned and smoked
most effectually. There can be no doubt that the fox has
become more wary even in modern times ; but, while the
wolf has surrendered to domestication, the fox continues
his original warfare on human rights until his name is a
synonym for untamable cunning.

Even the sports and pastimes of animals were taken
advantage of to secure their capture. For example, the
land otter travel over the snow chiefly by sliding. " They
seek a steep place by the water side, crawl to the top of it,
and then face about and go head first into the water. Then
up they climb and at it again, having great sport. One of
these slides is the best place to catch otter." ' The trap is set
immediately at the bottom, and the happy creature rushes
headlong into self-slaughter.

In addition to the transfer of devices from one branch of
any craft to another, and the acknowledgment of such
a transfer to be a true invention, there are still further

' Thrasher, Zrww/^r flW Trapper, New York, 1868, Judd, p. 28.

CApTORE and bOMlilStlCAtlON OF ANIMALS. 3t3

adaptations. Many of the devices used in other crafts have
undergone special modifications with a view to hunting and
fishing.

The snow shoe, the harness of animals, boats of many
kinds, designed for travel and transportation, were among
primitive tribes used more by hunters and fishers than by
all other persons combined, and were constructed to meet
their wants. In our own day there is a very large class of
boats with no other function than for fishing. The kaiak,
the birch-bark canoes, the great dug-outs and other sea
craft, piroques, bark boats, balsas, catamarans, proas, were
primarily for reaping the harvests of the sea. Everything
about the boat has been similarly modified, except perhaps
the anchor. The bow becomes a spear thrower ; the spear,
a harpoon ; the arrow, a retriever. The same is true in
land hunting. House, clothing, apparatus must all conform
to the absorbing occupations. Even the customs and laws
were changed.

The hunting and capturing and domesticating of wild
animals, specially those that go in droves, led in most
primitive tribes to the laws of game and the declaration of
the rights of owners. It seems to have been universally
agreed upon that the man who first made his mark upon an
animal was its owner. Mr. Gushing says that whoever after-
wards killed the creature was obliged to bring it to its
owner, and received his share of game from the man whose
mark it bore. The same testimony is borne by Bourke,
Dodge, and others who are familiar with the usages of
savagery.

Among the Waboni, on the river Tana, East Africa, the
etiquette of hunting is strictly observed : thus, if a dead
elephant is found by a hunter other than the one who
wounded it in the first instance, the owner is identified.

It is certain that law was developed in two ways. about
the question of animal capture, namely, in the direction of
boundaries showing where each tribe might hunt, and about
the game itself, declaring to whom it belonged. At this

314 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

same point some curious solutions of anatomy were made.
When two or three men struck the same animal, there
were laws which decided which part of the body entitled to
ownership, and these were not based on our knowledge,
but upon the savages' notions of vulnerability and totemic
precedence. Ken nan, in Tent Life^ calls attention to the
anatomical lore of the Koraks.

The employment of cunning in place of brute force in the
taking of animals alive soon led to the rudiments of domesti-
cation. There will always be persons who prefer wild
strawberries to cultivated ones, a "high'' snipe to spring
chicken, and wild boar to Westphalia ham. Though the
argument might be yielded to, it would do its advocates
little good. Wild strawberries are almost extinct, snipe are
already higher in price than they are in flavour, and, as for
the ** boar-sticker," that has been hung up with bric-a-brac
for a century. There are no longer " as good fish in the sea
as were ever caught out of it," unless we include those that
are artificially propagated.

Darwin, in speaking of the part man has taken in the
domestication of animals, adds to the natural selection upon
which he dwells : i. Unconscious Selection^ following from
men naturally preserving the most valued and destroying
the least valued individuals, without any thought of
altering the breed. 2. Methodical Selection^ or that which
guides a man who systematically endeavours to modify a
breed according to some predetermined standard. Un-
conscious selection graduates into methodical and only
extreme cases can be distinctly separated.* The same
observation might be made regarding invention through-
out every line of its life history. He further admits that he
had fallen into the current belief as to the stupidity of
savagery. " It appeared to me at one time probable that
although ancient and semi-civilised people might have
attended to the improvement of their more useful animals
in essential points, yet that they would have disregarded

* Variation of Animals and Plant s^ New York, 1876, vol. ii. p. \^^•

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 3IS

unimportant characters. But human nature is the same
throughout the world : fashion everywhere reigns supreme,
and man is apt to value whatever he may chance to
possess." ' A long list of examples is given by the dis-
tinguished naturalist, which must be omitted for want of
space.

That Darwin's unconscious selection has been going
on in savagery from the earliest period there has been
abundant evidence. As in the case of plants, so every
animal had to pass an examination. It is not for one
moment to be supposed that by an act of inspiration the
first men guessed that the dog, the cat, the horse, the cow,
the sheep, the goat, the ass, the camel, the elephant, the hog,
the llama would be useful to them. Nor is it supposable that
these creatures came and offered their services in his naked
and helpless condition.

That is a very interesting panorama hinted at in Genesis,
where all the wild animals came trooping by to see what
Adam would name them. Only I think the procession
must be strung out over many lands and must occupy
many, many centuries in the passing. Even now the
species have not all reported to get their binomial Greek
and Latin names, and the lists have frequently changed.
Nevertheless, before a page of history was written, repre-
sentatives of most of the families of vertebrates, and a great
number of species of invertebrates were familiarly known
and named by their recognised characteristics, and these
have come to be useful.

In the lowest savagery animals were killed or taken for
immediate use. They were slain in the capture or they
were taken to be slain. But in higher savagery the young
of animals were spared and brought to the habitation for
children to play with, to furnish plumage or fur for their
elders to use in decorating themselves, and for the regalia of
their civil and religious and military festivals. The question

* Variation of Animals^ iSr't., under Domestication, New York, 1 876,
vol. ii. p. 193.

3l6 THE ORIGINS OK INVENTION.

of economy obtrudes itself : how to get the best results with
the least effort. There is no doubt, also, that many animals
learned that they were safer under the protection of man
than they were in the wilds.

The author is delighted to quote from Mr. Gushing on
this point. "Both Navajo and Pueblo, but especially
the latter, practise domestication. They capture young
hawks and other birds — ducks and mocking birds among
them — and by tethering them with strings keep and
ultimately succeed in taming them. They prefer fierce
animals like the hawks and, among quadrupeds, wild
cats, because they are more easily captured, being less
timid, and are hardier, enduring the extremely unfavour-
able conditions of their captivity better than the gentler
creatures. They also like their voices better and their
characters, as being more independent. Even porcupines
are sometimes brought in, but only the badgers ever live
long. The prairie dogs die of continued fright and starva-
tion. The porcupines sooner or later prick and enrage their
over familiar master, getting killed in consequence." Fright,
starvation, bristling quills — too much for the youthful
apostle of domestication. His wild pedagogy has been a
wonderful selector, and so has the same school in all ages
and all places extinguished or subdued the animal kingdom.
The eagle, however, has another use not mentioned above.
Its feathers are most precious appendages to the ceremonial
paraphernalia.

"The moose are also easiest to tame and domesticate
of any of the deer kind. I have repeatedly seen them at
Churchill as tame as sheep, and even more so ; for they
would follow their keeper any distance from home, and at
his call return with him, without the least trouble or ever
offering to deviate from the path."'

Any American boy who has lived on the frontier knows
that partridges, wild turkeys, crows, deer, foxes, ^coons,
buffaloes, and many other wild species will become tame in

* llearne, fourncy^ «2r^., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 257.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 317

a single generation, and some of them will breed in confine-
ment. The author was never without some of these pets
when he was a boy.

" The Campas of Peru possess a great number of tamed
animals — paroquets, ourax, several species of penelopes,
monkeys, ronsocos (capyhara\ and even wild boars and
tapirs ; and it is curious to see the mistress of the lodge
when she goes, for example, to draw water from the river.
If their presence around the habitation attracts at times the
puma and the tigrillo, they destroy numbers of insects and
small vermin infinitely more dangerous to man than the
animals of the mountains. Their devotion to their masters is
the more solid because it is voluntary and nothing prevents
their regaining their liberty. The Campas do not eat the
animals thus domesticated ; on the contrary, it is not rare
to see a savage woman give her breast in turn to her child
and to a young monkey." '

The opinion that the leading domestic animals came
under man's control in prehistoric times is confirmed by
Ogilby's observations on the sheep, dog, goat, &c. Ovis
brachyura is the characteristic variety of the Ugrian race ;
Ovts dolichura the appropriate breed of the Indo-Ger manic
nations ; Ovis platyura is the favourite of the Semitic
peoples ; Ovis steatopygia was the original breed of Mon-
golic nations ; and Ovis longicauda still continues the
peculiar variety of the dark-skinned races of Asia and
Africa.2 But these are only varieties of a species that paid
its fleece and flesh and milk as tribute to primitive man.

The domestication of the dog furnishes a typical example
of the manner in which the process has gone on from
unconscious to conscious selection in the taming of animals.
It also is a refutation of those who have no good word for
savage peoples.

The wolf is an uncanny creature, said to be bloodthirsty,
remorseless, and deceitful. Not only so, but it practises

' Ollivier Ordinaire, Rev, (TEtJmog.^ 1887, vol. vi. p. 282.
^ Rep, BriL Assoc., 1857, pt. ii., p. 105.

31^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

co-operative murder, bringing down the stoutest mammals
by mere numbers. But all the beauty, all the faithfulness,
all the versatility of modern dogs were locked up in the
wolf as in a mine of precious ore. These fine qualities
were gradually bred out from the wolf, not bred into him.
From one point of view they are indeed human productions,
human inventions, just as much as the delicious music of
the violin is a product of human genius. The qualities of
men are mirrored in their dogs. All that the dog has and
is it owes to man. In its natural state the wolf is the
picture and synonym of what is rapacious in man. The
latter has not learned a single virtue from the former ; on
the contrary, man has given no higher testimonial of his
talent than the creation of such a noble animal as the dog
from wolfish material.

The Eskimo in our day have preserved one of the first
lessons taught the wolves. They take a sharp bit of flint
or a knife-blade procured from the whalers, and fasten it to
a stake or a rock and cover it with fat, which soon freezes
into a ball. The incautious and hungry wolf, discovering
the dainty morsel, laps the fat with its tongue until the
sharp blade slices the latter and brings the blood. The
taste of blood excites and infuriates the wolf, which only
laps the more vigorously and commits accelerated suicide.
The smell of blood and the taste thereof communicates
the madness to the pack, and if at that moment all the
wolves in the world could be gathered, they would be piled
into a monument of mutual carnage. There is no profit in
contending against such odds. The wolf is now superstitious.

The first day or two spent by Lupus in the human school
must have been anything but sunshine to his soul. Hitherto
he had been taken for his fiir alone. Hunger on his part
drove him to put his head into a noose or under a weighted
log, or to move the treacherous trigger that released a stone
dagger to brain him.'

' Boas, Sixth An. Rep, Bur. Ethnol.^ Washington, 1885, p. 510, quoting
Klutschak, AU Eskimo^ «SrV., Wien, 1881, p. 192.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 3I9

In this primary grade, however, the wolf learned
thoroughly the first lesson in domestication — the con-
viction of a mysterious force, the sense of having been
overpowered, the ineradicable memory of a hopeless
struggle. The wolf^s head being larger than its neck
enables its preceptor to put a collar thereon and a tether to
that, against which the pupil might protest in vain. . Fear
also, created by the infliction of bodily pain which the
creature could not escape nor revenge, completed the
enslavement of the wolf.

All animals are tamed or broken in the same fashion.
The author was reared on a large stock farm, and is witness
to the fact that the subduing of the most incorrigible
stallion or bull is first psychological. The animal is
** cinched,'^ as it used to be called — that is, it is rendered
powerless. The method of breaking elephants in the East
is well known. The celebrated flea-tamer puts the frisky
creatures into a metal pill-box on the end of a spindle, and
whirls it by means of a bow drill. When the box is opened
the fleas are as docile as tortoises, and, on his testimony,
they never hop again.

The next step in this lycotechny is the result of a dis-
covery that even the native and wild instincts and habits of
the wolf may be helpful to its captor. It howls at night in
recognition of the approach of other wolves or wild beasts,
or of man. Its refined olfactory sense discovers the sources
of food unperceived by the hunter. Its fleetness enables it
to run down the wounded game, which it is allowed to
share with its master. It may be that in close quarters its
canine teeth deliver him from an ugly foe.

One day the tired hunter discovered that on the snow the
wolf-dog could pull, and that its back could bear a burden.
The proverb, **to work like a dog," must have arisen in that
period of history.

In Southern Canada and along the northern border of the
United States a broad collar is put around the dog^s neck,
a girth around its body, and these are united along the

320 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

shoulders by two straps. The dog is in a harness which
allows perfect movement of every muscle, and yet it cannot
extricate itself. Two poles are lashed to this harness, one
on either side, and tied together at the upper ends, while
the other ends trail behind the dog on the ground. Upon
this primitive " wheelbarrow *' or cart without wheels, called
travois, a load of fifty pounds is lashed. In the same region
a pack regularly made up is laid upon the back of the dog.
Along the Arctic strip of North America and in North-east
Asia, among the Eskimo and the Indians, dogs are harnessed
to sledges. The amount of thought and forethought dis-
played in the sledge, the harness, the training and care for
the animals, does great credit to the thinking powers of
these savages.

Some of the Canadian dogs at the beginning of the
winter, when fresh at their work for the season, are exceed-
ingly restive under coercion of any description, and not
infrequently snap at their masters, who invariably arm
themselves with very strong mittens of buffalo or deer hide
when harnessing a savage and powerful animal. The dogs
require long-continued and most severe punishment to make
them obedient to the word of command.*

The dog has never been able to emancipate itself from this
simple but effective harness. The history of its activity
must include all the tread-mills upon whose "climbing
sorrow '^ dogs have been compelled to walk. In the most
learned nation of the earth it is possible to see these crea-
tures by hundreds harnessed with women, as they have been
from the beginning dragging food for the militant class to
eat. In Belgium and France also the same sights will
greet the eye under the shadow of the grandest structures
in the world.

The barbarous races have always welcomed the services of
the dog in the care of their flocks. The shepherd^s dog is a
marvel of breeding and training. If the reader will watch a

' Hind, Canadian Red River, <Sr»r., London, i860, Longman, vol. ii. p.
93. Consult Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, New York, 1872, p. 557.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATtON OF ANIMALS. 321

flock of sheep conducted through the thoroughfares of
London by one of these creatures, he will scarcely be able to
realise what the ancestor of the dog would have done with
these same sheep many generations back.

The oldest books in Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, and the
Mesopotamian languages mention dogs already bred and edu-
cated, if we may say so, out of savagery into a high canine
civilisation. Revoil believes that the hunting instincts of the
wild dog still survive in the hound, indeed, have not been
allowed to die out, and that the great ferocity exhibited in
the chase would seem a temporary recurrence to savage life
and habits.^

The variety of acquirements among the earlier mentioned
trained dogs is truly surprising, and confirms the suggestion
made more than once in this book, that a multitude of the
stage settings for the drama of human progress were prepared
before the curtain rose upon written history.

Xenophon^s Kynegetiktis is the oldest known book upon
the domesticated dog. Says Rossignol, " Among the Greeks
different races of dogs were employed for different kinds of
game. For hares, Castorians and fox-hounds were used ;
for stag hunting, Indian hounds ; for the wild boar, Indian,
Cretan, Locrian, and Laconian hounds. Chief attention is
given to the coursing of hares. They were not to catch the
hare, but to drive it into nets set at certain places. The
best dogs are those with a light head and blunt muzzle, pro-
minent black shining eyes, broad forehead ; long, flexible,
roynd neck, broad chest, straight elbows. They must be
strong, well-proportioned, swift of foot, and above all they
must be keen scented." * Then follows a number of direc-
tions for feeding, for young dogs, and for the making of
specialists.

* Revoil, HisL Physiologique et Antcdotique des Chiens, Paris, 1867,
p. 394, quoted by Rossignol.

* For an elaborate study on the subject consult Rossignol, ** The
Training of Animals. A. — Dc^s,** Am. J, of Psychology, Worcester, Mass.,
1892, vol. V. pp. 205-13. Reviews of Works on Dogs in Professor Brewer's
Library.

21

3^^ THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

" Cat and dog " are synonyms of antagonism. The cat
is a tiger in blood and at heart. The dog is man's friend,
chiefly ; but the cat is woman's friend. The latter was
invented much later in history ; that is, the useful functions
of the cat were developed after those of the dog.

The cat was the defender of the hoard, the house, the
granary, against rats and mice and other vermin, against
snakes and lizards and other reptiles. It never seized nor
retrieved, nor brought home aught for man to eat. In India
the cheeta or hunting leopard springs upon prey, but it still
insists on devouring the game after the manner of the cat.

So, the myth relates that when in the war with Typhon
the gods fled to Egypt and were metamorphosed into
animals, the goddess of hunting, Diana, was changed into
a cat.^ The universal esteem in which Pasht or Bubastis
was held in Egypt, pre-eminently the granary of the ancient
world, is only another example of the good people of this
world who have gone to live in the sky. Since in historic
times the cat, in both a wild and a domestic state, has
always been known in China, India, Egypt, and Greece, its
first treaty of peace and amity with man goes back to those
prehistoric times when men first began to lay up grain-stores
for the future.

Any other one of our domestic animals would furnish an
equally good example of the evolution of the art of domesti-
cation. The steps are in every case easy to follow. The first
act is a kind of compromise or covenant ; the second is an
enslavement of the weaker minded ; the third is a mutual
improvement, each refining and becoming refined ; the last is
conscious breeding on the part of man, by which he creates,
as it were, new species or varieties for a thousand uses and
pleasures.

The domestication of the bee and the silkworm are
marvels of human ingenuity. The bee-hunter has always
a charm to readers of books of travels. In the days of
slavery in the Southern States there was a class of " poor

* DxxxeaUi Ann, d, Sc. NaL^ Paris, 1829, Crochard, vol. xvii. pp. 159-92.

CAPTURE AND DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. 323

whites " who eked out a living by finding bee-trees in the
forests. The Africans hollow out a log, rub it with aromatic
herbs, and hang it in a tree near the wild bees* nests. To
unhook this log with its bees and honey and hang it in a
tree nearer home is the work of a moment, and the thing is
done.^

In Palestine the owners frequently remove their hives of
bees up into the loftiest mountains as the flowers disappear
from the lower regions, and put them in the woods, that the
bees may gather honey from mountain thyme and other
plants that bloom in autumn on those cool heights. The
hives are made of plaited basket-work, formed with long,
hollow cylinders, and are easily transported on the backs of
mules and donkeys. The cylinders are piled up in the
woods in a sort of pyramid, and covered with an old mat.'

The domestication of the silkworm in China was pre-
historic. ** In the grounds of the Imperial Palace at Peking
is an altar forty feet in circuit and four feet in height, sur-
rounded by a wall and also a temple. This is the * Early
Silkworms Altar,' in the vicinity of which a plantation of
mulberry-trees and a cocoonery are maintained. It is dedi-
cated to Yuenfei, First Wife, in her quality of the discoverer
of silkworms, and annually in April the Empress worships
and sacrifices to her." 3

The latest modern efforts to change from the natural
supply to an artificial basis of food through intentional
selection and propagation is in the case of fishes and other
aquatic products. The most primitive fishermen doubtless
ate their spoils on the spot. But the savage fish-hook
without barbs, and the traps and weirs and nets, could not
be long in suggesting that the meal might be taken at the
pleasure of the captor. So, fish-preserves, and, finally, fish-
ponds are of very early date.

In Polynesian fish-ponds a circular space about ten feet

* See Livingstone, 7 ravels ^ k^c, New York, 1858, p. 307..

* Thomson, The Land and the Book, New York, 1880, vol. i. p. 225.
3 Lacouperie, The Silk- Goddess, London, 189 1, Nult, p* 3.

324 The origins ok invention.

in diameter is enclosed with a stone wall built up from the
bottom of a lake to the edge of the water. A small opening
is left in the upper part of the wall, on the side away from
the sea, and from each end of this a wall of stone extends,
the two diverging as wings of a net. In this manner the
creatures are intercepted on their return to the sea. Fish
are usually found in these ponds, and they are excellent
preserves, in which the animals are kept until they are
wanted. Ellis describes a fish-pond in Tamehameha not less
than two miles in circumference.'

Eels were a favourite fish with the Tahitians, and were
often tamed and fed until they attained an enormous size.
The pets were kept in large holes, two or three feet deep,
partially filled with water. On the sides of these pits the
eels formed or found an aperture in an horizontal direction,
in which they generally remained. Ellis mentions a young
chief who would give a shrill whistle near one of the holes,
and bring forth an enormous eel, which moved about the
surface of the water and ate out of its master's hand."

The climax of this industry is the modern patent fish-jar,
holding a gallon, and hatching a hundred thousand young
at a time.

' Ellis, Polyiies. Researches, Lon<loii, vol. i. p. 138; vol. iv. p. 407.
Turner, Samoa, London, 1884, p. agS.
" Ellis, Palynes. Researches, vol. i. p. 76.

CHAPTER X.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION,

" Look at the character of our country. Crete is not like Thessaly, a
large plain, and for this reason they have horses there and we have runners
afoot here. The inequality of the ground in our country is more adapted
to locomotion afoot." — Plato, Laws,

Atlas and the Caryatides were men and women who went
long ago to live in the skies and in the dreams of artists and
architects. They once dwelt upon the earth, however, not
as individuals, perhaps, but as a class of whom the artistic
and the mythic types are only composite photographs.

Any day, in London or New York or Dresden or Singa-
pore or Mexico, their descendants may be seen bowing under
great burdens as of old — men carrying them upon their
backs, women poising them upon their heads chiefly. In
many other places these burden- bearers share with freighted
ships and trains and beasts of burden the loads of com-
merce ; but it was not so from the beginning. j^The
commerce of the world was borne at first only on the backs
of human beings. The loads were not great, the distances
travelled were short, and the carrying industry was confined
principally to the food-quest.

Even in those early days, conveyance was both by land
and by water, and it was prosecuted for the double purpose
of getting about personally and for the bearing of burdens.
The former was the beginning of what is now called travel ;
the latter, of transportation. The vestibule train and the

325

320 THR ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

fast freight train, the passenger steamer and the merchant
marine, are the modern representatives of those primitive
methods of moving persons and things.

The interesting problem h to find out how the one
became the other throughout the world, and how the more
ancient methods survive into the modern time. To any
thoughtful student, such immense and costly assemblages
of riding and carrying devices as may ha seen in a great
exhibition are stimulating. So many of them are only of

yesterday, and yet all of them are a sort of metric scale
or indicator to show how far man's genius had gone in
that particular year in shortening distances and lightening
burdens', ,.

In the life of primitive society the carr3ing of adult
human beings must have been confined to the dead, the
sick, or the wounded, or to the bearing of persons in
authority. At any rate, in our own day, among the
precipitous trails in the mountainous region of South

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 327

America, the silleteros take each a man on his back in
a rude hod or chair and carry him ten miles a day.*

But the more primitive inventions, antedating these rude
frames on which one man bears another, were devices which
would enable the man himself to get about more rapidly.
The exigency was never too great. Foot-gear and ac-
cessories to walking, running, or climbing were devised for
the occasion. By this means the man became passenger
in a coach which he himself compelled. Cold or heat,
mountain or plain, open sward or volcanic slag or thorny
undergrowth, only stimulated the germ of ingenuity, and
gave the greater variety to what else would have been
barefooted monotony.

Where the cold was intense, and the snow compact, the
Eskimo walked on a snowshoe in which a few coarse meshes
were sufficient, and he also, as well as the Laplander, the
Finn, and the Ghiliak, put a cunning little snowshoe on the
bottom of his cane.* The increasing size of the snowshoe
and fineness of the mesh were governed by the temperature,
coming southward, with the greatest fidelity, until the tier
of states south of Canada were reached, and there they dis-
appeared. Only in the elevated portions of California are
they elsewhere found. In the northern regions of Europe and
Asia the coarse snowshoe and the Norwegian skee prevail.
But neither in Russia nor in Siberia could be found a finely
meshed variety similar to those of Canada or interior Alaska.
The reason is plain. Each snow-bound area where men
dwelt at all, dictated the style of snowshoe to use.

The study of aids to locomotion is more interesting if we
commence in the tropical regions and follow the evolution
of the shoe northward.

Tropical men were practically barefooted. They wore in

* Columbus mentions the carrying of a cacique in his \\iitx, Journals , <SrV.,
HakUiyt, London, 1893, ^o^* Ixxxvi. p. 119.

- Excellent chapter on the construction of the snowshoe, by Murdoch, in
Ninth An. Rep, Bur, EthnoL, Washington, 1892, 344-52, 4 figs. ; also
von Schrenk, op, cif^

328 THE ORiniNS OF IN^'RN'TION.

some places strips of raw hide the shape of the foot, and
fastened thereto by thongs. The sandal came up from the
Bouth. In other warm regions the raw hide was replaced
with a coarsely woven sandal made of the toughest and most
available fibre of the country — perhaps of yucca filaments
as in Mexico, or of palm fibre as in other lands. Each
culture area provided an excellent sub-
stance, which Necessity was not long in
finding.

The most primitive of foot-gear is
found among the Indians of Guiana.
This is a pair of sandals cut from the
leaf-stalk of the aeta palm {Mattritia
flexuosa), which is worn on very stony
parts of the Savannah to protect the
feet. The string which keeps the sandal
on the foot passes between the great toe
and the next, and when these foot
coverings are much worn, the flesh be-
tween the two toes becomes callous. A
very few hours' use wears out the
sandals, but this does not much matter,
for a new pair can be cut from the
nearest aeta palm, and can be ready for
use in a few minutes. They are made
to the measure of the foot as carefully
as though they were done by European
shoemakers.'

Starting from this southland, where
the burning or rough earth has suggested
to the traveller the advisability of clothing the soles of his
feet, one may hear the environment whispering new sug-
gestions in his ear at every degree northward.

In the desert, among venomous creatures, man dons rude

leggings. Among the thorns and cactus the foot was

povered, the moccjsin was invented, and even a. long toe

' )in Tlium, Indians of British Guiana, I^ondon, i88j, p, 195.

TRAVFL ANn TRANSPORTATION. 329

was turned up, like the front of a snowshoe, to tread down
the thorns. The Apache Indians, roving in the deserts of
Arizona, were known by the style of this foot-gear. The

of the Topboot, Hupa Indians, California.

covered sandal or shoe was also a helper against the cold.
In the temperate zone of both continents and both hemi-
spheres the shoe in some form came early to be prevalent-

330 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

But in the regions of the north the sandal, the moccasin,
the gaiter, the buskin, and the legging were all securely
sewed together into the boot.

This formidable foot-wear, whatever the chasseur may
say to the contrary, was invented in the north — at least, in
subarctic climes. Furthermore, the Samoyede, as well as
the Eskimo, was persuaded by dame Nature to add a sock
of soft grass, into which he thrusts his foot before donning
his boots for a long journey. And so our modern foot-gear
has required all climes and all ages of the world for its
invention. Between the barefooted man and the booted
Hyperborean there is a great difference of speed and en-
durance. The shoes and boots were the winged sandals
of Hermes in the early days of travel.

In other articles of clothing it is not always certain
whether the idea of utility or that of adornment was first ;
but there is no doubt that men protected their feet before
they thought of decorating them.

The alpenstock and the gold-headed cane of the alderman
are survivals of a useful accessory in travelling and trans-
portation. Omitting the pilgrim^s staff of mediaeval times
as being a little too far along for this inquiry, it is but just
to observe that its ancestors were most serviceable members
of society. The cargadores of Mexico, and all the burden -
bearing tribe of Latin America, together with the noble
army of coolies, everywhere carry staves for a multitude of
purposes. The Pima Indian of Southern California has a
notch or a fork on the top of his staff, which he may use
at will as a rest for his carrying net-basket. The survival
of this may be seen in the single leg of the organ-grinder^s
apparatus or in the coolie^s staff, serving now as a cane,
now as a rest for his load, and anon as a weapon, defensive
against dogs or men. It must have been with some such
thought in his mind that the Psalmist wrote, " Thy rod
and thy staff they comfort me,'* serving the double purpose
of supporting his flagging body and warding off his savage
enemies.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 33 1

Reference might also be made to stilts, which are by no
means confined to the amusement of children, nor yet to
the French shepherds, but may be seen in savagery as well.
The Polynesians made stilts of very beautiful patterns.

Travelling upward, in the house life or along declivities
and in steep places, stimulated the invention of steps cut
from a log, ladders of rope or bamboo or wood. The Pueblo
tribes, for safety against the roving Indians in the neigh-
bourhood, had studied out the problem of security. Living
in fastnesses of the canons, or in adobe houses on the mesas
and the plains, they rendered themselves secure by ascend-
ing to their homes on ladders and drawing these up after
them. Here they defied both assault and fire.

** The road to Peten," says Morelet, ** was interrupted
by almost vertical descents, impassable for mules, and only
ascended and descended by pedestrians, through the aid of
rude ladders, formed of the notched trunks of trees placed
against the rocks." ^ The inclined plane was mentioned in
a previous chapter as a mechanical device for raising heavy
objects. It was thoroughly studied out in the trails and
mountain passes that cover the elevated portions of the
earth like a network, and led up no doubt to later military
engineering.

The modern elevator is in reality a vertical railway for
passengers and freight. Hoisting apparatus for freight is
common enough, and quite old, but, before the vertical
railway was invented, passengers had to walk up into the
air on steps and ladders as we have seen, but climbing was
before that. Ellis tells us that a little Polynesian boy who
goes up for cocoanuts, " strips off a piece of bark from a
purau branch and fastens it round his feet, leaving a space
four or five inches between them, and then clasping the
tree, he vaults up its trunk with greater agility and ease
than a European could ascend a ladder to an equal eleva-
tion. When a bunch is gathered at a time it is lowered by
a rope ; but when the nuts are gathered singly the boys

^ Morelet J Trav. in Cent* Am,^ New York, 1871, pp. 327, 420.

li
■.■:

332 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

give them a whirling motion that they may fall on the
point." *

The Aetas of the Philippines are prodigiously active at
climbing trees, clasping the trunk with their hands and
setting the soles of their feet against the trunk.' This is
precisely the way in which men of our day mount telegraph
poles. The rough bark of the tree, and the bare feet of the
Philippine islander are offset on the smooth telegraph pole
by spikes on the operator's boots.

Anticipatory of the modern vertical lift is the device
of the bee hunters of the island of Timor. A company
of natives coming upon a smooth tree, without a
branch till at seventy feet from the ground, and spying
three large bee combs, prepared to take them. One
of them, from the stem of a creeper, made a bush-rope
by which to do the climbing, and proceeded to wrap his
head and body in cloths, but left his limbs free. To his
girdle he had attached a long coil of small rope wherewith
to let down the honey. To one end of the bush-rope a
wood-torch and a chopping knife were attached. " The
bee hunter," says Wallace, ** now took hold of the bush
rope just above the torch, and passed the other end
round the trunk of the tree, holding one end in each hand.
Jerking it a little above his head, he set his feet against the
trunk and, leaning back, began walking up it." When he
had come within a few feet of the bees he began to swing
his torch. Arriving at the limb, he attached the small cord
at his girdle to the comb hanging down, cut it loose with
his chopper, and let it down to his companions, at the same
time plying his torch. As soon as he had secured the three
combs he retraced his steps to the ground, by means of his
bush-rope.3

' Ellis, Polynes, Res,^ London, Bohn, vol. i. p. 57.

' E. Best, y. Polynes, Soc, Wellington, 1892, vol. i. p. 12 ; quoting
Geroni^re, Tiveniy Years in the Philipines, Consult also Woods, Unciv.
Races ^ Hartford, 1870, vol. ii. p. 33, for Australian climbing.

^ Consult Wallace, Malay ArchipeL^ New York, 1869, p. 207*

(A«« iu Mumilc.y

I

tRAVEL AND TRANSPOkTAtlON. 333

The Dyaks have a most ingenious method of ascending
tall, smooth trees. The necessary apparatus are a number
of sharpened bamboo pegs about a foot long, one or more
long, slender bamboos, and cord made from the inner bark
of a tree, all of these being prepared on the spot. " They
now drove a peg into the tree to be ascended, about
three feet from the ground, and bringing one of the
long bamboos, stood it upright close to the tree, and bound
it firmly to the two first pegs [one at the ground and
one three feet above], by means of the bark cord. One of
the Dyaks now stood on the first peg, and drove in a third
about the level of his face, to which he tied the long bamboo
in the same way, and then he mounted another step,
standing on one foot and holding by the bamboo at the peg
immediately above him, while he drove in the next one. In
this manner he ascended about twenty feet, when, the
upright bamboo becoming thin, another was handed by
his companion, and this was joined on by tying both
bamboo to three or four pegs.^' ^ And so on to the point
desired.

The T'lingit Indians of Alaska ascended the tall trees, from
which their totem post and great house logs were cut by
a similar devicie.

Locomotion must necessarily have been largely by water
at first. It was the reproach of the Choctaws living on the
Mississippi river that they could not swim. But it would
be very difficult to find another tribe of savages devoid of
this art.

The Labrador Indians use little paddles to drag them-
selves quickly through the water. The tribes on the
borders of Mexico, in Peru, and in several localities in the
Eastern Continent, tie bundles of reeds together as floats.
The ancient Assyrians are represented as buoying themselves
upon inflated goatskins. Cardinal Wolsey confessed that
he had ventured, like wanton boys who swim on bladders,
far beyond his depth. The breaking of his high-blown

* Wallace, Malay Archipel.^ New York, 1869, p. 66.

334

THK OKIOINS OK INVENTION,

pridu ivas true, no doubt, but the bladders used as life
preservers by boys and men are difficult to burst.

On the Gulf of California there are tribes that lash
two light bits of wood to a vine which they place
against the breasts, exactly after the manner of the cork
life-preservers.

— Assyriiiii Warriur crussini;

ing, the savage man solved the difficulty of going where he
pleased.

Ellis says, " Like the inhabitants of most of the islands
of the Pacific the Tahitians are fond of the water, and
lose all dread of it before they are old enough to know

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 335

the danger.'^ In surf swimming they used a small board,
on which they were accustomed to ride inward on the
breakers. The Sandwich islanders were especially skilful
with the swimming board, being able to sit, kneel, and
even to stand on them when the crest of the wave
was pushing shoreward." ^ In the sport called pakaka-
iiahi^ the player rides the surf sitting in his canoe. The
canoe poised on the inclined plain, in advance of the wave,
is carried shoreward at such speed that it is possible to avoid
broaching and being upset only by a delicate adjustment of
forces and great skill and judgment with the paddle.=^

But in a chapter on the beginnings of the carrying industry
we are most concerned with conveniences for riding and
transportation. Here, as in other arts we are to investigate
the construction of each apparatus, its evolution or develop-
ment, and its geographic distribution. How much of each
form is due to the earth, and how much to human ingenuity
will be difficult to determine. But we are at the foundation
of one of the four greatest of human employments — the ex-
ploitation of the globe, the transformation of material, and
the consumption of industrial products being the other three.

The first coaches were the backs of savage mothers. In
the frozen north, the Eskimo woman bears her infant about
in the ample hood of her warm caribou or sealskin robe.
There, both men and women are compelled to wear the
parka or blouse, with a hood or cowl attached, and this
they may throw back at pleasure. But the mother pro-
vides a hood like a great bag, so large indeed that her babe
may rest upon her shoulders and crawl about in the back of
her bonnet, as in a miniature sleeping-car berth.3

' Consult CoU Lane Fox, •* Early Modes of Navigation," J, Anthrop,
Inst., London, 1875, vol. iv. pp. 399-437.

^ See " The Long Voyages of the Ancient Hawaiians," Hawaiian Hist,
SoCi May 18, 1893.

3 Mason, " Cradles of the American Aborigines,** ^<f/. U^S, Nat. Afus.,
1887, pp. 161-235 ; 'blwrdochy Ninth An, Kep, Bur, EthnoL^ pp. 1 10-120,
figs. 52, 61.

336 THK OKKilNS OF IXVKNTloN.

Further south, as far as the borders of modern Mexico,
and ill the more temperate regions of South America, the
\ehicle in which the youthful aborigines are transported is
called a papoose frame. The passenger is lashed to or in
this carriage shortly after its birth, and rides about therein
until his legs are strong enough to bear him up.

It is an interesting study to mark
the close relationship between this
primitive mode of conveyance and
the environment, and also the eflTects
which the vehicle has had on the
rider. In the cold precincts of
Canada birch -bark furnishes the
material, making a light and warm
trough in which, embedded in soft
furs, the young savage takes his
ride. The climate decides both
the material and the method, and
there is little artificial modification
of the body.

On the Pacific coast of America,
in that wonderful lumber belt which
stretches from the Columbia river
to Sitka, troughs of wood like tiny
\ arks are excavated for the papoose,
^ with bed of shredded cedar bark.
Among not a few tribes, Chinooks
proverbially, each passenger is fur-

(J/itrffialy.) obliged to wear for many months

upon his forehead, so attached to
the sides of the cradle as to arrest the Increase of the brain
in front and force it to grow in the region of the vertex,
pushing the skull up in that direction like a pyramid. This
operation is said to have made the individual took taller,
while it did not impair his intelligence. In this instance
also the climate selected both the material and the style of

tra\t?:l and transportation. 337

the cradle, which, in its turn, gave shape to the body of
the tiny rider throughout its life.

The Indians who treat their children thus are of several
stocks. Besides this intentional modification of the skull,
there is an inadvertent flattening of the occiput in all the
tribes of America.'

In the eastern portion of the United States, the primitive
vehicle was a flat board or frame, with sides of raw-hide,
profusely decorated with quill-work and feather-work, and,
latterly, covered over solid with bead embroidery — a dainty
coach indeed. One has only to put runners beneath it and
increase its size in order to have the travelling sledge in
vogue in all the countries of the domesticated reindeer and
the harnessed dog. The modern cradle with rockers is also
the descendant of some such device, and the old-fashioned
hooded cradle was not unlike it in form. The effect of this
perfectly flat and straight board is visible in the limbs and
carriage of the Eastern Indians.

In the Great Interior Basin of the United States and in
California, wicker carriages were in universal fashion, many
of them made with exquisite care. Some of them were
built up from a hurdle-like wicker frame, perfectly straight,
while others in form resembled the bowl of a spoon. The
beds in these were differently constructed in accordance with
the climate and elevation and natural resources, each region
having its own unmistakable form. Where the same culture
area is inhabited by more than one stock, the tribal
characteristics are also marked like escutcheons upon the
coach.

In one and all of these, the passenger, without being con-
sulted, was compelled to lie on his back, to be wrapped in
furs or blankets or mats, and to be kept secure in his place
by being lashed therein with soft thongs or buckskin.

In the days of unchanged savagery he was borne about on
the back of the mother, a soft band of buckskin attached to
the top of the apparatus passing across her forehead. Occa-

' Porter, Rep, U. S, Nat, Mus,^ 1887, PP« 213-235.

22

338 THE ORIGrNS OF INVENTION.

sionally this band was passed over the projecting knot of a
limb.

** When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough bends, the cradle will fall,
Down will come l)aby and cra<lle and all — "

necessarily, as they were securely lashed together.

In tropical and sub-tropical portions of both continents,
where it was as much as an infantas life was worth to ride in
so close a vehicle, the mother infolded it in her serape or
mantle, carrying it now on her hip, now on her back, and
anon on her shoulders. The women of the tropics adopted
everywhere this form of carriage. It was always a marvel
how the tiny creatures could keep their seats in such an
insecure vehicle. A friend of the author tells of a Mohave
woman who came to a barrack with her child thus mounted.
Spying a rain -barrel partly full, she threw off her serape, the
only garment she wore, and proceeded to bathe herself, her
infant passenger sticking to her like a young lizard to a tree.
Indeed, in all their travelling and working the women carry
their infants upon their persons, having a half-conscious,
half-automatic care of them the livelong day.

There is usually about the woman *s waist or arms or
shoulders a band or girdle, and the prehensile instincts of
the babes soon learn to stick to this. The apes carry their
children in the same manner, only they do not wear a
girdle, which is an invention.

In the extreme southern regions of South America
among the Araucanians, the cradle frame is similar to those
in Eastern United States, and to the carrying frames of
Eastern Asia ; and further south, in Tierra del Fuego,
there is a semblance of the Eskimo custom of infantile
transportation, though the abject natives go very much
more naked. So, in the American continent, from one
extremity to the other, the ingenious minds of the abo-
rigines, who were of the same race, understood the exi-
gencies of climate and the regional resources so well as to

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION.

339

establish in their method of carrying their children an
excellent harmony

Throughout the African continent, in Australia, among
the Pacific islanders in the Asiatic continent south of the
Altai Mountains indeed in much of Furope, the carrying

method of the Mohave woman before mentioned is kept up.
But the little passenger attaches himself peculiarly to the
mother's body in each region and tribe. In civilised Europe
the child sits in front, that is, it rides on the forearm of the
maternal beast of burden or of her substitute, the nurse.
Mention should be made later on of tlie tiny carts and

I

340 THE OKIGIKS OF IWENTION.

waggons in which the latest born of the Aryan race are
dragged about. But it is not to be forgotten that in the
earliest times of our species the custom of conveyance b^an
with the transportation of infants, frequently for long dis-
tances, on the mother's back.'

For the better security of their babies when travelling,
women are in the habit of hanging ronnd their necks a
string, the ends of which have been previously fastened to
the infant's wrists. The child is carried about in a chip,
which is a sling or band made by women from the bark of
the Melochia velufina, which is worn over the shoulder like
a sash.'

Mention will be made later on of the methods of being
carried about in apparatus of greater complexity. Leaving
here for a moment the passenger primeval we may observe
the most simple kinds of burden- bearing.

The millenniums of change through which human inven-
tion has passed in the transforming of a rude stick or frame
to fit on a man's back, or a burden strap to fit across hif
torehead, or a pad to rest on his head, into the latest devices
for transportation by land or by sea, constitute the history ol
one of the world's activities. Many volumes would be
required to tell the whole story ; but in this connection are
to be rehearsed only a few of its opening paragraphs, and tc
notice how these initial efforts survive into modern culture
Here, also, we cannot stop with the thing invented, but must
search for co-ordinate changes wrought in other industries.

To have some conception of the enormous amount o:
labour borne on human backs, calculate the weight of everj
mound, earthwork, embankment, fort, canal, wooden, brick

■ Kxcellent picture of Bechiiana women hoeing and carrying baby al thi
same lime in Holuh, Ilbislricrler Fiihrer dunk die Siidafrik Amslelluiig
I'l^, 1892, Olio, ]i. 86.

= Mar, Andaman Istandtrs, l^ndon, 1S88, Triib., pp. 109, 180, pi
vii., fig. 25. Consull also Pokrowski, Reimt d' Eihnagraphie, Paris, 1889
50 pages wilh illuslradons. Also Les Nmirriuens et tittotn les fays tl h
agts, A. Collin, Paris ; anil Ploss, Das Kind.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPOtttATtON. 34I

and metal fabrication and structure on earth. These have
all been carried many times and elevated by human muscle*
Omitting the few heavy stones too weighty even for a com-
bined human effort, all the freights of land trains and sea
craft were first carried by men and will be lifted a,nd borne
by them again and again. The ancient field gleaner, miller
and cook performed little compared with the modern
farmer, roadster, freighter, warehouseman, retailer, and
consumer.

If one should walk through the markets or along the
docks of a great city at busy time, he would be surprised
at the survivals of ancient ways of carrying existing on into
our day. The human body is marvellously adapted to
the greatest variety of burden bearing. Almost from the
crown of the head to the foot loads may be attached.
They are borne on the head, on one shoulder, on both
shoulders, on the atlas, on the hips, on the thighs, on the
arms, on the knees, and they are suspended from the top of
the head in front ; from the forehead, resting on the back,
from the neck, shoulder, breast, arms, hands, waist, and
even from the knees. To suit these parts of the body there
have been invented, ** the milkmaid^s P^d,^^ the forehead
band, the porter^s knot, the "Holland yoke,'* the Chinese
yoke, the pedlar's stick, market baskets, knapsacks, burden
baskets, panniers, haversacks, grip-sacks, and all the rest.

There are tribal and regional and national ways of
attaching the load. What will suit the plain will not suit
the mountain. What will suit meat will not be convenient
for acorns, and so on to the end.

These for single carriers. Then comes co-operative
carrying involving the palankeen form, the bier, the lumber*
man's stick held in the hands and supported on the knees.
In the hill country of Hindostan as many as three hundred
men have been seen carrying a menhir on a frame. The
whole could not have weighed much less than fifteen tons»
Every man in the street carries something, every lady has her
package or her parasol. If all the loads great and small at

34^ I'HE ORIGINS OF INVENriO>J.

aiiy'inomeiit resting on human bodies could be added up, it
would equal at the same moment all other loads oa ships
or railroad trains.

LA Pullman palace train weighs from 780,000 to 1,000,006
pounds, and travels at least forty miles per hour. A pack-
man among our primitive peoples cannot possibly move
over one hundred pounds ten miles a day. The train, with
proper relays, will move nearly a thousand miles a day.
Allowing one hundred and fifty pounds for the weight of
the carrier, it required four hundred thousand men to do
the work of this one train. The problem is not quite so
simple as that, because another great advantage is gained
by the diversification of industries, and business created by
the making of the track, and the train, and the commerce
involved.

If all of the carriers of the world were marched in a proces-
sion in the order of the antiquity of their devices, taking into
consideration the actual relationships and affiliations of cer-
tain forms, the single burden bearers, sustaining their loads
without any intermediary apparatus would come first, they
would be followed by single carriers who were using some
sort of apparatus. All of these could be put in lines ac-
cording to the part of the body involved.

The co-operative carriers might follow in accordance with
the same evolutionary plan of arrangement. Before there
were any means of transport over the mountains lying
between Hope, on the Frazer river, British Columbia, and
the Similkameen tribes, the Indians used to be employed to
pack provisions on their backs'^!) The packs were suspended
by means of a band or strap passed over their foreheads, and
one of them, says Mrs. Allison, packs three sacks of flour
(150 lbs.) on his back, while travelling on snow shoes for a
distance of sixty-five miles over a rough mountainous road,
with a depth of twenty-five feet of snow on the summit of
Hope mountain, over which the trail ran.'

Sometimes a whole family would start out on one of these

* Mrs. S. S. Allison, J, Anthrop* Insi,, London, 1892, vol. xxi. p. 306.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 343

packing expeditions, the children, as well as their parents,
each taking a load, and accomplishing the journey in six or
eight days according to the state of the road. If an un-
usually violent snowstorm overtook an Indian while travel-
ling in the mountains, he would dig a hole in the snow,
cover himself with his blanket, and allow himself to be
snowed up. Here he would calmly sleep till the snow had
passed, then he would proceed on his journeyT^

An interesting combination of toting with packing may
be seen in Jamaica on any market-day. The picture of a
negro woman with an immense weight on her head, fre-
quently over one hundred pounds, is common enough.
But this same woman, still retaining the load on her head,
has learned to drive a donkey in front of her to help her in
her work of transportation. A halter of rope serves for
bridle, and this is attached to a long line held in the
driver's hand. The little creature is almost concealed
beneath its panniers and bags and bundles of produce.'

Mr. Croffut makes an interesting statement about the
Mexican porters. ** In every part of Mexico have I observed
the Cargadores, patiently following the trails and carrying
immense loads on their backs. I recollect seeing, four
years ago, near a railroad station, half a dozen of them
squatting on the ground, resting. One had a sofa upon his
shoulders, strapped on I could not see how ; another bore a
tower of chairs locked into each other, and rising not less
than eight feet above his head ; another carried a hen-coop
with a dozen or twenty hens, and others were conveying
laden barrels and various household goods. They had come,
they said, from San Luis Potosi, not less than fifty miles
distant. These Cargadores will cover thirty miles a day for
a week or more, going from ocean to Gulf.

** During a ride which I made over the Andes on the Mexi-
can National Railroad, these persistent carriers were almost
always in sight from the car windows, the peons and burros
following each other up and down the slopes. The vice-

* See figure in Ward, /amaica ai Chicago^ New York, 1893, ^^^11, p. 95.

344 *i*HE ORIGINS OK LnVenTioN.

president of the road, Thomas C. Purdy, said, as we watched
these animated trains advancing on parallel lines, * There
is our rival. That is the only transportation company we
fear. If it were not for that line, this country would treble
its railroads next year, and the roads would double their
profits. We are combatting the custom of centuries.
Those fellows carry on their backs to Mexico the entire
crops of great haciendas far over the mountains. I have
sat down with a wealthy and enterprising haciendado and
explained to him that we could do his carrying in a quarter
of the time and for half the cost, and have seen him refuse
to change, and stubbornly stick to the old method. I was
never before so impressed with the tremendous force of
habit/ " '

As transportation through the forests of Yucatan can be
effected only on the backs of porters, the traveller has before
him the humiliating spectacle of man reduced to a beast of
burthen. The Indians, especially those of the central pro-
vinces, are accustomed to this kind of labour, which their
fathers pursued before them from time immemorial, and
they not only carry merchandise and baggage, but the
travellers themselves, by means of a kind of chair sus-
pended from the shoulders."

** For the Indians," of Vera Paz, Guatemala, " there is no
road too bad : and where no beast can keep its feet, they go
and carry loads without difficulty. Herein is seen the power of
habit, since these people, beginning at six years* old to carry
burdens, become such active carriers as to be able to make
journeys of two hundred leagues or more, without suffering,
when the best mule, if unshod, becomes so lame as to be
unable to move a step. I have often seen them, after
having hurt themselves by stumbling, hold a burning
skewer near the wound or bruise, to prevent inflammation,
and start fresh on their journey after this painful treatment.
When on a journey they carefully avoid drinking cold

' W. A. Croflfut in Am, Anthropologist ^ Washington, vol. ii. p. 80.
» Morelet, Travels in Cent, Am,, New York, 187 1, p. 279.

Travel and Transportation. 345

water, and quench their thirst with water as warm as it can
be taken. Their ordinary food is a little roasted maize

paste, called totoposte, which they crumble into boiling
water and so eat it, or else they warm it with chile and salt.
Wherever they stop they stretch themselves at full length,
although it be on the stones, extending to the utmost their

legs and arms, and by this means they soon regain their
vigour." '

This will serve to emphasize what the reader has been

' Escobar, mj. Hey. Gtog. Sik., London, vol. xi. pp. 89-97, looted in
Morelet, Ttavels in Cent. Am., New York, 1871, pp. 418-27. A good
■Icetch of a huniBii beast of burden in the shape of d man dragging and
canjing poles is in Whympet's Trav«h among tkt Grtal Andes of tit
Equator.

34^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

accustomed to see all his life, but not to observe. But the
frontiersman, the farmer^s help, the mechanic at his ordi-
nary employment, bows his back and harnesses himself to
loads without much intermediary apparatus, the beginnings
of which must now be examined.

The porter's knot is a device roughly made like a huge
horse-collar, and fitting down over the head and shoulders
and upper back of a man, to enable him to do his very best
in carrying. With such a load as he is represented as bear-
ing. Atlas should have worn a porter's knot. The sight of
these appliances is common enough on the commercial
streets of London, and in another form in Constantinople ;
but the author has never seen one in America. In addition
to distributing the load over several parts of the body, they
are padded so as to enable the carrier to take on hard boxes,
furniture, and such things without bruising his flesh.

(jn China human beasts of burden are even now more
profitable than pack animals over narrow and circuitous
passes. In Southern China the long string of coolies bearing
down from the hills tea-leaves in deep baskets slung on
poles is a familiar sight. The transport of brick-tea from
Syn-chuan into Thibet is by coolies, who bear the packages
on a wooden frame strapped to their shoulders. They make
a fifteen days' journey, carrying one hundred pounds of tea
each^

In some places, where vehicles are used, the bridges are
so narrow that the mules are unhitched and led singly,
while the carts are carried over on men's shoulders.^

Men and women in Korea carry burdens upon frames
that remind one of Europe rather than of Asia, as do other
customs of the Land of the Morning Calm. The affair
resembles a painter's knapsack or the framework of a
wheelbarrow, without the wheel. It is hung to the bearer's
shoulders by means of broad, braided ropes attached to the
upper part of the apparatus, passing over and in front of
the shoulders as in a knapsack, and attached by loops or

* Minister Denby,y. Soc. ArtSy London, 1892, vol. xl. p. 166.

TRAVEL AND TKANSPOKTATION.

347

kiiuts to the lowtjr tud of the principal pieces. From the
outside of these two project two sticks outward to receive
the load. This framework will hold all sorts of things, and
is really a handy vehicle.

The climax of transportation after the fashion of the knap-
sack is reached in Monbutto land, where, Schweinfurth says,
it is the fashion to
pile up the hair in
a high chignon.
They naturally
avoid exposing these
artistic coiffures, ac-
complished with so
much expenditure
of time, to the dan-
ger of being crushed,
and therefore carry
baskets, after the
manner of the pan-
niers in Central
Germany, support-
ing them by means
of bands slung over
the forehead.'

It is in connec-
tion with this fore-
head-band that a
species of parbuckle
is in use in both
hemispheres. The
carrier places the middle of a long line against his forehead,
passes the two ends down under the pack and up to his
shoulders. By pulling on the ends he rolls the load upon
his back.'

■ Schweinfurth, ArUi Afritanae, London, i8?5, pi. xviii. fig. 15 ; refers
li> Chaillu,/i>((rM0'« Askaiigo, London, p. 84.
' Mason, A'tf. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1886-7, P- 287, lig. 4^,

34^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The carrying -yoke was foreshadowed in Polynesia. A
pair of gourds suspended from the auamo, or carrying-stick
of the Hawaiian, served for traveller's trunks, one containing
food, the other clothing. They were dried and carefully
cleaned, furnished with a cover, which also served as a dish
and a net to hold the cover close and to form handles.*

The Hawaiian was very fond of carrying on his shoulder
by means of the stick like the coolie's yoke. In Siam,
Burma, and the Far East it is also in vogue. The Siamese
perforate two long panniers, which are borne on the ends
of a carrying-pole.

jThe carrying of loads to any considerable distance neces-
sitated the creation of paths, the removal of brushwood and
loose stones, the study of slopes and the easiest way of
crossing them, the cutting out of steps here and there, and
the building up ol rude retaining walls where the escape-
ments were too steep. Bridges would often be needed and
fords, besides the marking of trees and the piling up of stones
to guide the traveller when the ground was covered with snow.

These were realised, in fact, over all the continents before
there was a domestic animal trained. Curiously enough,
the Indian trails in North America were taken up and
adopted by the pioneer settlers of the continent. They
were afterwards widened into waggon-roads, and not a few
railroads follow on in the track of the waggons. Certain it
is that some of the streets in thriving cities of the west
follow the old Indian trails. In other places the trails have
not been obliterated, and are pointed out by antiquarians?)

The term ** pitching track " is applied to an Indian trail
from one part of the country to another. West of Mani-
toba, on the crest of the ridge, there is a narrow, well-worn
path, which, for many generations, probably, has been the
highway of the Indians passing to the Assiniboine, through
the valley of Te-wa-te-now-sube. This is connected with
the " Ridge Pitching track." ^ The same author explains

^ Brigham, Cai, Bishop Museum, Honolulu, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 7, 22.
* Hind, Canadian Red River , London, i860, vol. i. p. 51.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 349

how the roads are made in the Red River country for the
toboggan sledges, by tramping a track first with snowshoes
and following it up with the teams until it is as smooth as
glass — a natural railway.

In this primitive migration there were no cross-cuts. All
roads were crooked ; the trails and paths, the roads and
ancient river routes are paralleled in modern times by
canals winding about contours, railroads as crooked as ram^s-
horns, and even steamships meandering through the sea to
follow their currents and the trade winds. The portages
adopted by the American savages were possible where the
head waters of rivers were near together, and where the
buffalo-hide and the birch-bark made the light canoe
possible.

[The working out of highways has been along some such
method as the following. By land, men went first trackless,
then by trail, path, common road, highway, paved way,
railroad. On the water their routes were in small streams,
on rivers, land-locked seas and canals, the open sea or ocean.
Parallel with these ways of conveyance the commerce and
communication were first local, then regional, then conti-
nental, and finally world-embracingT)

In the more favoured and cultivated regions of Mexico
and Peru, the making of roads received still greater atten-
tion. For the purpose of facilitating the procuring of food
for the centres of population and for moving the fighting
contingent still greater attention was paid to highways.

That grading was well known to the American aborigines
is attested by the approaches to the earthworks and fortifica-
tions of the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley. The
Cahokia mound opposite St. Louis is one hundred feet high,
and the top is reached by a graded way, which is now used
for a carriage-road.

The ingenuity of savagery in this connection is best shown
in the construction of bridges. A log thrown across a stream
was about all that the savage mind attempted in the tempe-
rate zone. The tropical man was really the primeval bridge

350 THR ORimUS OF INVENTION.

builder, who had great chasms to cross, and who also had
around him rattan, cane, bamboo, and long pliant vines.
The occasion and the material evoked the necessary intellect,
as they have ever done.
, A few bridges of stone were constructed by the Spaniards,
some after the Conquest, and a few others have been erected
by their descendants ; but, as a rule, the rivers and mountain

L B sCafion, Willi Ctii.l«i way. {Hayifv,,.)

torrents are pa5sed>to-day by the aid of devices the same as
were resorted to by the Incas, and at the points which they
selected. In a'country destitute of timber, they resorted
to suspension -bridges formed of cables of braided withes,
stretched from bank to bank. Where the banks are high,
or where the streams are compressed between precipitous

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. -^CI

rocks, these cables are anchored to piers of stone. In other
places they are approached by inclined causeways.

Three or four cables form the floor and principal support
of the bridge, over which small sticks are laid transversely
and fastened to the cables by vines, cords, or thongs of raw-
hide.

Two smaller cables are sometimes stretched on each side
as a guard or handrail. Over these frail and swaying
structures pass men and animals, the latter frequently with
loads on their backs.' It is not possible to say whether the
inventors of modern suspension bridges did not copy this
idea out and out without waiting for the regular processes
of inheritance. In Sarawak a foot-bridge is constructed by
planting two rows of long stakes in the ground alternately
slanting in opposite directions, so that a small sapling laid
in the fork will be horizontal and of the proper height.
Each pair of stakes is lashed together at their intersection,
and the bridge is further strengthened by perpendicular
posts set under the footway. A pole is lashed along the
top of each row of stakes to serve as a hand-rail. One of
these between Paku and Serambo was a hundred feet long
and nine feet high.^

The Dyak bridge consists of a stout bamboo for the foot-
way, sustained by braces of the same material, for these
engineers are well aware of the stability of the triangle.
" When a stream is to be crossed an overhanging tree is
chosen, from which the bridge is partly suspended, and it is
partly supported by diagonal struts from the bank." In
carrying a path along a precipice, the same combination of
suspension and struts is used. ** These bridges are tra-
versed daily by men and women carrying heavy loads."

" From the landing-place to the hill a Dyak road had
been formed, which consisted solely of tree-trunks laid end
to end. Along these the barefooted natives walk and carry

* Squier, Pertt^ &'c., New York, 1877, p. 544 ; figs. opp. pp. 545, 558,
559. There are thousands of such bridges in Peru to-day. Jdt(/.y p. 505.
^ Ilornaday, T700 Years in the Jtingle^ New York, 1885, p. 484.

352 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

heavy burdens with the greatest ease, but to a booted
European it is slippery work."

" When a path goes over very steep ground, and becomes
slippery, pieces of bamboo are cut about a yard long,
and opposite notches being made at each end, holes are
formed through which pegs are driven, and firm and
convenient steps are thus built with the greatest ease and
celerity." '

Across the Vanapa River in New Guinea, J. P. Thom-
son saw an ingenious bridge made of rattaa. On one
side of the river a large banyan-tree supported one end of
the bridge fifty feet above the water. From this point it
stretches seventy yards to the opposite side, where it was
attached to a small tree supported by a stout post, and both
of these were stayed by rattans to trees further back. The
struts, foundation stringers and the rails, two on each sid6,
were netted together by innumerable lacings of fine rattans,
the whole looking like a modern cable bridge.^
(^Naturally, the carriage of passengers and freight on human
backs was followed by the utilisation of animals. The study
of the subject of domestication belongs to another chapter,
but there are two animals in America and one in the
Eastern Continent that have never done much for civilised
peoples. These are the llama, the dog, and the reindeer.
The last named, yielding its milk as well as its neck to the
service of man, may be dismissed with a vote of thanks not
only by the Board of Trade, but also by the Lapp mothers
who utilised the milk of the reindeer in eking out their ownj^

The llama is confined to the sierras of South America,
and has been used for a pack-animal from time immemorial.
Its load is less than a hundred pounds, and its journeys per
diem quite short. They are tractable animals, however, " a
single drove laden with merchandise and containing from

' Cf, Wallace, Malay ArchipeL^ New York, 1869, p. 89. Figure of Dyak
crossing bamboo bridge, pp. 45, 89.

= Cf, Thomson, British Neiv Guinea, London, 1892, Philip, p. 90, with
good page plate facing.

Travel and transportation. 353

five hundred to one thousand head, being managed by eight
or ten Indians." '

The freight and passengers in the Arctic region are trans-
ported overland, or, rather, over Nature^s railroad track, the
snow and ice, on sledges drawn by men and dogs. The
parts of this operation to study in the sledge are the runners,
the shoes, the cross-bars, the handles, the traction thongs,
and the lashing. Concerning the dogs it is necessary to
consider the domestication and training of the animal and
the harness. And the economics of the apparatus involves
the problem of greatest result with least effort over greatest
difficulties and least natural resources. The runners are
wrought from drift-wood or the bones of whales, and
shod with strips of walrus ivory or whale-bone or whalers
jaw, fastened on with tree-nails or lashed on with raw-hide
thongs through countersunk holes. The cross-bars are longer
than the sled is wide, and are not only pinned to the top of
the runners, but thongs pass from their extended ends to
the runners below and act as braces. The traction thongs are
attached to the runners by toggles, and the thongs are joined
by a lodp and toggle, for this is a cold country, and knots
are hard to untie. The handles of the sledge may be of
drift-wood, but, wanting that, these cunning elves of the
ice- land knock off the antlers of the dead reindeer, together
with a piece of the skull, saw off the prongs, invert the
device, lash the tips to the rear ends of the runners and the
thing is done. When all is finished, and the vehicle is
about to start, the Eskimo inverts his sledge, fills his mouth
with water and blows it along the shoe where it freezes, fills
the cavities and lubricates the surface. After polishing this
surface down with his mitten it is ready for loading and
progress.*

A Central Eskimo rarely brings up more than three or

* For a resiinU of the literature on the llama and the paco sec Payne,
History of America^ London, 1892, Macmillan, vol. i. pp. 317-330*

' ^Vn excellent account in Boas, Sixth An^ Kep„ Bun Ethno',^ pp.
529-538, figs. 482-488.

33

354 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTIO>J.

four dogs at the same time. The young dogs are carefully
nursed, and in winter they are even allowed to lie on the
couch or are hung up over a lamp in a piece of skin.
When about four months old they are first put to the
sledge, and gradually become accustomed to pull. They
undergo a deal of lashing before they are as useful as the old
ones.'

The harnessing of the dog has reference to the character
of the animals and to the nature of the work to be done. If
you were to take into account the necessities in the present
case they would certainly include, besides many unfore-
seen exigencies, the hitching of eight or ten dogs sepa-
rately, provision for unhitching them instantly, the chance
for the dog to jump out of his harness in a tight place, the
possibility of taking a running start to set the sledge in
motion, the opportunity to spread out or come together as
occasion demanded, distance enough from the vehicle to
keep out of the way on a descent.*

The old trading routes which existed among the Central
Eskimo before the coming of Europeans are described by
Boas. Two desiderata formed the inducements to long
journeys, which sometimes lasted several years — wood and
soapstone. The shores of Davis Strait and Cumberland
Sound are almost destitute of drift-wood, and consequently
the natives were obliged to visit distant regions to obtain
that necessary material. Their boats took a southerly course,
and as the wood was gathered a portion of it was imme-
diately manufactured into boat ribs and sledge runners,
which were carried back on the return journey ; another
portion was used for bows, though these were also made of
deer's horn ingeniously lashed together.

Another necessary article of trade, soapstone, is manu-
factured into lamps and pots. It is found in a few places
only, and very rarely in pieces large enough for the articles
named. The visitors came from every part of the country,

» Boas, Sixth An, Rep, Bur, Ethnoh , p. 538.
" Boas, ioc, cit»

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 355

the soapstone being dug or " traded " from the rocks by
depositing some trifling objects in exchange.'

Tylor says, " The wheel carriage, which is among the most
important machines ever contrived by man, must have been
invented ages before history. ... In looking for some hint
as to how wheel carriages came to be invented, it is of little
use to judge from such high skilled work as was turned
out by the Egyptian chariot-builders, or by the Roman
carpentarii or carriage-builders, from whom our carpenters
inherit their name." '

/According to the fitness of things the wheel carriage is
not prehistoric. Dense population, fixed roads and great
traffic or wars first called it into existence. Among the
Chinese the wheelbarrow is common. 3 There the country
is hilly, and the paths narrow. The waggon or cart or
chariot breaks upon us in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in the
Asiatic steppes, where the whole champaign is a level road
and there are no forests to impede the progress of wheels.*
In America the Red River cart and the lumbering Spanish
vehicle are found under precisely similar environments.

No savage people have been discovered without the means
of navigation. In the frozen north, among the wretched
Fuegians, in Australia, boats or rafts are in daily use. The
construction of these were better considered in the study of
woodcraft. Here their relation to carrying passengers and
to primitive commerce is to be considered. In those
regions where beasts of burden were scarce boats were
plentiful ; they are the camels of the waters in the same
sense that the latter is the ship of the desert. We shall

' Boas, Sixth An, Rep, Bur* Eihftoi, p. 469.

- Tylor, Aftthropologyr New York, 1881, D. A. & Co., p. 193, with
Egyptian figure.
3 The old ditty—

** The way was so long and the street so narrow,
That he had to bring his wife home on a wheelbarrow,"

would suit exactly the prehistoric lover. Though it would more naturally
be the wife wheeling the husband home.

356 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

look, therefore, for the most extended traffic by water in
America and in the Indo-Pacific region.

The primitive boat was propelled by poling, by cordeling
or tracking, by paddling, by rowing, and by sailing. Steam
navigation is altogether a product of our century. Survivals
of the other varieties may be seen in the modern sand-scow,
the canal boat, the canoe, the yawl, and the catamaran. In
late years important discoveries have been made of old Norse
and other wrecks. This information is further increased by
the ancient historians and monuments. So we come to a
knowledge of the first mariners by digging up the wrecks of
time, by questioning the descendants of sailors in primeval
seas, by searching for some out-of-the-way arm of the ocean
where generations of hardy mariners have handed down the
simplest forms and names of mast and sail and rigging, by
watching children playing on the beach, if haply they may
reinvent some of the earliest forms of ships sailed in during
the childhood of the race.' j

This particular subject demands a volume. Every good
sailor and shipbuilder knows how little the cunning savage
has left for them to invent in the matters of lines and pro-
pulsion in the simpler craft.

The Australian moves his extremely rude boat by poling.
In Venezuela the rivers that enter into Lake Macacaibo are
navigated by shallow boats propelled by poles, the man
standing on one part of the boat. All through the
Southern United States the author has seen thousands of
"long-boats," "scows," and even vessels with square sails
pushed by negroes into and out of the shallow creeks.
A clear way from stem to stern on each side enables the
men to set the large end of a long pine sapling against the
bottom, the smaller end against the shoulder, and to walk
from stem to stern, pushing with all their might. They
then walk back and repeat the process.

* Figures in Bohmer, S//i. Report^ 1891. For a delightful scene in which
a company of naked negroes are dragging a helpless steamer through thd
Nile grass, see Sir Samuel Baker, Ismdilia^ New York, 1875, opp. p. 53.

TRAVEL AND TRAN'SPORTATIOV, JS7

The Eskimo boat is a model of construction in the light
of our modem craft with skins of steel drawn over frames of
iron. For the construction of the umiak, which is their
open freight boat, drift-wood, prepared skins of the ground
seal, and abundance of stout raw-hide from the same animal
or from the walrus will suffice. The framework of the umiak

lever device.

is a marvel of economy in material and of strength. After
this is carefully joined together with thongs, the hide cover
specially prepared is drawn over as neatly as a taxidermist
finishes his specimen. The thwarts are secured by thongs,
and even the rowlocks, for oars are used instead of paddles,
are loops of raw-hide linked together. Into this buoyant
craft the women place all the impedimenta of the family,
the aged and the children, and move as occasion demands.

35^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Dr. Rink is of the opinion that the skin-boat is the child
of the birch-bark canoe, and that the more finished man's
boat, kaiak, is after the same model, only, the farther the
Eskimo has moved toward the open water, the more he has
drawn the covering around him, until at last he sits in a
well, with the gunwale fitting close to his body. In this
case the utility of his craft is destroyed for freight, and
becomes a passenger craft. Rather, it is turned into a
man-of-war, for the deck is covered with weapons, and the
manager goes forth to fight with beasts.

Again, the historical question arises whether the wonderful
similarity between the graceful lines of the kaiak and those
of the racing shell is a matter of gradual descent or of out-
right borrowing.

The paddle is older than the oar, and for rude peoples in
natural streams more convenient. It has been mentioned
that the Australian uses a bit of bark in bailing out his
canoe, and also in forcing her along. There are other
peoples who lash a flat blade to a pole for a paddle. The
form cut out of the whole piece is more common. This
method of propulsion is noiseless, and may be used in waters
tangled with vegetation and encumbered by overhanging
trees and bushes. It is universal in Australia, in the Indo-
Pacific Ocean, and may be found in parts of Asia. Many
pictures of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese life exhibit the
fisherman using the paddle. The Eskimo, however, in their
open water umiaks use the oar. The rowlocks are a model
of ingenuity. The oar passes through two loops or links of
stout walrus hide attached to the gunwale in such fashion
that one prevents it from moving forward, the other from
moving backward, but they allow perfect play in rowing.
The Easter islanders employ a sculling oar, the end of which
is carved to guide the water in fixed lines. There is nothing
in savagery near so complicated as the ancient • trireme, or
the Norse boat, or the modern seine boat with oars. But
with paddles the Caribs, the Haida, or the Polynesians could
put those historic navigators on their muscle.

t

I.

l! i\

Mil

5.—

' /J

"V'li

i>$in\y

Fig. 70.— forms of paddles in America,
(U. S, Nat' Museum.)

360 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

CTo witness the survival of the very ancient industry of
tracking, one has only to stand on the footbridge of the
Canal St. Martin, Paris, and watch the human horses
hauling the boats into the locks. The harness is even more
simple than that of an Eskimo dog, for it is only a strap or
loop of leather like a bricole attached to the leading line of
the boat. Into this loop the hauler thrusts his body, and
now with his breast, now with his forehead, forges along,
A similar loop or becket of rope was used in slavery days by
the Southern negroes in hauling the seine. A Turk's-head
knot at the free end enabled the seine hauler to attach him-
self readily to the cork-line by simply passing the knot
under and over the line and then overlapping it with the
standing part as he surged backward with the becket over
one shoulder, and under the opposite arm.

But savages knew how to use the open water after the
manner of a canal, walking now on the shore or bank, and
now in the water. The Eskimo umiak, or family boat, is
tracked along the shores and the edges of ice-floes both by
dogs and men by means of walrus-hide lines. The Mon-
tagnais Indians brought loaded canoes up the rapids safely
by using two lines. Upon the Missouri, says Dr. Matthews,
tracking or cordeling was common in the old fur-trading
days. The method is in vogue everywhere in Africa, and
leads up legitimately to the hauling of boats in canals or
confined waters first by men, and then by beasts, and now
by electricity.^

And, finally,. th» savage mind invented the sail. The
Indians of all stocks, from Mount St. Elias southward to the
Columbia river, peel off the inner bark of the cedar. Thuja
gtgantea^ and strip the inner portions into ribbons no thicker
than the annual layer, and one-eighth of an inch in width.
This they weave into mats and sails often ten feet square.
These sails are set on the wind, the direction of the boat
being governed by the men with their paddles. There is no
provision for shifting the sails.'

' Consult Tylor, Anthropology^ New York, 1881, pp. 252-59.

r. AND TRANSPORTATION', 361

Buttfar more successful in the use of the open water than
any other savages of modern times were the Pacific islanders
They made a canoe of bundles of bulrushes, in which they
were not afraid to venture out of sight of land. This same
craft is common in Peru, But in their dug-out and built-up
canoes, made double or with outriggers, propelled by paddles
and sails, they visited every archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.

^/^M5^

Fir 71 .

A little before the time when Europe was agitated on the
subject of maritime disco\ery canoe \oj ages were made by
the Polynesians between Tahiti and Hawan a distance of
twenty-three hundred miles A=i soon as the invention of

' See N, B, Emerson, Hanaiiaii Hit W Mij 18 1893 Smilh
TroHS. Australian A. A. S 1891 Ale\ander A Brie/ IfisUry of tit
Hawaiian People, New York 1891 Fomandet Pefynestan Sa e 2 vols

362 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

the outrigger, the sail, and compressed food were perfected
they sallied forth fT

Associated with water travel to be supplemented by land
travel is the primitive custom of establishing "canying-
places.*' A carrying-place is a path along which goods are
transported around falls and torrents of rivers, or across
country from one navigable water to another. In the former
case the craft may be either hauled up through the water,
or' itself borne around with the goods. In the case of the
birch-bark canoe, employed by the Indians of the lake region
of North America, there was no difficulty of transporting it
many miles.

** On these occasions only," says Hearne, " we had recourse
to our canoe, which, though of the common size, was too
small to carry more than two persons, one of whom always
lies down at full length for fear of making the canoe top-
heavy, and the other sits on his heels and paddles. This
method of ferrying over rivers, though tedious, is the most
expeditious way these poor people can contrive, for they are
sometimes obliged to carry their canoes one hundred and
fifty or two hundred miles without having occasion to make
use of them ; yet at times they cannot do without them ;
and were they not very small and portable, it would be
impossible for one man to carry them, which they are often
obliged to do, not only the distance above mentioned, but
even the whole summer." ^ The bark canoe made of a
single piece is found in Australia and South America, on
the Columbia and the Amur river. The last named two are
identical, having the bow and the stern pointed below the
water-line.

How far these fur-hunting savages were from the most
primitive sort of ferry ! They actually carried their ferry-
boats hundreds of miles on their backs, not knowing the
moment when they would encounter a lake or a river. In
other words, it was cheaper to do so. There were ferries at
certain points on the rivers further south, and they were

' llesLme, /burftey, ^'c, Ix>ncloii, 1795, Strahan, p. 40.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPOBTATIOX. 363

common in Tibet. Catlin often speaks of being taken
across the Missouri and its tributaries by Indian women
in tbeir bull-boats, made by stretching the hide of a buiialo
bull over a crate made of poles. The coracle is a more
improved form.

^The extent and variety of ancient commerce on all the
continents is attested by the occurrence of articles in graves,
the materials of which are not found in the vicinity. Copper,
mica, shells, curious stones, metals in the possession of his-
toric tribes also bear wi'"=" "" *■"• -iJ*^— '"" "' ►-.^'1= Even

men belonging to peoples far distant have been met by
travellers in their prospecting, and in many tribes there
were laws providing that they should not be molested.
This trade had pervaded Europe before Ciesar's day, and it
had explored every land before its historic period.

Hearne gives a wonderful example of this extended travel,
" It is indeed well known to the intelligent and well-informed
part of the Company's servants that an extensive and nume-
rous tribe of Indians, called E-ar-che-thinnews, whose county
lies far west of any of the Company's or Canadian settle-
ments, must have traffic with the Spaniards on the west side
of the continent, because some of the Indians who traded

364 THE ORIGINS- OF INVENTION.

formerly at York Fort, when at war with those people,
frequently found saddles, bridles, muskets, and many other
articles, in their possession, which were undoubtedly of
Spanish manufacture. I have seen several Indians who
have been so far west as to cross the top of that immense
chain of mountains which run from north to south of the
continent of America. Beyond these mountains all rivers
run to westward. I must here observe, that all the Indians I
ever heard relate their excursions in that country had inva-
riably got so far to the south that they did not experience
any winter, nor the least appearance of either frost or snow,
though sometimes they had been absent eighteen months or
two years." *

Im Thurn says that there exists among the Guiana
Indians a rough system of division of labour between the
tribes, and this serves not only the purpose of supplying all
of them with better made articles, but also brings the
different tribes together and spreads among them ideas and
news of general interest . Each tribe has some manufacture
peculiar to itself, and its members constantly visit other
tribes, often hostile, for the purpose of exchanging the pro-
ducts of their own labour for such as are produced by the
other tribes. These trading Indians are allowed to pass
unmolested through an enemy*s country.'*

Of all the tribes on the coast the Warraus make far the
best canoes, and supply them to the neighbouring tribes. In
the same way, far in the interior, the Wapianas build boats
for all the tribes of that district. The Macusis make ourali
for poisoning arrows, the darts of blowpipes, and an abun-
dance of cotton hammocks. The Arecunas grow, spin, and
distribute most of the cotton which is used by the Macusis
and others for hammocks. They also supply all blowpipes,
for these are made of the stem of a palm, which, growing
only in and beyond the Venezuelan boundary of their terri-
tory, are procured by the Arecunas, doubtless in exchange,

* llea.rne, yburttey, »SrV., London, 1795, Strahan, p. 40.

^ C/,lm Thurn, Ittd. of British Guiana^ London, 1883, p. 270.

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 365

from the Indians of the native districts of that palm. The
Tarumas and Woyowais have a complete monopoly of the
manufacture of the graters on which Indians of all the
tribes grate their cassava. They are also breeders and
trainers of hunting dogs. These distribute their graters
and dogs through the Wapianas, who act as middlemen.
The true Caribs make the best pottery, the Arawaks make
fibre hammocks of a kind peculiar to them.

To interchange their commodities the Indians make long
journeys. The Wapianas visit the Tarumas and Woyowais,
carrying canoes, cotton hammocks, knives, beads, and
European goods. Leaving the canoes they walk back,
carrying a supply of cassava graters and leading hunting
dogs. The Macusis visit the Wapianas to obtain graters and
dogs, for which they give ourali-poison and cotton ham-
mocks ; and these in turn carry such graters and dogs as
they do not require, together with their own ourali and
cotton hammocks, to the Arecunas, who give in return
cotton and blowpipes, or to the true Caribs, who pay in
pottery. In this way travellers with news and goods pass
from district to district." ' No doubt this sort of commerce
has been in vogue since the beginning of migration, scarcely
any group of human beings having ever entirely lost their
contact with other portions of the species.^

' Cf, Im Thurn, I ltd. of British Guiana^ London, 1 883, cap. xiv.

CHAPTER XL

THE ART OF WAR. *

*' At no period of man's life were wars the normal state of existence.
While warriors exterminated each other, and the priests celebrated their
massacres, the masses continued to live their daily life, they prosecuted
their daily toil. "— K R apotk IX.

The contemplation of the activities of primitive man in face
of the greater animals is an excellent preparation for the
study of war. Doubtless the motives and the actions of
the wild beast were copied by men, both in their aggressive
and their protective conduct. After the same fashion the
weapons of warfare and those of hunting were modelled on
identical notions. This parallel is painfully correct, even to
the point of hunting men for food. However, the appliances
in the two sets of activities are sufficiently differentiated to
merit a separate treatment.

The present organisation, drill, and actions of the great
armies and navies of the world are the resultants of the past
efforts of leaders and students of military science. Back-
ward in unbroken order the whole series could be traced to
savagery. Not even in the lowest grade were men devoid
of discipUne. The first principles of defence and offence
were then studied out and practised. The art of war has
always engaged the greatest minds. There never was a
tribe or nation that did not have its grand marshal, or
generalissimo, or commander-in-chief, or war chief, whatever
his title might be. For example, among the Muskhogean

tribes, " the next one in dignity and power was the great

366

THE ART OF WAR. 367

war-chief. He led the army. In council his seat was
nearest the mico, on his left, and at the head of the most
celebrated warriors. On the right of the mico sat the
second head-chief of the tribe, and below him the younger
warriors of the nation." * This picture would be a true one
for any other of the martial tribes of America, or of Africa,
or of the Indo-Pacific.

The modern books on warfare divide the subject into
strategy, tactics, and engineering. Strategy includes every-
thing that is done out of sight of the enemy, and in prepara-
tion for actual fighting. By tactics is meant the actual
fighting, the movement of the troops to the battle-field, their
conduct and manipulation in the engagement. The engi-
neer prepares the ground for offence or defence, and has
charge also of roads and bridges. There are incidents pre-
ceding and succeeding the battle not included in these.

To obtain even a superficial view of the genius of savages
in war it is necessary to examine the causes which induce
them to undertake it, their modes of declaring war, the
methods of recruiting and organising and drilling troops,
their weapons and standards, their means of subsistence
and transportation, and such other precautionary measures
as they take regarding themselves, their families, and their
property.

In the second place, savage tactics should be studied,
their method of going to battle, of trailing the enemy, of
actual fighting, their music and war-cries, captives, trophies,
and neutrals.

And, thirdly, the best minds will always be found exer-
cising themselves over the subject of temporary and per-
manent fortifications. These are the works of engineers in
primitive times, whose remains in different parts of the
world are encountered by explorers and excite the wonder of
the civilised. Even the native populations can frequently
give no account of their origin, only that they were erected
by giants who perished long ago. The universality of such

' Jones, Southent htdiansy New York, 1873, p. Ii.

368 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

remains has induced many writers to defend a theory of
degradation instead of progress in culture.

The most simple warfare was the duel, with or without
weapons. The assassin and the duellist are survivals of the
most primitive warriors. Before conflicts between commu-
nities could have existed there had to be rival communities,
and even between them, if we are to believe those who know
savages best, the disputes of individuals brought on blood
revenge, and precipitated conflicts. It is not to be supposed
that war was ever the normal occupation of any people.
As now, so in all ages, war is an incident, an outbreak, a
frenzy that soon exhausts itself.

Mr. Dorsey says that among the Omahas war was caused
by the stealing of horses, the elopement of women, and
infringement on hunting grounds. It is to be presumed
that similar causes operated among other tribes. One of
these causes recalls the elopement of Helen and the rape of
the Sabines as cases of survival from a lower culture.* In
aboriginal times war was occasioned by encroachments upon
the standing order of things. Tribal endogamy tended to
solidify each stock as against the whole world.

In Samoa war was provoked by the murder of a chief, a
disputed title, or a desire for aggrandisement, and hostilities
were prevented by giving up the culprit, paying a fine, bow-
ing down in submission.^ In more general warfare the three
groups were the highway soldiers, the bush soldiers, and the
sea fighters.

In Africa aggressive wars were common since historic
times ; but the enslavement of negroes to bear the burdens
of the world was the moving cause in most of these
conflicts.

Most frequently there was no overt declaration of war,
but when a great conflict was decided upon much ceremony

' Dorsey, Third An. Rep, Bur. Ethnol.^ Washington, 1884, p. 312.
For Mexican pretexts, see Bandelier, Tenth An. Rep, Peabody Mus.^ Cam-
bridge, 1877, p. 128..

* Turner, Samoa, London, 1884, p. 189.

THE ART OF WAR. 369

preceded. In the aggressive tribe there were meetings,
debates, laying of plans, considering ways and means. The
language used on such occasions was not infrequently the
national classic, incomprehensible to the laity. The author
has witnessed one of these councils, and will never forget
the dignity and the earnestness of some of the orators, who
shrewdly guided their language by the abundance or scarcity
of grunts that followed each pause.

Among the Southern Indians of the United States war
was determined on by the war-chief, but his decisions were
subject to the approval of the council. Subordinate to the
war-chief were the leaders of parties. As soon as war was
declared each warrior painted and plumed himself, provided
a small bag of parched corn to eat, armed himself with a
long bow and a quiver of arrows suspended from the right
hip, and frequently with a formidable club made of hard
wood and a spear. Thus equipped he set off from the village
with a great noise and defiant shouts. The head-warrior
taking the lead, was followed by the rest in single file.*

" The Aetas, or negrito people of the Philippines, on the
death of a member of one of their tribes sally out to avenge
him, and slay the first living thing they encounter as a pay-
ment. As they proceed on such an expedition they break
the twigs off trees in a certain manner to warn friends off
their line of march." These are among the lowest of
savages, and the custom is mentioned to call attention to
the primitive method of giving information.* Evidence is
not wanting that in certain cases the enemy was notified of
the coming attack, and he was warned to prepare himself
for punishment.

Men were not recruited for these primitive armies either
by conscription or enlistment, but each youth on arriving
at an age established by usage passed through a trying
ordeal, the successful endurance of which marked him as

' Cf. De Bry, A Brief e and True Report^ <Sr»f., Francoforti, 1590, p. 25.
' Gironiere, Twenty Years in the Philippines^ cjuoted by E. Best, /.
Polynes, Soc.^ Wellington, 1892, vol. i. p. 12.

24

370 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

one worthy to bear arms. The tribe was perpetually
mobilised. The organisation of the male members of each
for warlike purposes was adapted to its social structure.
The fighting groups were kinsmen, after the manner of
that people. As in all other arts, the co-ordination of
structures is as complete as in the natural world.*

Every male of the Mexican tribe was born a warrior.
When still a babe his father placed alongside of the child
a small bow and some arrows in token of its future duties.
There was no military caste at Tenuchtitlan or Mexico ; with
the exception of children, old people, infirm or crippled
persons, and sometimes priests, every one had to go to war.
" No youth over fifteen years of age should remain. All
had to go except children and old people.*' There was no
standing army, the available force being composed of all the
able-bodied men of the tribe of Mexico.*

The sources of information concerning primitive weapons
and the manner of using them are the aborigines of the two
Americas, the native Africans, and the mixed peoples in
the Indo-Pacific region. Reference may also be made to
the Arctic tribes of Asia, but neither they nor the Eskimo
are given to fighting ; so their genius has been expended
rather in the invention of hunting and fishing implements.
Strange enough, in each of these three areas attention
has been given especially to one of the three forms of
wounding. The Americans are, par excellence^ piercers ; the
Africans slashers and the Indo-Pacific peoples are gifted with
the club. This is not a fixed rule, however, as in each area
other sorts of wounds are also in vogue. It is a fact that
the true Polynesians were ignorant of the use of the bow as
a weapon, that the greatest diversity of bows and arrows
was in America, and that no other savages devised such a

' On ordeals cf» Catlin ; for India, Hunter's Imp, Gazetteer of Indian
vol. vi. p. 58.

' Bandelier, Tenth An, Rep, Peabody Mus,^ Cambridge, 1877, p. 98,
quoting Clavigero, Gomara, Torquemada, and A. Costa.

THE ART OF WAR. 37 1

variety"ot apparatus for, and delighted so much in, hacking
human flesh as the Africans.'

Ling Roth gives a list of weapons in Borneo, i. The
Shght\ a wooden javelin with point hardened in the fire ;
2. Apieng^ dart stems with poisoned points ; 3. Sangkoh^
long wooden spear with metal head and spud ; 4. Duku^ or
i>arang pedang^ a species of scimitar ; 5. Parang nabur^ or
short curved sword with bone handle ; 6. Parang ilang^
the Kyan style of parang ; 7. The Katapu^ or decorated
helmet of wicker work ; 8. Gagong^ or war jacket of skin ;
9. Klamhi taiahy padded or quilted cotton jacket. 10. Trabat\
or shield.''

For the single warrior, offensive weapons or implements
niay be studied structurally or functionally. According to
the former, these would be blunt weapons, edged weapons,
and pointed weapons. Further on there ought to be
examples which include two or even three of these in one,
as the sabre bayonet, which may be used in many ways.
Expressing the same ideas functionally would give us
bruising, cutting, and piercing weapons.

Again, the manner of holding and using divides the same
objects into hand weapons and missiles.

Hand weapons are such as do not leave the hand in doing
their work. As in the case of the primitive mechanic's
tools, the arms of the warrior are to be considered in their
grip or handle, and in their working part. In the simple
case of the stone or stick held in the hand for bruising,
hacking, or stabbing, the working part and grip are prac-
tically the same ; only one end is modified to suit the hand
and the other to do the work. The fundamental idea in
each of the three sets of hand weapons is as simple as that ;
but practically no people are known so rude as not to have

* Lane Fox, Catalogue^ London, 1877, Eyre, Ac, vols, i., ii. ;
Tregear, "The Polynesian Bow," y. Polyms, Soc, Wellington, New
Zealand, 1892, vol. i. pp. 56-59.

^/. Anthrop. Inst.^ London, 1892, vol. xxii., from Papers of Hon.
Brooke Low.

372 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

gone a step further. It will be seen that the handle parts of
weapons may differ in length from a few inches to several
feet, as in the stiletto and the Japanese long-handled sabre.
They differ also in rigidity, as the slung shot and the club.
They also are much varied in the adaptation to the form of
the hand and to the idea of guarding and parrying, as in the
totally exposed Fijian club and some types of the African
swords. The working parts of weapons are subject to an
infinite variety of forms dependent upon climate, natural
resources, forms of defence, race proclivities, and even upon
the idiosyncrasies of the enemy .^

The following is Adrien de Mortillet^s classification of
weapons modified to suit the present purpose: —

T. Bruising Weapons.

/;/ the hand. The fist, with or without " knuckles.**
With a handle. Club, flails, scourges.
Projectile, Stone bullets, blunt arrows.

II. Piercing Weapons.

Jn the hand, Poignard and rapier.

With a handle. The lance and the pick.

Projectile, Javelin, harpoon, thrown from the hand, with
an amentum (fixed or mobile), or with a throwing stick
or spear thrower (pocketed or hooked).

III. Cutting Weapons.

/;/ the hand. The sabre with stone blades.

. With a handle. The battle-axe or pole-axe.

Projectile, Boomerang, African throwing knives, bladed
arrows.

" Of all weapons employed by savages the club is probably
entitled to be considered the most primitive." "

' A. de Mortillet, Hev, Metis, de VEcole ctAnthrop,^ Paris, 1892, vol. ii,

pp. 92, 93-
* Lane Fox, Catalo^te, London, 1877, Eyre, &c., p. 6l.

THE ART OF. WAR. 373

The club is single-handed or double-handed. And in a
series of them, especially from Melanesia or Polynesia, it is
possible to follow minutely the thought of the maker. The
plainest of the little Fijian single-handed clubs is a stick
ending in a globular excrescence whose surface is regularly
wrinkled. Now, in making more elaborate examples, these
islanders work out similar forms, and replace the wrinkles
with exquisitely carved patterns. In the same manner,
the crudest two-handed club is a stock of a small tree,
having a two-pronged root, on the outer margin of which
is a peculiarly wrinkled appearance. But much finer clubs
are carved in this same form, and, curiously enough, the
carved ornamentation is always put where the wrinkled
surface occurs in the crude specimens.

General Pitt Rivers^s collection in the Oxford Museum is
especially rich in the evolution of the club, and his catalogue
is the very best treatise on the subject.'

In the American area the club was a complicated affair,
often a compound weapon for bruising, gashing, and piercing
in the most dreadful manner. The oft-repeated story of the
Mexican specimens, consisting of a heavy stick grooved along
the side for the insertion of blades of obsidian are more
than matched by the reality in examples from the Plains
tribes. The Sioux standard club is a flat piece of wood
curving and widening away from the grip, and terminating
in a spherical head, which in modern times carries a long
spike. It is not uncommon also to see the blades of one or
more butcher's knives firmly inserted along the margins.
The United States National Museum possesses a great
variety of these ugly weapons, designed, as the frontiersmen
say, to " knock down the white man and then to brain him
and cut him into mince-meat."

John Smith says that the Virginia Indians for swords
often used the horn of a deer put through a piece of wood
in form of a pickaxe, some a long stone sharp at both ends,

* Science and Art Department, South Kensington, Bethnal Green
Branch Museum.

374 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

used in the same manner/ This is interesting because the
Siouan tribes universally used the mace with head of stone
sharpened at both ends, and the Pacific coast tribes in Alaska
and Columbia have from time immemorial made their picks
for braining slaves of horn or ivory or other hard substaace
"in form of a pickaxe/*

The South American tribes make clubs which strongly
remind one of the Polynesian varieties. Those of the Carib
tribes are square in cross section, elegantly polished, and
ornamented with woven cotton bands.

The African hand-weapons for striking, owing to the
acquaintance of the natives with iron, are exceedingly
complicated. Indeed, the plain clubs in that area are for
throwing. The standard hand club is converted into a sort
of tomahawk by the addition of a blade, or into a spear by
the addition of a sharp spud. In the museums of ethno-
logy may be seen now and then from Africa, plain clubs
carved from the small tusks of young elephants. These have
no attachments for cutting or piercing.

The ordinary hand weapon of the Dinka and other
heathen negro tribes on the shores of the Upper Nile
territory is the ** boUong,'* or club, with a pointed ferrule.
The Kaffir kerries are similar in shape. One of Schwein-
furth's * examples has a disc-shaped head, and the object
served as striking and thrusting weapon and for a seat.
The Bechuana as well as the Zulu type is a knobbed stick
or horn, useful not only at close quarters, but also as a
missile in hunting, in which function it is managed with
deadly precision.

The Polynesians have developed an interesting series of
weapons, called paddle clubs, in which they seem to have
summed up the whole story of their method of going to
war. That the clubs are developed from the paddle can be
seen on inspecting any series, notably those in the Oxford
Museum. The whole theory of cutting, thrusting, and

' History of Virginia^ Arber reprint, p. 31.

^ Artes Africanae^ London, Sampson Low, p. i, figs. 3, 4, 5i 18.

THE ART OF WAR. 375

Striking is involved in one of them, which, on occasion,
may be used also in getting a canoe out of danger or into a
safe place. Indeed, many of these paddle clubs have passed
into the sphere of ceremony, being elegantly carved with
lace-like tracery over the entire surface.

For slashing, the American savage devised a leaf-shaped
dagger-blade. A strip of soft fur wrapped about one end
served for a grip ; but he also knew how to insert the tang
into a haft of wood, or of antler, and secure it there with
sinew lashing, gum or glue. The very same forms occur in
flint over Western Europe, showing that in prehistoric
times the inhabitants gashed one another's faces and bodies
with short swords of stone. In countries where obsidian
was abundant, blades of this material were inserted into
handles, to be used as battle-axes. The Indian tomahawk
is the true descendant of such a weapon.^

In the Polynesian area, in Easter Island specially, the
axe-blades of obsidian are most savage looking. The
polished stone- workers, .wherever material of sufficient
hardness could be procured, invented the true short sword.
There is a blade of jade-like material in the United States
National Museum, from Alaska, which might have been
taken as a model for metal short swords. The native
Africans, however, easily deserve the palm for gashing and
slashing weapons. They frequently have no other function,
but as often unite the office of ** cut and thrust " in the
same arm. Quite as much as German university students,
the negro warrior prides himself upon the number of his
scars. In times of peace be will hack his own flesh and
retard the healing to produce ugly cicatrices. The execu-
tioner's sword in this area combines keenness of edge with
the force of the battle-axe. It is the ancestor of the modern
sabre. The Kingsmill islanders and other Polynesians made
a dreadful slashing implement by securely sewing rows of
sharks' teeth along the sides of a handle of wood. These

' On the Mexican maccuahuitly see Bandelier, Tenth An, Rep, Peabody
Mus,, Cambridge, 1877, P* ^^7*

37^ THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

sharks* teeth slashing weapons vary in length from a few
inches to sixteen feet. They are stillettos, dirks, short
swords, long swords, and poleaxes. In all the range ot
weapons there is nothing more blood-curdling to behold.

The dagger or dirk-knife of the African tribes is worthy
of a separate chapter. Schweinfurth says that, " diffused
over a great part of equatorial Africa, this weapon, which
serves also for domestic purposes, forms the characteristic
mark of a whole series of tribes between the Zambesi and
the Upper Nile. The knives of the Balonda are not to be
distinguished from those of the Niam Niam. The dirks of
the South African negro tribes, and of several on the West
Coast, present a contrast to the above form, being dis-
tinguished by a spear-shaped outline of the blade, suddenly
becoming constricted and narrowed.'

The falcate edges of the Monbutto and other African
swords were designed to meet an emergency. " This way
of dealing hacking [picking] rather than slashing strokes
was manifestly intended to wound the head, which is pro-
tected, as with a helmet, by a high coiffure, while the blow
of a sabre or a sword, in our fashion, would fall ineffectually
on the elastic bolster." Hence the term " pick " applied to
such weapons by Pitt Rivers is eminently appropriate.^

This style of weapon reappears in the negroid area of the
Indo-Pacific, and for the same reason, to pierce through the
massive woolly coiffure. It should be compared with the
Alaskan " slave-killer.'*

The missile weapon has developed more ingenuity in the
lower grades of culture than has the hand weapon. They
may be thus arranged : —

__ , . ., ( From the naked hand.

I. Hand missiles. -^ t^ ^ ^ .* . ^

\ From a rest or an amcnttim*

* Schweinfurth, Artes Africanaei London, 187$, vol. xii. figs. 6-10.
For bone daggers of the Eskimo, see Murdoch, Ninth An, Rep, Bur,
EthnoL^t Washington, 1892, p. 192, figs. 174 and 175.

* Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa^ London, 1875, pi. xviii.

THE ART OF WAR. 377

( From a sling or atlatl.

2. Machine missiles. I From a bow.

' From a blow-tube.

The thing projected may be a bruising weapon, as in
sling-missiles and blunt arrows ; a cutting weapon, as in the
trumbash or the bladed-arrow ; or, chiefly, a piercing
weapon, as the whole genus of javelins, darts, arrows, and
sumpitan bolts.

The grip and sudden release of the fingers enables the
energy of the arm to be exploded and used in hurling the
javelin. The hand-rest and the amentum are inventions
which enable the warrior to economise the muscular effort
otherwise used in grip and to employ it all in the hurling.
The sling converts circular motion into rectilinear motion,
adding momentum to muscular force. The projectile usually
is a bruising weapon.

The Mexican atlatl or throwing-stick or spear-thrower
found in Australia, Melanesia, and in America from Point
Barrow to the Argentine combines muscular force with
prolonged effort. It is also a convenience for a man who
has only one free hand.

The bow converts the pent-up elasticity of wood or
animal substance or metal into rectilinear motion. The
spring-gun is a bow. The blow-tube is really the legitimate
prototype of the gun. It converts the elasticity of compressed
air into rectilinear motion. It is not here said that the
inventors of arquebuses ever saw a sarbacan or a sumpitan,
because on the theory of this book, the parentage of in-
ventions is an intellectual one. The arquebuse and the air-
gun doubtless sprung from an imaginary sarbacan, and
combined the missile of the sling and of the " stone-bow "
therewith. The bow and the arrow and the arbalest were
its rivals. It is a hunting weapon rather than one for war.

** Nearly all savages are in the habit of throwing their
weapons ; even apes are known to throw stones, the North
American Indian throws his tomahawk, the Indians of the
Gran Chaco throw their inacana^ akind of club, the Kaffirs

373 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

and the negroes of Western Africa throw the knob-kerry
and trumbashes/* Grant says that the women of Faloro,
East Africa, hold their knives by the tip of the blade and
throw them at their adversaries. The Fiji islander throws
his knob-headed club, the New Zealander his pattoo pattoo^
and the Australian his dowak. Even the Franks are
supposed to have thrown t\\Q\r francisca^ and we learn from
Blount's travels in 1634 that the Turks used the mace for
throwing as well as for striking.^

The natives of New Hebrides were expert at throwing a
stone called a kawas. It is about the length of an ordinary
counting-house ruler, only it is twice as thick, and this they
throw with deadly precision when the. victim is within
twenty yards of them.^ The knob-kerry, or kiri, before
mentioned, throughout South Africa, the boomerang-like
rabbit-clubs of the Indians in South-western United States,
and, most effective as a wounding hand-missile, the
Australian boomerang deserve mention among the most
clever devices in this class. The boomerang and its con-
geners are also quasi edge-tools, but their work is to break
bones.

The pingah, or projectile of the Niam Niam, is a cutting
or slashing missile of infinite diversity of shape, but in every
case consists of three two-edged blades — a short, broad one
at the apex, triangular or heart-shaped ; an oblong blade
near the point, which is the longest of the three and is at
right angles to the shaft or axis of the weapon j a third and
shorter blade on the opposite side and just above the handle,
and set at an acute angle to the shaft or axis. The handle
itself is only an elongation of the middle part and is wound
with stout twine.

The pingah is thrown in such a way as to revolve in the
plane of its blades, and no matter in what position it reaches
its destination, in every instance it strikes with a sharp edge.
In fact, this artistically wrought weapon is thrown only in

' Lane Fux, Catalogue, London, 1877, Eyre, &c., pis. i. and ii. p. 29.
' Turner, Samoa, London, 1884, P* 312.

THE ART OF WAR. 379

extreme cases ; generally it serves as a battle-axe, the sickle-
like point turned forward.

Projectiles of a similar kind, sometimes made of wood,
sometimes of iron, are spread over a large part of the
northern half of the continent. Among the Mohammedan
negro tribes of the Soudan, from the Tchad lake to Abyssinia,
flat, two-edged projectiles of wood, sickle-like and widened
towards the point, are used in hunting fowls and small
mammalia. Such wooden projectiles are called in the
Upper Sennaar " Trumbash."

Similar to the pingah is the kulbeda of the Fundy and
the Berta negroes in the Upper Sennaar. It consists of two
blades, and has a wooden hilt. The longer blade inserted
in the elongation of the tang is sometimes sword-like or
sickle-shaped, sometimes curved to and fro in a serpentine
form. The lateral blade of the kulbeda is quite short,
and serves chiefly for the protection of the hilt, as a sword
breaker or a guard.

In Central Sudan, projectile irons are called " Shanger-
manger," and are to be seen in a great variety of shapes.
The lower end of the shaft is wound with rope. As a rule,
only two blades are in use.

The negroes of Borgoo, Wadai, Ennedi, and the Tibboo
are fond of using them. The shangermanger of the Musgoo
correspond in shape almost exactly to the kulbeda of the
Berta and Fundy.

The projectiles of the Fan in equatorial West Africa
exhibit the greatest similarity to those of the Niam Niam
in question.'

The javelin thrown from the naked hand finds its highest
development in the South African assagai. The Americans
did not use the simple javelin. It was only in connection
with the throwing-stick and throwing-strap that it found

* Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae^ London, 1875, P^* ^ii* ^gs. 1-5. Consult
also Lane Fox, Catalogue^ London, 1877, pp. 28-37, pi. ii. Compare
Schweinfurth, I.e., pi. xviii. In this connection belongs the Hindu chakra,
figured by Wood from Sir Hope Grant's collection.

380 THE ORIGINS OK INVENTION.

place. The brown Oceanic race as well as their negroid
neighbours present it in its most primitive form as a long
pole of hard wood sharpened at the end. The Persian
jereed is a survival of a more serious implement, gone out of
date now, but quite active in European wars down to the
introduction of fire-arms.

Sir Samuel Baker says : " Every man is a warrior, as the
Baus are always at war. They are extremely clever in the
use of the lance, which they can throw with great accuracy
for a distance of thirty yards, and they can pitch it into
a body of men at upward of fifty yards. From early child-
hood the boys are in constant practice, both with the lance
and the bow and arrow.'* *

The Australians are also extremely clever at spear throw-
ing. The most marvellous stories are told of their dexterity
in this particular, as well as their coolness and agility in
warding them off.

" Another means of accelerating the flight of the javelin
is by means of the Amentum^ or Ounep^ as it is called by the
Melanesian islanders. This is a thong attached to the centre
of the spear in which the forefinger is inserted, and like the
throwing-stick enables the thrower to continue the impulse
after the spear has left the hand. . . . The amentum was
used by the Greeks and Romans, and is mentioned by
Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Livy, Pliny, and other ancient writers,
and is figured on Etruscan vases ; it was called &yKu\ii by the
Greeks." ^ The Melanesian ounep remains in the thrower's
hand, and the amentum was fastened to the javelin shaft.

In this same connection the student must not overlook
the little brackets of ivory daintily carved and lashed to the
shaft of Eskimo harpoons, great and small, used as " stops "
for the gloved hand. Though on a hunting device the stop
may just as well occur on a javelin.

According to Potter, "The most common [engine] in

* Ismailia, New York, 1875, P* '35*

* Lane Fox, Catalogue, (Sr»<-., London, 1877, P* 4° » also Catalogue of
Hambiirghy Ethnog. Mus.

THE ART OFtWAR. 381

field engagements among the Greeks was a sling ; which we
are told by some was invented by the natives of the Balearian
Islands, where it was managed with so great art and dexterity
that young children were not allowed any food by their
mothers till they could sling it down from the beam, where
it was placed aloft. Slings resemble a plaited rope, some-
what broad in the middle, with an oval compass, and so by
little and little decreasing into two thongs or reins. The
manner of slinging was by whirling it twice about the head,
and so casting out the bullet.*' '

In America the sling was used universally from Tierra del
Fuego to the Arctic regions. And it is found diffused in
Polynesia. Even in classic times it continued among the
Greeks and Romans. It is not mentioned in Homer. But
it was a common weapon among the Semito-Hamitic peoples,
and among the Asiatic Aryans. Strutt does not know when
it was introduced into England. Most of his illustrations
show the slinger in pursuit of birds, but he speaks of the
balistarius as a warrior. The order of invention seems to
be the simple sling, then the fustibalus or staff-sling, and
then the transfer of the missile to the stone bow, and the
more effective arbalest.

ThQ fustibalus^ or staff-sling, was a common sling attached
to the end of a shaft and used for heavier stones.

** This geaunt at him stones caste
Out of a fel staf-slinge:'^

Tylor calls attention to the almost entire disuse of this
weapon, but speaks of an interesting sur\'ival in the practice
of the " herdsmen of Spanish America, who sling so cleverly
that the saying is they can hit a beast on either horn and
turn him which way they will.** 3

Among the Maoris of New Zealand, Phillips encountered
a dart thrower consisting of an elastic rod and a short lash,

* ArUiq, of Greece^ vol. ii. bk. iii. ch. iv. p. 45.

^ Chaucer, Sir Thopas^ vol. i. p. 118, in Century Dict^ with picture,

3 Frimitiv^ Culture^ Boston, 1874, vol. i. p. 73.

382 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

the whole resembling a whip. A knot in the end of the
lash fitted into a notch in the shaft of the dart and the latter
was propelled by holding the dart in the left hand after the
string was in place and giving a sudden jerk with the rod
held in the right hand. The same apparatus is familiar to
boys in civilised lands. But in the olden days the Maoris
launched their spears at a hostile pa [village] by means of a
whip sling similar to the one described."

The throwing stick mentioned among the hunting instru-
ments was with the Mexicans an apparatus for warriors also.
In the codices very many pictures are given of warriors
hurling javelins by means of this apparatus. Furthermore,
while the forms used by the Eskimo are right-handed and
carved from a single piece of wood, those in the Mexican
pictures are for either hand, and the finger-holes were in
bits of raw-hide or leather attached to the side of the grip.
The Australian spear-thrower is of the same sort, though of
different form.^

A separate treatise could be devoted to the bow and the
arrow as exhibiting the progress of mind in the use of an
elastic spring down to the fifteenth century of our era. It
cannot be asserted whether the spring trap or the spring
weapon is older. The bow is fundamentally an elastic rod,
with a bit of wood, or fibre, or cord for a bow-string. In
many places savages have not got beyond the simplest
form. In Africa, universally, owing to the keenness of the
poisoned arrow points of iron, the bow is weak. The
negroid peoples of the Indo-Pacific make strong bows of
hard wood, and in the Malayan area bamboo is the material.
The Andamanese for some reason give a sigmoid shape
to the apparatus. As before mentioned, the pure Poly-

' Coleman Phillips, Trans. N» Z. Inst., Wellington, 1877, vol. x. pp.

97-99.

^ List of authorities in Proc. U. S.Nat. Mus.y vol. xvi. pp. 219-222, figs.
1-6. See also Science, New York, September, 1893, fo'" description of a
Mexican example discovered by the author among the cliff dwellers of
Arizona.

384 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

nesians had no bows, and the Australian forms are very
rude. America and Asia are the home of this weapon.
Commencing with the very plain form of the Fuegians and
travelling northward to Point Barrow, the student would
see the following types —

1. The plain or "self" bow, made of the best material
that each country furnishes, hard wood in the temperate
regions and palm wood in the tropics.

2. The sinew-lined bow of the United States west of the
Rocky Mountains. This consists of a bow or frame work of
yew, or other soft wood, on the back of which is plastered
by means of animal glue a mass of finely shredded sinew.
This is done so skilfully as to give the appearance of bark.
The sinew must be glued down with the greatest care, to
avoid weakness on the one hand and a backward breaking
strain on the other. Seizings of sinew are frequently made
at intervals to secure the backing.

3. The composite bow, of the Plains Indians and of the
Eastern Eskimo. These may be made of horn, antler, wood,
or bone. The Sioux type consists of three pieces, the limbs
of horn, the grip of wood, made in the shape of a Cupid's
bow. These parts are held together by sinew twine and
covered with skin to conceal the joints. The Eskimo type
are ruder, and the joints are not concealed. Since the
whaling times the parts are often riveted. In this north-
land, material is scarce, and the compound bow may be
constructed of bits of wrecks, old drift wood, whales* ribs
or even of walrus ivory or baleen. The man who must
have a bow is stimulated to a more complicated and highly
organised apparatus in the scale of evolution by a more
diversified condition of affairs in the natural world around
him.

4. The sinew-corded bow of the Eskimo. This type is
found among the Western Eskimo, from Cape Bathurst all
the way around to Kadiak on the Pacific ; and on the Asiatic
shores near Behring Strait. The essential principle of this
invention is by means of a cable of sinew, twine, or braid, to

THE ART OF WAR. 385

convert the breaking strain of a bit of drift wood into a
columnar strain. In other words, it is to combine drift-wood,
which is rigid and brittle, with sinew-cord, which is flexible
and very elastic, so that the wood will supply the rigidity
and the sinew the elasticity.^ The cord is laid on most
ingeniously, and in passing from one limb to the other is
secured by half-hitches, which act like a set of fingers clasp-
ing the wood just where the greatest strain would come.

For tightening and loosening the bow, small levers of
ivory with notches on alternate sides at the ends are
inserted in the cable on the back of the bow at the grip.
These make a half turn and then are slipped back their
length. After the cable or cables are wound they are kept
from unwinding by a strap of raw-hide passed through the
cable two or three times and made fast to the bow. The
ivory levers are then withdrawn.

The composite or built-up Asiatic bow does not in itself
belong to savagery, yet it is the immediate result of com-
pounding processes of primitive types. Indeed, the " Tatar "
and the " Kung " bow of China are compounded of (i) the
" self" bow as a base ; (2) the separate arms of the compound
bow ; (3) the sinew backing or a substitute ; and (4) the cover-
ing of snake-skin or bark or buckskin to conceal the joints.
It is argued that this Tatar form of bow was in every-day
use around the besieged city of Troy, and that the Scythians
contributed this type to all the classic nations.^

The bows of the Monbuttoo are made of a species of
Rotang, and are provided with a string of the same material,
which is made and fitted on when the material is green.
On the inner side of each bow is a piece of wood shaped
like a weaver's shuttle and scooped out longitudinally

' Murdoch, Rep, Smithsottlnst,, Washington, 1884, part ii. pp. 307-316,
plates i.-xii. ; and Ninth, An, Rep, Bur, Ethnol,, Washington, 1892, pp.
195-210, figs. 177-194. O. T. Mason, " Bows, Arrows, and Quivers of the
North American Aborigines," Smithson, Rep,, 1893. Profusely illustrated.

» Henry Balfour, "On the Structure and Affinities of the Composite
Bow,"y. Anthrop, Inst,^ London, 1889, vol. xix. pp. 220-245, P^* v- ^^^ vi,

25

3^6 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

toward the string. This not only serves as a protection for
the hand against the recoil of the sharp-edged string, but as
a receptacle for poison, to be used on the spot.*

The bow has not been known as a weapon among the
brown Polynesians in historic times. Its occurrence as a
toy in one place and as a ceremonial object in another
may point to prehistoric use, but the fact remains that,
while the negroid peoples around them carried the arrow
especially to a high degree of perfection, the brown race
discarded the apparatus of the archer altogether .^ A type
of bow from this area has a groove along the back, which
would seem to be an element of weakness rather than of
strength. By one it is alleged to be a survival of the crease
in the bamboo bow, by Captain Cook as a place for the
arrow, and by Moseley as a resting-place for a cord like the
Eskimo sinew-backed bow.3

As an arm or weapon the arrows of the Americans were
of the simplest kind, consisting of shaft, feather, and head of
stone. The last named was often barbed to prevent its
being withdrawn. As to poisoning their arrows, there is
conflicting testimony, with the preponderance against the
systematic use of deadly substances : this remark is not true
of the darts from the " blow- tubes." The collectors of
American arrow-heads are wont to divide them into
sagittate and lanceolate, alleging that the former were for
men, the latter for beasts. This lacks confirmation, but the
two styles of head did prevail widely.

But, for refinement of cruelty that cannot possibly be
surpassed, the war arrows of the negroid peoples take the
lead, whether on the continent of Africa or in the Indo-

* ScYiwcinfixrtht A r/es A/h'canae, London, 1875, pi. xix., fig. 23; pi. xx.,
fig. 7. Compare wrist guard of the Tinneh Indians, which is a bit of
wood the shape of a bridge on a violin, attached to the bow and not to
the shooter's wrist.

= See the subject well worked out by E. Tregear, in /. Polynes, Soc,,
1892, vol. i. p. 56.

3 Balfour, y. Anthrop, Insty London, 1889, p. 241.

THE ART OF WAR. 387

Pacific isles. The Papuan and Fijian arrows are barbed
with human bones, the thorns of the stinging ray, and
every other diabolical thing that would serve the purpose.
In Africa, with the recollection of some such prehistoric
cruelty or in imitation of some murderous shrub, the black-
smiths make ragged the heads of the arrows with thorn-like
projections, which lacerate on entering the body, and which
cannot be removed.

"The arrows of the Monbutto have broad triangular and
spatulate heads of iron, furnished along the shank with
thorn-like barbs in endless variety. These are said to
inflict at short distances much worse wounds than the sharp-
pointed arrows. It is important to remember that all
originally lanceolate heads acquire an obtuse or spatulate
shape by repeated grinding." ^

Not all African arrows are feathered. The Monbutto
feathering is produced by inserting a narrow strip of skin
into a longitudinal slit at the base of the arrow, so that the
long hair may protrude. The seizing is of bark.

The Bongo arrow-shaft is of cane or cut out of a piece of
wood, and made about as thick as the cane. The tang of
the ragged head is inserted into the shaft, cemented and
bound with bast. The nock is wrapped thickly with the
same substance [Grewia mollis). The cane shafts are cut so
as to have a knot near the head, to secure a break at that
point and render the wound more dangerous. The bows
are made of bamboo or tough wood, and the string is twisted
from a vegetable fibre {Crotalaria cannahind),^ In poisoned
arrows the tang of the head is wrapped between the ragged
barbs with bast soaked in the juice of Euphorbia venefica,

Makrigga is the name of a very thorny shrub (Randia
dumetorum) which seems to have been in the eyes of the
Bongo armourer as a model in making his jagged, and
toothed, and thorned lance and arrow-heads. These thorns
are produced on the corners of the quadrangular tang by

' Schweinfurth, Artes Africanae^ London, 1875, p. xix. fig. 21.
^ Ibid. , pi. vii.

388 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION,

chiselling the metal in a red-hot state, and, considering the
rudeness of the tools, cannot fail to excite the highest
admiration. The shaft is of bamboo or light wood, and as a
counterpoise to the head, it is set at the lower end with
bands or spuds or wrappings of metal.^

Of the Mittoo and Madi arrows, Schweinfurth says, they
are distinguished by the number and variety of the barbs,
and manifest a truly diabolical ingenuity in the invention of
means to render a wound as dangerous as possible. These
heads, too, as in the Bongo arrows, are fastened by means of
bast, just above a node in the cane, so as to make them
break off* more easily and adhere to the wound. The tang
is always four-sided, and the barbs, now shorter now longer,
are cut out from the edges of this tang.^ The endless
variety of these barbs would of course baffle any surgeon.
The only redeeming consideration in the premises is that
among peoples who take no prisoners of war, the more
speedy death is the more beneficent.

The blow-tube, called Zarabatana and Pucuna in the
Western Hemisphere, and Sumpitan in Southern Asia,
completes the series of projectiles. Its office is that of
hunting rather than in killing men, and, therefore, a more
detailed account of its manufacture and use will be found
elsewhere (chapter viii.).

The modern representatives of these implements are the
fowling-piece on the one hand, which keeps up the old
traditional function of bird slaying especially, and, on the
other hand, the man-slaying series beginning with the pistol
and ending with the rifle, cannon, and dynamite gun.

Among hunting weapons, those for capture and retrieving
occupy a prominent place. But in war, among savages
especially, little ingenuity is expended on this point. It is
true that the Australian lover steals upon his sleeping flame
and twists his spear into her matted hair, just as the darkeys
in the Southern States wind the opossum out of a hollow
tree or steal cotton from the warehouse through a knot

* Schweinfurlh, Aries Afncanae, London, 1875, pi. viii. ' Ibid., pi. x.

fHH ART. OP^ WAR. 389

hole. This is, however, a peaceable matter, though it
frequently issues in bloody conflicts. The barbs on piercing
weapons are not for retrieving the foe, but to ensure his
death by preventing the withdrawal of the point.

The use of poison was resorted to quite generally in
savage warfare. Leaving the secret administration through
treacherous and false friends to more cultured peoples, the
primitive warrior did not hesitate to lay iht fatal dose on
his cutting and especially upon his piercing weapons, De

FlC. 74.— Elk-Skin Amiour, West Coast of America.

Mortillet holds that prehistoric man was a poisoner. It is
well known that the Botocudos of South America, the
Bushmen in Africa, and the Negritos of Asia make up for
their weakness in other regards by their insidious chemistry.'
The defence of the body or of the home is quite as
important to the warrior as his weapons. The history of
invention as applied to war has been the record of alternate
advances in this line, and in overcoming defence. The

' Mortillet, " Empoisonnement des Armes," Rev. Mtns. <U FBiBle
d'Antkrop., Paris, 1891, vol. i. pp. 9?-io6,

390 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Spaniards conquered the American natives simply because
the bullet when it was discharged and did hit its mark
would penetrate anything the Indians opposed to it, while
the Spanish armour would resist the showers of arrows
rained upon it. The English archers long discussed the
question of laying their bows aside, because they could dis-
charge three dozen deadly arrows while the arquebusier was
getting his missile started. But for a long, long time the
shaft had to go searching for the joints and weak places in
the armour, while this new messenger of death opened its
way through walls of steel. The Kingsmill and other
islanders arm themselves with horrid rapiers and swords
and battle-saws of cocoa wood, along the sides of which
rows of sharks' teeth have been sewed. It makes one's
blood curdle to look at them. But it is in precisely the
same islands that the warrior arrayed himself in thick
panoply of cocoa-nut fibre that would tear the teeth from
these dreadful dogs of war whenever they came into conflict.
A more detailed description of savage defensive armour will
follow, the design here is to emphasize its importance in the
current of invention.

The American savages were acquainted with body armour
when they were first encountered. Wherever the elk, the
moose, the buffalo, and other great land mammals abounded,
there it was possible to cover the body with an impervious
suit of raw-hide. Such armour is to be seen in many
museums. The Eskimo and his Asiatic neighbours shielded
their bodies v/ith plates of ivory, and with armour made of
encapsulated rings of raw-hide precisely after the style
of the Japanese. Rods of wood laid parallel were woven
together and fitted to the body by North American
and Asiatic tribes. In Mexico cotton armour was worn.
"Sometimes they went to war without any other pro-
tection, but in most cases the warrior wore a frock of
quilted cotton, about three-quarters of an inch thick up to
one and one-half inches. This was the cotton armour
subsequently adopted by the Spaniards under the name of

THE ART OK WAR. 39 1

Escuapil. Sometimes even the limbs were encased in such
quilted protection,

"Warriors of merit inserted their heads into wooden
forms, intermediate between masks and helmets, imitating
heads of ferocious beasts," '

Quite as important as the armour of the warrior was his
shield, rendering him ambidextrous. Only those who have
seen Australian savages using the parrying shield, or one of
the American aborigines warding off arrows with his disc
of raw-hide, have any conception of the efficiency of this

from Californa (U S Nal Museum)

apparatus. The general notion is of a target simply opposed
to the arrows of the enemy, but this idea would be dissi-
pated after seeing a Shoshoni and an Apache trying their
best for twenty minutes at a range of only six feet to shoot
an arroiv into each other's unarmed bodies. The knack
and dexterity, the enormous energy put into the operation,
excite the spectator to such a pitch that he forgets the
element of death involved.

■ Bandelier, Ttaii An. Rep. Ptabody Mus., Cambriilge, 1877, p. 109 [
Squiet, Nicaragua, vol. ii. p, 347; Dall, Third An. Rep. Bur. Elhnoh
p. 93. D. Hough fint's Japanese greaves among T'lingit annour.

392 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

The inhabitants of Drummond's Island, in the Kingsmill
group, use a cocoa-nut club pointed at both ends for
warding off* spears. The Hottentots warded off* stones with
their kirri- sticks. The Dinka negroes use a club in the left
hand to push aside the spears of the enemy.

The shield, according to Lane Fox, was developed from
the parrying-stick. The gradual widening of the stick or
club in the centre, with the addition of a contrivance to
cover the hand until at last the long narrow shield is
produced, developed into the broad shield constructed to
cover the body from the thrusts and missiles of an
assailant.'

The Dinkas used parrying -sticks made of the wood of the
Diospyrus mespiliformis. They are elongated spindle shape,
the bulbous central portion being hollowed out, and having
a grip for the hand. The Dinkas also use a parrying-bow,
apparatus in vogue elsewhere, but often mistaken for an
offensive weapon.'* There is a slight diff*erence between
parrying and shielding. The one diverts the point of a
flying missile and lets it go on ; the other receives it, arrests
its momentum, and takes its blows.

The ancient armourer among the Sioux made shields of
the buff*alo hide, choosing the part over the neck and
shoulders, because that was thick and tough. . After
removing the hair by sweating the hide, he stretched the
latter over a pit containing a mass of reeking coals. The
heat shrunk the material, and made it hard and impervious
to any arrow. The disc of raw-hide is common everywhere
in the area of the great mammals, and worn on the left
hand, it received the club, the arrow, or the slashing
blade.

In the modern army nothing is more prominent than the
flag, the standard, the corps badge or symbol. It was so in
mediseval and classic times. The soldier fought about his

* Cfi^ Lane Fox, Catalogue ^ p. 6.

* Schweinfurth, Artes Africattae^ London, 1875, Sampson Low, pi. i.,
figs. 13-16. Cf, ^Qo^^ Africa^ fig. 11.

THE ART OF WAR. 393

standard, and sought no greater glory than to die with it
folded in his arms. The savage had the same pride. His
flag was his totem ; it was painted on his shield and on his
body. He had a sign language which would reveal his
clanship, even if he could not speak. When he went out
in his canoe, there was no mistaking his affiliation. He had
no banner that he held aloft, but every one who " ran could
read " his brotherhood on both stern and bow of his war
boat.

" The Polynesians in their war canoes had some distin-
guishing badge of their district hoisted on a pole — a bird, a
dog, a bunch of leaves. Land forces had certain marks on
the body by which they knew their own party. It seems
that this means of recognition could be changed from time
to time, being blackened cheeks one day, marks on the
breast another, and a shell suspended from the neck a
third." ' This countersign is in contrast with the American
Indian scheme, for the identification of the tribe and the
clan was always by the same token. The Mexicans had
their standards mounted on a staff, and bent in such a way
to the shoulders of the bearer as not to hinder him from
fighting, and yet it could not be captured without hacking
him to pieces.^

Drill is also of great importance in keeping up the
skill of modern armies. Of the Plains Indians Colonel
Dodge says that they spend a considerable portion of their
time in drilling. This applies especially to their history
since they became possessed of horses, but the very same
evolutions could be practised on foot.

" There seems to be no fixed system of tactics, each chief
instructing according to his own peculiar ideas. There
are no ranks, no units of command, but there are words
or signals by which the same evolutions are repeatedly
performed. The whole band will charge en masse, and

' Turner, Samoa, London, 1884, p. 191.

* Icazbalceta, doc. i., Mexico, 1858, Torqtieniada, vol. i. p. 525 ; Zelia
Nutlall, Anil, aiid Eth, Papers, Peabody Museum, vol. i. pp. lO, 1 1.

394 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

without order on a supposed position of the enemy. At a
word it breaks and scatters Hke leaves before a storm ;
another signal, a portion wheels, masses, and dashes on a
flank, to scatter at another signal. The plain is alive with
circling, flying horsemen, now single, lying flat on the horse
or hanging to his side, as if to escape the shots of a pur-
suing enemy, and now joined together in a living mass of
charging, yelling terror.

'*The remarkable control of the chief is exercised by
signals. Wonderful as it may seem, the orders are given
on a bright day with a piece of looking-glass held in the
hollow of the hand. In communicating at long distances
their mode of telegraphing is equally remarkable. Both
the signalling and telegraphing are modifications and exten-
sions of their sign language. All are offspring of a neces-
sity growing out of the constant wariness instant to a life
of peculiar danger."^

All the operations of the Baris are conducted by signals
given by the drum. In early morning, shortly before sun-
rise, the hollow sound of the big drum is always heard
giving the signal, by a certain number of beats, to milk the
cows. The women and young men then commence, and
when the operation is completed the drum beats again, and
the large herds are driven to pasturage. The signal is
repeated in the evening. Should an enemy attack the
country the sheik's big drum gives the alarm by a peculiar
series of beats. In a few seconds this alarm will be re-
echoed by every drum throughout the villages.''

In Melville's Typcc^ recounting a four months' residence
in the Marquesas, he tells of a primitive mode of signalling.
" The word * botee ' was vociferated in all directions, and
shouts were heard in the distance and growing louder and
nearer at each successive repetition, until they were caught up
by a fellow in a cocoanut tree a few yards off". This was the

* Dodge, Plains of the Great JVest, New York, 1877, p. 369.
= Sir Samuel Baker, hmdilia^ New York, 1875, P* ^34' Drum
language is common both in Africa and Polynesia.

THE ART OF WAR. 39S

vocal telegraph of the islanders, by which condensed items
of information could be conveyed in a few minutes from the
sea to their remotest habitation — eight or nine miles." '

The superstition which condemns every scalped warrior
to annihilation is the primary cause of a drill peculiar to
the Indians, namely, stooping from a horse going at full
speed and picking up objects from the ground. At first,
light objects are selected. These are exchanged for heavier
and more bulky ones, until some individuals attain such
wonderful proficiency as to pick up, while going at full
speed, the body of a man and swing it across their
horses. This is generally done by two men working in
conjunction. 2

Of the Mexicans Bandelier writes : " There were no
regular times set for military practice, but every twenty
days there occurred a religious festival, at which the
warriors skirmished, showing and practising their skill in
handling arms. . . . When in 1743 the tribe of Tlalilulco
agreed upon attacking Mexico, they practised beforehand
with as much secrecy as possible. Setting up posts of hard
wood, they beat against them with their swords and clubs ;
they sped arrows and threw darts at thick wooden planks ;
and, lastly, they went out into the lake and shot at birds
flying." 3

Each group was its own quartermaster and commissary,
partly carrying its subsistence, but for the most part
relying on pillage. It has been said, indeed, that for the
first time in the history of war the army of Frederick the
Great was wholly independent of the country invaded.
Likewise there was little need of quartermaster. Every
warrior furnished his own tent, rolled himself in a robe
of skin, and slept upon the naked ground, as hundreds of
thousands of brave men have done in historic times.

' Typee^ Harper Bros., 1852, New York, p. 119. The man in the tree
for looking out and signalling was common in America.

' Dodge, Plains of the Great West^ New York, 1877, p. 369.

3 Bandelier, Tenth An. Rep, Peabody Mus,y Cambridge, 1877, p. loi.

396 THE OklGINS_OF INVENtlOK.

Transportation was on the backs of warriors, what little
was needed, when the travelling was by land ; but on the
water they fared better, for canoes were always at hand to
transport both troops and equipments. It is easy to under-
stand, therefore, that the more complicated methods of
fighting were invented by peoples who possessed the means
of water transport, and of preserving compact food. When
there were no means of transportation the fight had to
be brief, and consisted for the most part in a band of
warriors falling upon unsuspecting enemies asleep, or en-
gaged in some peaceful festivity.

A " trail " is a succession of marks left on the ground by
anything moving to a definite end, as a trail of troops,
an Indian trail, a deer trail. Trailing, or following trails, is
second nature to the Indian. He is taught from child-
hood to read every mark on the ground, to tell what made
it, its age, and all about it of interest or importance to
himself. To these are added a thorough knowledge of the
habits of animals of any kind, and a pair of eyes exqui-
sitely sharpened by constant practice.

When anticipating pursuit, the Indian will resort to all
ruses, keep as much as possible on rocky ground, mount a
high hill, only to go down again on the same side. Getting
into the bed of a brook, he will keep along its channel for
miles, going out and coming in again, doubling on his track.

Indians travel by ** landmark." A good trailer will tell
from the general appearance of the country what landmarks
an Indian is travelling by. When the pursued resorts to
ruses the pursuer loses no time in painfully tracking him
through all his windings, but goes at once to where he
thinks the Indian will pass. There he looks for the trail,
and finding it, pushes on. The pursued may spend several
hours in making a devious trail, which the astute pursuer
will jump over in as many minutes.^

As a rule the Indian relies upon surprises, upon the effect

^ Dodge. Plains of the Great West, New York, 1877, chap, xxxix. See
the chapter in full.

THK ART OF WAR. 397

of a sudden and furious dash, accompanied with unearthly
yells to demoralise his enemy and render him a sure prey.
In this he has no superior, nor can he be excelled in the
spirit with which he follows up a first successful effort, nor
in the remorseless vigour of his pursuit of a flying foe.

If two hostile bands nearly equal in number should meet
on the plains a prolonged contest at long range is sure to
ensue. This goes on until one party shows signs of weak-
ness and gets away the best it can.^

The Indians never receive a charge, and very rarely meet
one. When charged the portion immediately in front of
the charging force breaks and melts into individual Indians,
while the bands on either side close in to harass the flank
and rear. The broken Indians, wheeling in circles, form on
the flanks to attack and break again when charged. Should
the attacking force become scattered its defeat and destruc-
tion are almost sure.^

An excellent and detailed account of the apparatus and
the processes of savage warfare, written by one who is
thoroughly conversant with the language of the tribe about
which he writes, is that of J. Owen Dorsey, on the war
customs of the Omaha. No item of detail is omitted
concerning the preparation This description includes the
going out of small war parties, the start, the secret journey,
and the method of procedure. It also embraces the setting
out of large war parties, the feasting, the government of
these, the order of march, the songs and dances and
encampments, and the behaviour of those who stay at
home.3

War was not carried on by the Siouan tribe as it was by
the nations of the Old World. They had no standing
armies, no general who holds office for life or for a given
term. They had no militia ready to be called into the field

* Dodigty Fiains of the Great West, New York, 1877, p. 371.
' Ibid., chap. xxxv. The plan of campaign among the Indians is well
worked out in this otherwise unfavourable book.
3 Dorsey, Third An, Rep, Bur, Ethttol.y pp. 312-333 ill.

398 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

by the government. Military service was voluntary in all
cases, from the private to the commanders, and the war
party was disbanded as soon as home was reached. They
had no wars of long duration, in fact, wars between one
Indian tribe and another seldom occurred, but there were
occasional battles. This was for want of transport and
compact food.^

When near a hostile town or in the vicinity of the spot
where a meeting with the enemy was anticipated, the most
profound silence and circumspection was observed. A
sudden attack, a fearful succession of wild yells, an indis-
criminate massacre, and the demolition by fire of the
habitations of their enemies, and then a hasty return with
captives and bloody trophies of the pillage and butchery,
these constituted, as a general rule, the sum total of a suc-
cessful military excursion. " Their manner of warres,**
says Thomas Hariot, "among themselves, is either by
sudden surprising one an other most commonly about the
dawning of the day or moone light, or else by ambushes or
some suttle deuises : Set battels are very rare, except it fall
out where there are many trees, where eyther part may
haue some hope of defence, after the deliuerie of euery-
arrow, in leaping behind some or other." ^

Says the Gentleman of Elvas : " The Indians are so
warlike and nimble that they have no fear of footmen, for if
these charge them they flee, and when they turn their backs
they are presently upon them. They avoid nothing so
easily as the flight of an arrow. They never remain quiet,
but are continually running, traversing from place to place,
so that neither crossbow nor arquebuse can be aimed at
them. Before a Christian can make a shot with either the
Indian will discharge three or four arrows, and he seldom
misses his object. Where the arrow meets with no armour
it pierces as deeply as the shaft from a crossbow. Their
bows are very perfect ; the arrows are made of certain canes,

* Dorsey, Third An, Rep, Bur, Ethtiol,, p. 312.

' A Brief e and True Report, ^c,^ Francoforti, 1590, De Bry, p. 25.

THE ART OF WAR. 399

like reeds, very heavy and so stiff that one of them, when
sharpened, will pass thrdugh a target. Some are pointed
with the bone of a fish, sharp, like a chisel; others with
some stone, like the point of a diamond ; of such the greater
number, where they strike upon armour, break at the place
where the parts are put together ; those of cane split, and
will enter a shirt of mail, doing more injury than when
armed." ^

A public declaration of war was made by planting arrows
along the pathway leading to the principal village of the
enemy. They were also able, by means of ignited tufts of
dried moss and grass attached to the heads of their arrows,
to set fire to the thatched cabins located in the fortified
towns of their ad\'ersaries.2

Wherever thatched roofs or stockades were prevalent they
were attacked by fire. The North American tribes were
extremely careful to keep a good wide space burned away
from their stockades or ditch banks.

A custom existed among the Plains Indians when fighting
called " giving the coupP When a foe has been struck
down in a fight the scalp belongs to him who shall first
strike the body with knife or tomahawk. This is the coup.
If in a mtlee a warrior kills an enemy he, in order to secure
his proper recognition and reward, must rush at once on the
prostrate body and strike his coup. Otherwise, says Dodge,
the enemy being in full flight, a brave and skilful warrior
who presses on adding victim to victim, returns to find his
scalps at the girdles of laggards.3

The Andaman islanders are ignorant of the most
elementary rules of warfare. Should a dispute arise, a
general personal conflict ensues, after the manner of a

* Narratives of the Career of Hernando dc Soto^ &^c,, trans. Bucking-
ham Smith, New York, 1846, p. 26.

^ Jones, Southern Indians^ New York, 1873, P* 'S, quoting Brevis Nar-
ratio. Also Adair, Hist, of the American Indians ^ (Sr^f., London, 1775,
p. 377, et seq.

3 Dodge, Plains of the Great West, New York, 1877, P- 3^9.

400 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

street brawl. The wounded are not cared for, and unless
speedily removed receive the coup-de-grdce. They do not
mutilate the slain. In case of more systematic attacks the
assailants steal upon their enemies, availing themselves of
natural cover, but they take no further precautions, or
devise stratagems, to conceal their trail. The favourite
time of attack is the break of day, when the enemy are
asleep, or at a late hour, when they are at the evening meal.
No captives are taken, except children, who are frequently
carried oflf and adopted into the conquering tribe.'

In Dyak warfare the men cluster around their chief and
are indifferent to the fate of others so long as the chief
escapes. Similarly relatives cluster together. They carry
away the dead and wounded when possible, at least they
sever the head and bury it in the forest. War is declared
at a great feast, and the plan of campaign agreed upon.
Notice to get ready is given by sending a spear around from
village to village. The women prepare the bags of pro-
visions, the men put the canoes in order. They take nets
for fishing, and dogs for hunting by the way. The men
furbish their arms, sharpen their weapons, and decorate
their helmets and war jackets. As long as the men are
away their fires are lighted on the small fireplaces just as if
they were at home. The mats are spread and the fires are
kept up till late in the evening, and lighted again before
dawn, so that the men may not be cold. The roofing of
the house is opened before dawn, so that the men may not
lie too long, and so fall into the hands of the enemy. The
omen birds are consulted. There is no attempt at order in
going until the proposed landing-place is reached. A camp
is then formed and guarded, the canoes are hauled up, and
the neighbourhood explored.

On a given day the march commences, each one shoulder-
ing his pack and stepping out in Indian file — the guides
ahead, and closely followed by a few of the hardiest, boldest,
and most experienced men at their heels. This line reaches
^ Andaman Islanders^ London, 1883, Triibner, p. 135.

THE ART Ot\WAK. 4OI

many a mile if the war party be a numerous one. Sur-
prise, a sudden rush, fire created by javelin torches hurled
into the thatch, and bloody duels for heads, constitute the
action.

The defence of the Dyak consists in palisades, wattle, and
chevaux de /rise of spiked bamboo. The waterside, the
landing-places, and the paths leading to the villages, as well
as the foot of each ladder, are all spiked. Pits are also dug
in the pathway. Women and treasures are concealed on
the hills and in the forests. Decoys and ambushes, blockades
of streams and paths by falling trees are commonly resorted
to.' A careful study of this description reveals the entire
art of war in embryo. It will be noticed that only time
and distance, as well as the complexity of apparatus and
methods have been modified as the world progressed. The
art of fortification and annoyances to marching were well
developed by the Dyaks. And this brings us to consider
that matter.

In Samoa there was in each district a certain village
called the "advance troops." It was their province to take
the lead in fighting. The boundary between villages was
the battle-field. Women and children were moved off.
Wives of chiefs often went to the field, carrying their clubs
or some part of the armour. The chiefs and heads of families
united in some central spot, and whatever they decided on
the young men endeavoured to carry out. Stockades were
thrown around the villages where war parties were assem-
bled. Their favourite tactics were of the surprise and bush
skirmishing orders. " Their heroes were the swift of foot,
like Achilles or Asahel ; men who could dash forward
towards a crowd, hurl a spear with deadly precision, and
stand for a while tilting off with his club other spears as
they approached him, within an inch of running him
through." 2

* Ling Roth, Low's "Natives of Borneo." J, Anthrop* Jnsi,^ London,
1892, vol. xxii. pp. 52-59.
^ Turner, Samoat London, 1884, chap. xvii.

26

402 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Schultze says that the Australians of South Finke river
murder their enemies by stratagem, waiting and spying them
by night.'

This is the testimony of the best observers concerning
warfare among the lowest people everywhere. Living from
hand to mouth, and lacking social organisation and drill for
any purpose, the men must contend single-handed, and the
fight must be bloody and brief.

In addition to the weapons of defence and offence among
savages, for the single warrior, there began to be devised,
even in primitive times, appliances of the same sort for the
corps, the family, the village, the tribe, in short, community
offence and defence, especially the latter.

As we have seen, men went out in squads against squads,
by concerted action set fire to villages, and on the water
they manoeuvred their fleets of war canoes. The action
in such cases is co-operative, organised life against the same.

However, savages have few engines of attack on laml.
But this lack is atoned for by their land defences. There
are tribes so low down as not to wear any personal defen-
sive apparatus, but none who do not know how to protect
their villages by means of some kind of stockade or platform
or earth wall. In some places, as we have seen, they set up
ugly splinters in the paths.

There was not a scheme for entrapping animals that was
not improved upon to catch the unwary foe. Especially in
sedentary tribes the permanent villages were made difficult
of approach.

The mediaeval caltrop and the modern abattis are quite
anticipated and surpassed by the Dyak tukah and ranjan*
This device is simply a strip of bamboo, large or small, as
the occasion demands, sharp at both ends, and stuck in the
ground wherever an enemy may be passing. Around
villages the whole chevaux de frtse is thus constructed*
Every pathway, lancjing-place, and the foot of each ladder
is thus guarded. In the shallow beds of streams these
* Schultze, Trans. Roy, Soc* S, AusiraL, 1891, Vol. xiv. p. 2ai.

1

THE ART OF WAR. 4O3

dreadful splinters are set up to impale the feet of the men
who have to tumble out of the canoes to haul them over the
rapids.^

The Mango negroes, on the Maringa river, Africa, set up
slender bits of bamboo about fifteen centimetres long in
their path to cover a retreat. They always carry an abun-
dance of these with them, and when they have to flee they
dip the sharp ends of the splints in poison, making a shallow
cut around to enable them to be easily broken. The pur-
suers thrust their naked limbs against the poisoned points
and are severely wounded.^ They choose strategic points
for their villages, where bluffs or marshes or watercourses
will shield them from sudden attack. In every condition of
land surface and natural resources, new inventions meet
changing conditions. The American savages were especially
ingenious in this regard. Here their villages were located
near some spring of water, and surrounded by a fence of logs
set close together on end, and pierced at intervals for
archers. At the base of the stockade the earth was heaped
up to increase the security. In another place a bluflf or
tongue of land, with precipitous sides, was rendered more
secure by a continuous fence or wall of stone extending for
miles. At the opening of these fortifications on the land
side were ramparts and gateways covered by mounds of
earth, so that an enemy would be compelled to enter single
file. Not far away, on prairie lands, huge mounds were
erected with steep sides, to whose tops the people could fly
in hours of danger, while in the south-west of the United
States great communal houses were built with outer walls
solid. Entrance was by ladders to the first stage, whence
the people descended into the ground floor or ascended to

* Ling Roth, Low's "Natives of Borneo," y. Anthrop. lust,, London,
1892, vol. xxii. p. 59.

* Allaire, Ann, de la Prop. /. Loif Paris, 1892, No. 389, p. 2631
Excellent portrait of native, p. 262, The Rev. O. F. Cook brought to the
United States National Museum baskets containing hundreds of thjBse
** path-splinters " from the Gola and Mandingo area in West Africa*

404 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION'.

the stories above. Besides these, pueblos were frequently
erected on the extremity of a mesa, where nature had built
up an indefinite number of stories below. If the same good
friend also provided a canopy of mountain above, the
inhabitants had only to lay oflf the pueblo on some shelf or
cave floor and they were secure from marauders. The log,
or living tree stockade, the fortified bluff, the refuge mound,
the cliflf dwelling, the pueblo once invented, it is only neces-
sary to replace the elements of their composition with more
durable material, or with more elaborate details to write
the history of fortification. The more civilised Mexicans
and Central Americans and Peruvians wrought in stone the
same ideas, for until 1492 nothing more deadly than an
arrow, or a javelin, or a club, or a stone-bladed sword or
battle-axe, had ever assailed human life in the western
hemisphere.

The Veiburi people, in British New Guinea j owing to
incessant raids made upon them^ were compelled to estab-
lish themselves on the bank of a stream in the midst of high
and large trees ; here the village was constituted of two
houses on the surface and eleven in trees. These aerial
dwellings are constructed in the highest trees, one hundred
feet above the ground, and approached by means of almost
perpendicular ladders, constructed of long spliced saplings
lashed eighteen inches apart by cross-bars at every fifteen
inches. These houses, supplemented by detached platforms,
are stocked with food and weapons of defence, and constantly
occupied by their owners, who are so intimidated by the
raids of their slayers that they leave their dwellings no
longer than they can possibly help for procuring food.*

This tree fortress is a tropical device. In those portions
of Guiana and Venezuela where the ground is submerged a
portion of the year, the natives naturally escape to the trees,
have developed an arboreal life, and find their only needed
defence therein. The latter country received its name

' Thomson, In British New GtUnea^ London, 1892 Philip, &c., p. 51,
excellent fig. on p. 52.

I TOWER Ann FORTRESS U
iND A MODERN SCOUT KEEPING A SHARP BYE ON THE
PESCENDANTS OF THF. BUILDERS. (After jMistti.)

406 T^E ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

from the circumstance of the natives living on what the
navigators called piles.

The best'known example of water defence was the pile
structures of Southern Europe and Switzerland in prehistoric
timest

The Polynesian places of defence were rocky fortresses
improved by art — narrow defiles or valleys sheltered by
projecting eminences — passes among the mountains difficult
of access, yet allowing their inmates a secure and extensive
range and an unobstructed passage to some spring or stream.

Sometimes the natives cut down trees and built a kind of
stage or platform, projecting over an avenue ; upon this
they collected piles of stones and fragments of rock, which
they hurled down on those by whom they were attacked.*

The Kyans, of Borneo, when they make a camp, strew
dead leaves outside the fence, so that no one, not even a
dog, can approach without being heard. Punans make
their camp in a circle, each hut facing a different direction,
so as to prevent surprise.*

The Hawaiians had a curious contrivance to protect the
house from invasion. No locks were known. A heavy
stone was suspended over the door in such a way that a
person entering after the trap was set would probably be
crushed to death.3

The fate of the captive in the wars of savages is intimately
connected with four words of awfully ominous import in
history — torture, cannibalism, slavery, and sacrifice.

The American Indian was addicted sparingly to cannibal-
ism. Slavery in the Pacific region and torture in the
eastern slope was the usual fate of the captive. Sacrifice,
as will be seen, is a higher idea, and had its evolution after
slavery. " The Indian," says Dodge, " does not claim to do
murder in the name of his religion. He does it because he

* Ellis, Polynes. Res.^ vol. i. p. 313.

^ Ling Roth,y. Authrop, Insi.^ London, 1892, vol. xxii. p. 56,

^ Cat. Bishop Mus.f Honolulu, 1892, vol. ii. p. 32,

THE ART OF WAR. 407

likes it, because his savage instincts and vindictive temper
impel him to it." '

But this would hardly satisfy the modern ethnologist. In
the Indo- Pacific, where large mammals were unknown,
cannibalism was pre-eminent. Africa developed slavery,
with the other ideas of secondary importance. Americans
were most gifted in torture, with outcroppings of the other
ideas. The sacrifice of human victims to the gods, to serve
them as food, or as objects of vengeful torture, or as slaves
to wait on them, must in any event succeed the acts which
it apotheosises. The fact remains that torture and canni-
balism and slavery and sacrifice had their roots in savagery,
and their most refined diflferentiations were then developed.

War was carried on in Mexico largely for the procurement
of human victims, their religion demanding human sacrifices
at least eighteen times a year. Every important event, like
an improvement of the " teocalli, and especially the installa-
tion of a new war chief of the highest degree, had to be
celebrated by a special butchery of men — and these victims
had to be obtained through war. Therefore the well-known
Mexican custom on the battle-field, to look more to the
capture than to the slaying of their foes." ^

" Some of the men of Beit ^Abdel Hady had attacked the
villages south-east of Carmel, had burnt the houses and
driven oflf the cattle and flocks. But what most excited the
wrath, especially of the women in that region, was the
report that the raiders had abused and even killed women
and children. During the civil wars that desolated Lebanon
in 1 841 and again in 1845, women were not molested even
in the heat of battle. I have repeatedly seen those of both
parties hastening with jars of water for the relief of their
friends who were either wounded or suffering from thirst,
and they were neither insulted nor molested." 3

" In the French and Indian wars of North America," says

' Our Wild Indians y Hartford, 1883, p. 524.

= Bandelier, Tenth An, Rep, Peabody Mus.^ Cambridge, 1877, p. 128.

3 Thomson, The Land and the Book^ vol. ii. p. 167

408 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

Ellis, "the custom which soon came in, to soften the atro-
cities of Indian warfare by the holding of white prisoners for
ransom, was grafted upon an earlier usage among the natives
of adopting prisoners, or captives/' " In their earlier
conflicts with the whites, the Indians generally practised
indiscriminate slaughter. ... In the raids of the French
with their Indian allies, upon the English settlements
prisoners taken on either side came gradually to have the
same status as in civilised warfare, and to be held for
exchange." '

The war paraphernalia of nations still absorb a large part
of their industries and their genius. As one examines with
great care the armoured war-ships, the built-up guns on
pneumatic carriages, the elaborate fortifications, it strikes
him that the world has gone a long way from the Polynesian
war canoe, the Carib pucuna^ and the mound-builders' work
in the Ohio valley. But we can but marvel at the voyages
of the Polynesians, the cleverness of the built-up blow-tube,
and the astounding patience displayed in the erection of
fortifications by hand, containing millions of cubic feet of
earth.

The way in which war is engendered and determined
upon, the preparations and precautions therefor, the appa-
ratus used by land and by water, the actual conflict, the
atrocities and cruelties, the conduct after the engagement,
all these are foreshadowed so far in savagery as often to be
characterised as among its relics. The best schools even
now charge high for tuition, and war has been a costly
teacher of men. It seems almost to have been necessary
in the pioneer days of human struggle, when beasts and
men were arrayed to decide thus who should be master.

In looking through the museums of Europe and America
for the material proofs of inventive genius, the student finds
no other class of objects more highly organised for the
co-operation of intelligent action. In the refinement of

' (i. E. Ellis, in Windsor, Narr, and CriL Hist.^ Boston, vol. i. pp. 287,
^89.

THK ART OF WAR. 4OQ

the thought involved, in the growing complexity of the
mechanical elements and their movements, in the co-ordina-
tion of great numbers of men, in the material and political
and ideal rewards or ends to be attained, war, at least in
primitive times, stands forth pre-eminently as an incite-
ment to the genius of invention and discovery.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSIONS.

The principles I have sought to illustrate in this book may
be briefly summed up.

Invention is indigenous in the nature of man. The first
being on this earth worthy of that name was an inventor.
The only moment in the life of an individual or a people in
which the distinction of true humanity may be worthily
bestowed on them is that in which something new is added
to the stock of knowledge or experience. When men or
nations originate they live and grow ; when they cease to
do that they decay and die. This has been true from the
beginning.

Invention is stimulated by human wants for : —

1. Food, nourishment of all kinds.

2. Shelter for the person, or clothing.

3. Shelter for the family, or habitation.

4. Rest, recuperation.

5. Locomotion on land and on the water.

6. Delight of the senses.

7. Knowledge, the explanation of phenomena.

8. Social enjoyment, leading to co-operative life in many
directions.

9. Spiritual satisfaction.

From this point of view inventions are not only things,
but languages, institutions, aesthetic arts, philosophies, creeds,

and cults.

4T0

CONCLUSIONS. 411

All invention is based on change :—

1. In the materials and thing invented.

2. In the apparatus and processes employed,

3. In the mind of the inventor.

4. In society.

This change is in both structure and function, and pro-
ceeds from simple to complex and compound in all the
particulars named above. It is also always a change from
the natural to the artificial, as Payne has well emphasized
in his History of America, The true destiny of man is to
subdue the earth, and to dress and to keep it.

The changes in things or in the powers and results
of inventions have followed some such law of evolution
as the following : —

1. In most primitive life inventions were natural objects
unchanged in form or material used for their natural
function, as thorns for piercing, or teeth of rodents for
chisels.

2. Natural objects slightly modified in structure to better
their performance of the same function, as the same things
hafted and sharpened.

3. Natural objects little changed in form to perform a
new or different function, as stones for hammers, sticks for
weapons.

4. Natural forms or structures copied in a variety of
materials for a multitude of functions, as gourds imitated in
wood, basketry, and clay.

5. Natural objects or materials changed in form to per-
form a diversity of functions. This is the most prolific
series, and has been ever growing in complexity.

6. Change of motive power, as man, elastic spring,
weight, beast, wind, running water, steam, chemical and
electric power.

7. Imitation of human activity by machinery.

8. Multiplication of man's power through mechanical
powers, as the inclined plane, wedge, roller, wheel, wheel
and axle, pulley and screw.

412 THK ORIGINS OF INVENTION.

9. Co-operative apparatus, demanding a corps of men and
performing more than one function.

Psychical changes include the following series : —

1. Perception, noticing the relation of cause and effect in
the natural world, and making up the mind to produce the
same results with the same means.

2. Happy thought, imagining that the same result may
be differently achieved.

3. The combination of mental activities, discovering re-
lation of one invention to another, resulting in machines.

4. Purposeful invention for its own sake ; predetermined
invention.

5. Co-operative invention.

The change of reward has been from individual to inter-
national.

I. Beginning with a man making an invention, manu-
facturing it with his own hands, and putting it on the
market, granting himself letters patent and exclusive
use for life, gaining to himself the highest pleasures and
applause in the world, and being apotheosised at death.

Z, Ending with a world-involving and world-benefiting
invention like the telephone, in which the inventor is
enriched and all mankind brought into relation through
one central office of thought.

This evolution is from immediateness to remoteness ; from
materiality to ideality ; from individuality or personalism to
plurality or sociality ; from egoism to altruism.

The change in society has been along the same lines.

1. The ability to fish, hunt, glean, build, weave for more
than one person made social groups possible.

2. The differentiation of special activities created centres
of activity. The first activities carried the actor to the
source of material supply, mineral, vegetal, animal. The
last and highest activities takes the natural supply to great,
artificial centres of invention and co-operative machinery,
from the natural source to the artificial civic centre.

At once it will be seen that this group of social eflfecta

CONCLUSIONS. 413

is the result of inventions in all sorts of apparatus and
machinery, and pari passu men have invented languages,
organisations, cities, international exchanges, and laws.
Society has invented itself.

In each culture-area of the earth such styles of invention
have been elaborated as to confer upon the people thereof
their local or tribal traits. The doings and sayings and
even the bodily appearance of the peoples of the earth are
composite photographs of all that they have been thinking
out along the paths or contours laid down by nature.

Finally, in contemplating the exalted position to which
acquired knowledge and experience have brought the
favoured race, we are apt to forget how many have helped
to place them there. The many patents and inventions
now on the earth are only a "handful to the tribes that
slumber in its bosom."

It is a well-established fact in biology that the humblest
creature is just as important a link in the chain of creation
as the highest mammal. The higher forms are so well
known, and so little has been found out concerning some of
the more lowly creatures, that the naturalist is very glad to
leave the ninety and nine and go into the- wilderness to seek
the one that is lost.

The devices of pristine man are the forms out of which
all subsequent expedients arise. The fire-sticks of savages are
the earliest form of illumination by friction. The tribulum
is the modern thresher with stone teeth. The kaiak fur-
nishes the lines of the swiftest racing boats. The sewing-
machine makes no new loops. Warfare is still cutting,
bruising, or piercing. All art lines and geometry were born
in savagery. Society even can never change in organisa-
tions and motives. Our most precious maxims antedate
literature. The whole earth is full of monuments to name-
less inventors.

INDICES.

INDEX UK AUTHORS.

Ailair, loi

Allison, S. S., 307, 343
Anderson, Temptsl, 29
Atkinson, J, J., 161
Austen, S2

Bakei, Sir 5., 14, 65, 8z, 115, 138,

356
Balfaui, II., tSo, 385
Bancroft, 20, 220, 256
Uandelier .568, 375, 39I
Bartels, M. 203
Best, E., 369

Boas, 60, 363, 267, 2S6, 354
Boiman, 304
Brighom, 55, 90, 107, 302, 337,

352
Brinton, D. G., 71

Candolle, De, 1S5, 195
Can, L., 201
Collinson, 103
Comslock, T. B., 261
■Conant, L. L., 66
Cook, O. F., 87
Coville, 43, 187, 189, 337
Crofful, W. A., 344
Gushing, 71, 73, 136, 156, 161, 173,
3>6

Dall, 391

Darwin, 314

Denby, 346

Dodge, 272, 377, 394. 399
Dursey, J. O., 69, 83, 109, 290,

368, 397
Duncan, 86
Dureau, 323
Eagle, 1'. II., 103
Elliott, H., 63
Ellis, H., 357
Kllb, W., 45, 51, 74, 104, loS,

'84,1931217-222, 226. 250, 394,

324
Emerson, N. B., 2zi,
Evans, .Sir /., 40, 137
Faurot, 244
Fewkes, 74
Fornander, 361
Fraier, J. G., 119
Goodale, 190
Goode, G. B., 264, 300
Goodfellow, G.,86
Urieabach, in

361

Hea

:, 72, 96, 100, 146,' 205, :

Hind, 210, 303

Hodge, F. W., 73

Holmes, W. H., 125, 151,

o, 165, 182, 234, 253
Hornaday, 295, 351

4i6

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

Hough, W., 55, 87, 90, 116
Hudson, W. H., 262

Kalm, 39, 195, 212
Klemm, 9, 18

Lacouperie, 118, 323
Lafitau, 26, 39
Le Bon, 22
Lewis, A. L., 83

Livingstone, 79, in, 195, 245, 304
Lubbock, Sir J., 24, 31, 85, 148,
320

Man, E. H., 23, 31, 33, 52, 66,

loi, 105, 137, 161, 234
Mason, O. T., 36, 45, 65, 137, 228,

257, 272, 287
Matthews, 37, 69, 74, 112, 247, 256,

310
McGuire, J. D., 26, 138, 142, 148
Mindeleff, V. , 99, 201
Mitchell, Sir A., 29
Modigliani, 168
Moorehead, W. K., 137
Morelet, 16, 50, 331, 345
Morgan, M. H., 84, 87, 99
Moriillet, 204
Morton, 204
Murdoch, 36, 59, 92, 96, 135, 269,

286, 376

Newberry, 190
Nuttall, Zelia, 252, 393

Ordinaire, O., 96, 105, 317

Palmer, E., 192

Payne, 17, 79, 186, 204, 353

PhiUips, C, 382

Pitt-Rivers, 279, 287, 335. 37 ly 37 3^

378
Planck, 99

Porter, J. H., 259, 301
Putnam, 49

Rau, 36, 148, 292
Reclus, £lie, 119
Reynolds, no

Ridgway, W., 68
Rockhill, 244
Rossignol, 321

Roth, Ling, 74, 186, 196, 203, 212,
223, 282, 302, 401

Sagard, 43
Satow, E., 77
Schultze, 403

Schweinfiirth, 23, 39, 47, 52, 57,
71,95, III, 143, 167, 201, 286,

310, 347
Sellers, 182
Shand, A., 150
Shaw, J., 77
Sibree, 217
Smith, R. B., 90
Snyder, 213
Spicer, 23
Squier, 351
Stearns, 71
Strachey, W., 200
Sturtevant, 19O

Theobald, A. G., 87

Thomson, 62, 79, 80, 198

Thresher, 312

Thurn, E. im, 43, 51,. 61, 94, 97,

209,211, 243, 364
Tregear, 67, 87, 371, 386
Tristram, 299
Trotter, 71
Turner, L., 46
Turner, W., 27, 55, 67, 87, 109,

215, 223, 228, 378
Tylor, 31,76, 355, 381

Wake, C. S., 21

Wallace, A. W., 57, 69, 90, 185,

209, 308
Watkins, 81
Whymper, 40, 345
Wilkinson, 48, 202
Wittich, 27
Wood, 48, 289

INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

Adze, 47

Algonkian Indians, 46, 229

Andamanese, 33, 52, 66, loi, 104,
I37> 167, 234, 243, 277, 399

Animals, war on, 258 et seq, ; do-
mestication of, 291 et seq.

Anointing oil, 5 1

Apaches, 27, 43, 156

Armour, 390

Arrow, 206, 271

Art, primitive, 143

Australians, 38, 103, 212, 380, 402

Axe, 47, 141 > 375
Aztecs, 70

Balance, the, 68
Bark, uses of, 210, 225
Bellows, the, 97, in
Basketry, 228 et seq.
Blow-tube, 208, 277, 377, 388
Boats, 210 et seq., 355 et seq.
Bolas, 288

Bongo, 39, 57» 7i» 95, I". 387
Boomerang, 378
Bow and arrow, 270, 382 et seq.
Bridges, 349

Calabashes, 51

Calendars, primitive, 72

Cannibalism, 407

Canoes, 210^/ seq.

Caribs, 166, 221

Carpenter, the primitive, 214

Carriers, 340 et seq.

Cat, domestication of, 322

Celt, the, 141

Cements, 43

27

Chimney, invention of, 98
China, 116, 118
Chisel, 47

Clocks, primitive, 117 ^'
Cloth, 225 et seq.
Club, 265, 372 et seq.
Commerce, beginnings of, 364
Copper, art of, 1 10
Coracle, 363
Corn-grinders, 77
Cradles, 235 et seq.
Curfew, 99

Decoration, of pottery, 173 ; of tex-
tiles, 253

Decoys, 310

Delaware Indians, 39

Digging-stick, 190

Dinkas, 207, 392

Dog, domestication o.G 261, 317
et seq.

Drill, the, 54

Drilling in war, 393

Drum, 207, 394

Dyaks, 196, 202, 211, 223, 282,
292, 401

Dyes, 226, 255

Education of Indian, 16

Embroidery, 252

Engineering, primitive, 81

Engraving, 50

Eskimo, 23, 35, 40, 45, 53, 57, 60,
77y 91, 95, 102, 109, 134, 146,
154, 232, 242, 263, 267, 283, 353,
357, 390

Fire, invention and uses of, 84 et seq.

417

4i8

INDEX TO SUBJECTS.

Fishing, 280 et seq. , 292 et seq.

Flail, 40

Foods, vegetable, 186

Forge, primitive, 112

Fortification, 402

Fuegians, 42

Furnace, primitive, ill

Genius as knack, 26
Glue, 42
Granaries, 201
Greenlanders, 44
Grindstone, 52
Gripping tools, 56
Guiana Indians, 51, 60, 63, 94, 208,
211, 214, 228, 242, 328

Haftings, 36

Haidas, 57, 146, 179

Hammer, 53, 143

Harpoon, 284

Harvesting, primitive, 196

Hawaiians, 55, 67, 90, 107, 202,

221, 226, 252, 355
Hide, uses of, 41, 57
Hoe, 195
Hook, 281
Hunting, 273, 388
Hurons, 43

Illumination, 106

Invention, definition of, 13 ; among

animals, 14
Irrigation, 78

Jade, working of, 26

Javelin, 379

Joiner, the primitive, 213

Kaffirs, no

Khasi Hill tribes, 82

Knives, 44, 265

Lamp, 155
Lasso, 287

Lever, 65
Loom-weaving, 245

Machinery, evolution of, 75

Malays, 36, 90

Maoris, 67

Matting, 228 et seq.

Measurement, standards of, 66 et

seq,, 116
Medicine, primitive, 203
Megalithic monuments, 82
Metallurgy, early, ill et seq.
Meteorology, primitive, 74
Metrology, primitive, 68
Millers, early, 138
Modelling, 169
Moki Indians, 74
Money, primitive, 71
Monbutto, 47, 387
Mortar and pestle, 139
Mound-builders, 157, 179

Navajo, 37, II2, 117, 156, 31a

Navigation, 355

Needle, 248-9

New Caledonians, 109, 161

Niam Niam, 52

Nias, 68

Nicobarese, 75, 161

Omaha Indians, 83, 108

Painting, 51
Patagonians, 289
Patent, the primitive, 15-16
Peruvians, 68

Plants, primitive uses of, 183
Plough, 191-5

Polynesians, 41, 45, 58, 74, 86, 105,
116, 150, 193. 221, 239, 245, 249,

361, 375» 393
Potter's art, IS2 et seq.

Potter's wheel, 75, 161

Printing, 169

INDEX TO SUBJECTS.

419

Pueblo Indians, 39, 98, 109, 112,

156, 201
Pulley, 61

Sago manufacture, 185

Sago palm, 209

Samoans, 55, 89, 214, 222, 293

Saw, the savage, 47

Sennit, 41, 241

Sewing, 234

Shans, 77

Shears, 45

Shoe, evolution of the, 327

Shoshonean Indians, 42, 136, 186

Sledge, 353

Sling, 381

Smelting, 11 1

Smith, the primitive, 57

Spindle, 76

Spinning, 239 ei seq.

Spoon, shell, 39

Stilts, 331

Stone- working, izi et seq.

Sword, 375

Tally sticks, 66

Tapa, 226

Teeth as tools, 57

Textile industry, 224 et seq.

Threshing, 197

Throwing stick, 287, 377

Time, measurement of, 116

T'lingit Indians, ^^ 179, 232

Tools, 33 ei seq.

Trade, primitive, 364

Trailing, 396

Traps, 299 et seq.

Travel and transportation, 325 et seq,^

Ulu, 45, 266

Vice, the, 56

War, art of, 366 et seq.

Weapons, 370 et seq.

Weaving, 228 et seq.

Wheel, the primitive, 62

Wheel and bucket, 80

Whetstone, 52

Whorl, 77

Wicker work, 230

Wind, utilisation of, 78

Woman's work, 52, 58, 60, 62, 79,
83, 96, 108, 135, 137, I55» I57r
161, 166, 168, 186, 196, 224, 228,
238, 242, 244, 253, 257, 266, 275,

277, 335. 378
Wrench, $8

Yam cultivation, 193

Zuiii Indians, 72, 75, 156, 173, 195,
230, 247, 307

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manifested itself among the various nationalities. Necessarily
founded on a certain degree of scholarly knowledge, these

volumes, while appealing to the literary reader, will never-
theless, it is hoped, in the inherent attractiveness and variety
of their contents, appeal successfully and at once to the in-
terest of readers of all classes. Starting from the early p:^riod<!
of each literature — in Italy, for instance, from the fourteenth
century, with Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and Parabosco; in France
with the amusing Fabliaux of the thirteenth century ; in Germany
from Hans Sachs ; characteristic sketches, stories, and extracts
from contemporary European and other writers whose genius is
especially that of humour or esprit will be givea Indicating
and suggesting a view and treatment of national life from a
particular standpoint, each volume will contain matter suggestive
of the development of a special and important phase of national
spirit and character, — namely, the humorous. Proverbs and
maxims, folk-wit, and folk-tales notable for their pith and humour,
will have their place; the eccentricities of modern newspaper
humour will uot be overlooked. Each volume will be well and
copiously illustrated ; in many cases artists of the nationalities of
the literatures represented will illustrate the volumes. To each
volume will be prefixed an Introduction critically disengaging and
marking the qualities and phases of the national humour dealt
with ; and to each will be appended Notes, biographical and
explanatory.

LIBRARY OF HUMOUR

Cloth Elegant, Large i

', Price $1.15 per vol.

VOLUMES ALREADY JSSUED.
THE HUMOUR OF FRANCE. Translated, with an

Inlroduciion an.\ N'ole<:, by KJizabelh L«. Wilh numerous

Illuslralions by Paul Fienzeny.

" From Villon lo Paul Verlainc, from daleless /o/'/iai/j: lo news-
papers fresh liom the kiosk, we have a tremendous range of
le\eaiara."~~Birmin^liam Daily Gazelle.

" French wit is excellently represented. We have here examples
of Villon, Rabelais, and Moliere, but we have specimens also of
La Hoehefoucauld, Regnard, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, Chamforl,
Dumas, Gautier, Lablche, De Banville, Pnilleron, and many others.
. . , The book sparkles from beginning to end." — C/o*« (London).

THE HUMOUR OF GERMANY, Translated, with

sn Introduction and Note;, by Hans MUIIer-Casenov. Wilh

numerous Illusliations by C. E. Brock.

An excellently representative vol u me. —Z'fljT)' Teh^raph (London).

"Whether it is Saxon kinship or the fine qualities of the collec-
ti(Hi, we have founil thii volume the most entertaining of the three.
Its riotous absurdities well overbalance its examples of the oppres-
sively heavy. . . . The national impulse to make fun or lh«
war correitpondenl has a capital example in the skit from Julius
Stettenheim."— .A'lta. York Iiuiipenaenl.

wYork: Charles Scb

S SON&

THE HUMOUR OF ITALY. Translated, with an In-
troduction and Notes, by A. Werner. With 50 Illustrations and a
Frontispiece by Arturo Faldi.

"Will reveal to English readers a whole new world of literature."
— AthetuBum (London).

" Apart from selections of writers of classical reputation, the book
contains some delightful modern short stories and sketches. We
may particularly mention those by Verga, Capuana, De Amicis. . . .
Excellent also are one or two of the jokes and * bulls * which figure
under the heading of newspaper humour." — Literary World {J^n^ovi).

THE HUMOUR OF AMERICA. Selected, with a

copious Biographical Index of American Humorists, by James Barr.

** There is not a dull page in the volume ; it fairly sparkles and
ripples with good things. — Manchester Examiner,

THE HUMOUR OF HOLLAND. Translated, with

an Introduction and Notes, by A. Werner. With numerous
Illustrations by Dudley Hardy.

** There are some quite irresistible pieces in the volume. The
illustrations are excellent, and the whole style in which the book
is produced reflects credit on the publishers." — British Weekly.

** There are really good things in the book — things of quaint or
pretty fancy, things of strong or subtle satire. . . . Even Mark Twain,
m * Tom Sawyer ' and * Huck Finn,* does not show a finer knowledge
of the humours of imaginative boyhood than is displayed by Conrad
van der Liede in * My Hero.'" — Daily Chronicle.

THE HUMOUR OF IRELAND. Selected by D. J.

O'Donoghue. With numerous Illustrations by Oliver Paque.

** A most conscientiously, exhaustively, excellently compiled book ;
the editor could not have done his work better. . . . Every f^enre of
Irish Humour as it is, or has been, written, from the twelfth century
down to the evening-newspaper age." — The Speaker (London).

THE HUMOUR OF SPAIN. Translated, with an Intro-
duction and Notes, by S. Taylor. With numerous Illustrations.

THE HUMOUR OF RUSSIA. Translated, with Notes,

by E. L. Boole, and an Introduction by Stepniak. With 50
Illustrations by Paul Fr^nzeny.

THE HUMOUR OF JAPAN. Translated, with an

Introduction, by A. M. With Illustrations by George Bigot
(from Drawings made in Japan).

The Contemporary Science Series.

Edited by Havelock Ellis.

Crown Szo, CloiJu Price %\,2^ per Vo.ume.

I. THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Prof. Patrick Gf.ddes

and J. A. Thomson. With 90 Illustrations. Second Edition.

" The authors have brought to the task — as indeed their names guarantee
— a wealth of knowledge, a lucid and attractive method of treatment, and a
rich vein of picturesque language." — Nature,

II. ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G. W. dk

TUNZELMANN. With 88 I II US'. rations.
'* A clearly- written and connected sketch of what is known about elec-
tricity and magnetism, the more prominent modern applications, and the
principles on which they are based." — Saturday Review,

IIL THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. Isaac

Taylor. Illustrated. Second Edition.

*• Canon Taylor is probably the most encyclopedic all-round scholar now

living. His new volume on the Origin of the Aryans is a first-rate example

of the excellent account to which he can turn his exceptionally wide and

varied information. . . . Masterly and exhaustive." — Pall Mall Gazette.

IV. PHYSIOGNOMY AND EXPRESSION. By P. Mante-

GAZZA. Illustrated.

** Brings this highly interesting subject even with the latest researches.

. . . Professor Mantegazza is a writer full of life and spirit, and the natural

attractiveness of his subject is not destroyed by his scientific handling of it.''

Literary U orld ( Boston ).

y. EVOLUTION AND DISEASL:. By J. B. Sutton, F.R.C.S.

With 135 Illustrations.

**The book is as i:iit.'ic>iin^T as a novel, without sacrifice of accuracy or

system, and is calcuLiied to give an r.ppreciation of the fundamentals of

pathology to the lay render, while forming a useful collection of illustrations

of disease for medical XL'^txtncQ.^'—Joitmal of Mental Science,

VL THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. By G. L. Gomme.

Illustrated.

**His book will probably remain for some time the best work of reference

for facts bearing on those traces of the village community which have not

been effaced by conquest, encroachment, and the heavy hand of Roman

law." — Scottish Leader,

VIL THE CRIMINAL. By Havelock Ellis. Illustrated.

"An ably written, an instructive, and a most entertaining book," — Law
Quarterly Review,

"The sociologist, the philosopher, the philanthropist, the novelist —
all, indeed, for whom the study of human nature has any attraction — will
find Mr. Ellis full of interest and suggest iveness." — Accuiemy.

VIII. SANITY AND INSANITY. By Dr. Charles Mekcier.

Illustrated
" He has laid down the institutes of insanity."— i1/«W. . , ., ,

"Taken as a whole, it is the brightest book on the physical side of
mental science published in our time, —Pail Mall Gazette,

IX. HYPNOTISM. By Dr. Albert Moll. Second Edition.

" Marks a step of some importance in the study of some difficult physio-
logical and psychological problems which have not yet received much
attention in the scientific world of England." — Nature.

X. MANUAL TRAINING. By Dr. C. M. Woodward, Director

of the Manual Training School, St. Louis. Illustrated,
" There is no greater authority on the subject than Professor Woodward."
'-'Manchester Guardian,

XL THE SCIENCE OF FAIRY TALEa By E. Sidney
Hartland.

" Mr. Hartland's book will win the sympathy of all earnest students,
both by the knowledge it displays, and by a thorough love and appreciation
of his subject, which is evident throughout." — Spectator,

XIL PRIMITIVE FOLK. By Elie Reclus.

*' An attractive and useful introduction to the study of some aspects of
ethnograpy. " — Nature.

" For an introduction to the study of the questions of property, marriage,
government, religion, — in a word, to the evolution of society, — this little
volume will be found most convenient." — Scottish Leader,

XIII. THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. By Professor
Letourneau.

"Among the distinguished French students of sociol(^. Professor Letour-
neau has long stood in the first rank. He approaches the great study of
man free from bias and shy of generalisations. To collect, scrutinise, and
appraise facts is his chief business. In the volume before us he shows these
qualities in an admirable degree. ... At the close of his attractive pages
he ventures to forecast the future of the institution of marriage." — Science,

XIV. BACTERIA AND THEIR PRODUCTS. By Dr. G.

Sims Woodhead. Illustrated.
"An excellent summary of the present state of knowledge of the subject.'*
— Lancet.

XV. EDUCATION AND HEREDITY. By J. M. Guyau.

**It is at once a treatise on sociology, ethics, and paedagogics. It is
doubtful whether among all the ardent evolutionists who have had their say
on the moral and the educational question any one has carried forward the
new doctrine so boldly to its extreme logical consequence." — Professor
Sully in Mind,

XVI. THE MAN OF GENIUS. By Prof. Lombroso Illus-
trated.

** By far the most comprehensive and fascinating collection of facts and
generalizations concerning genius which has yet been brought together."
—JitumaJ of Mental Science,

New York: Charles Scribnek's Sons.

XVII. THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE. By Prof. Karl
Pearson. Illustrated.

*' The problems discussed with great ability and lucidity, and often in a
most suggestive manner, by Prof. Pearson, are such as should interest tiU
students of natural science." — Natural Science.

XVIII. PROPERTY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.
By Ch. Letourneau, General Secretary to the Anthropo-
logical Society, Paris, and Professor in the School of Anthropo-
logy, Paris.

'*M. Letourneau has read a great deal, and he seems to us to have
selected and interpreted his facts with considerable judgment and learning."
— Westviinsier Review,

XIX. VOLCANOES, PAST AND PRESENT. By Prof.
Edward Hull, LL.D., F.R.S.

*' A very readable account of the phenomena of volcanoes and earth-
quakes. " — Nature.

XX. PUBLIC HEALTH. By Dr. J. F. J. Sykes. With

numerous Illustrations.
''Not by any means a mere compilation or a dry record of details and
statistics, but it takes up essential points in evolution, environment, prophy-
laxis, and sanitation bearing upon the preservation of public health." —
Lancet.

XXL MODERN METEOROLOGY. An Account of the
Growth and Present Condition of some Branches
of Meteorological Science. By Frank Waldo, Ph.D.,
Member of the German and Austrian Meteorological Societies,
etc; late Junior Professor, Signal Service, U.S.A. With 112
Illustrations.

"The present volume is the best on the subject for general use that we
have seen." — Daily Telegraph (London).

IMPORTANT ADDITION TO THE SERIES.

Price $2.50.

XXII. THE GERM-PLASM: A THEORY OF HERE-

DITY, By Augiisl Weismanfi, Professor in the University

of Freiburg'in-Breisgau, With 24 fllustraiions.

" There has been no work published since Darwin's own books which
has so thoroughly handled the matter treated by him, or has done so much to
place in order and clearness the immense complexity of the factors of heredity,
or, lastly, has brought to light so many new facts and considerations bearing
on the subject." — British Medical Journal,

XXIII. INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. By F. Houssav.
With numerous Illustrations.

•* His accuracy is undoubted, yet his facts out-marvel all romance. These
fiurts are here made use of as materials wherewith to form the mighty fabric of
evolution. ^^— Manchester Guardian,

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons,

XXIV. MAN AND WOMAN. By Havelock Ellis. Illus-
trated.

"Altogether we must congratulate Mr. Ellis upon having produced a
book which, apart from its high scientific claims, will, by its straightforward
simplicity upon points of delicacy, appeal strongly to all those readers outside
purely scientific circles who may be curious in these matters." — Pall Mall
Gazette.

"This striking and important volume . . . should place Mr. Havelock
Ellis in the front rank of scientific thinkers of the time." — Westminster
Review*

XXV. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN CAPITALISM.
By John A. Hobson, M.A.

j " Every page affords evidence of wide and minute study, a weighing of

facts as conscientious as it is acute, a keen sense of the importance of certain
I points as to which economists of all schools have hitherto been confused and

\ careless, and an impartiality generally so great as to give no indication of his

f [Mr. Hobson's] personal sympathies." — Pall Mall Gazette,

XXVL APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT-TRANSFER-
ENCE. By Frank Podmore, M.A.

"A very sober and interesting little book. . . . That thought-transference
is a real thing, though not perhaps a very common thing, he certainly
•' shows." — Spectator.

XXVIL AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE
PSYCHOLOGY. By Professor C. Lloyd Morgan. With
Diagrams.

" A strong and complete exposition of Psychology, as it takes shape in a
mind previously informed with biological science. . . . Well written, ex-
tremely entertaining, and intrinsically valuable." — Saturday Review.

XXVIII. THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION : A Study of
Industry among Primitive Peoples. By Otis T. Mason,
Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States
National Museum.