CHAPTER XII
HOW RA-NA SAVED HIS PEOPLE
Ra-Na was a wise old man who had dwelt in the valley for nearly a hundred years. He was lame, having had his leg almost torn off by a bear while hunting in the marshes, but his wits were very keen.
He was one of the watchers of the Sacred Fire, and lived in the Fire Cave with another old man named Sut, who was almost blind.
There were great piles of firewood before the cave, and more was stored inside, to be used in wet weather. In the centre of the cave was a flat rock, with a deep hollow in the top of it, in which the fire burned. This fire was never allowed to go out. One or the other of the old men watched it day and night, throwing on a few pieces of wood whenever they were needed. When rain came and the fires the cave men had built outside were put out, it was easy to build them again by taking hot coals from the Sacred Fire.
Later on, the cave people learned a way to make fire by rubbing two sticks together, but it was a long time before they found out how to do this, and meanwhile, they had to keep their precious fire always burning, for fear they might lose it.
Since the old men who watched the fire were never allowed to leave it, they could not go out to hunt for food for themselves, and so the cave people brought it in to them; bits of fish, and meat, and roots and grains and nuts. After a while these offerings they brought to the fire watchers came to be looked on as offerings to the Fire itself; the people were thankful to the Fire because it warmed them, when they were cold, and frightened away wild beasts, and cooked their food. So they began to think of the Fire as a sort of god, and showed their thanks to it by bringing in these offerings of food. In this way it soon came about that the supply of meat, and fish, and other things the people brought to the cave was much more than the two old men could possibly eat, so they hung the fish, and the strips of meat, on poles stretched across the roof of the cave, in order that it might not be wasted. The nuts, and grains, and sweet-tasting roots they piled up in great heaps in the back of the cave. Ra-Na and his companion did not know when they hung the strips of meat and fish in the roof of the cave that the smoke from the fire would preserve them. They only thought that they would dry. But we know now that if we hang fish, or meat, in the smoke of a burning fire, it will be preserved from decay, and will keep, without spoiling, for months and even years. There are certain chemicals, such as creosote, in the smoke from burning wood, which go into the meat or fish and keep it from decaying, and this way of preserving food has been used from the earliest times, and is still used to-day, just as it was thousands of years ago, to make smoked fish, and bacon and ham.
The weather in the valley had been growing colder year after year, but so far there had been very little ice or snow. Mother Nature, who was now ready to teach her children another lesson, called Cold to her.
"Cold," she said, "you have certainly helped me a great deal. Now I have something more for you to do."
"What?" Cold asked. "Do you want me to freeze your little people again? I love to make them shiver and shake."
"I want you to send them Ice and Snow. They might as well get used to such things, for they are going to see a great deal of them from now on."
So Cold flapped his wings, and blew a bitter blast from the frozen north, and all the little raindrops were turned to beautiful white flakes of snow, and all the marshes and streams and lakes were covered with ice many inches thick.
The north wind swept through the valley like a knife, and made the cave people shiver and shake to their very bones. They put on their fur coats, and huddled over fires in the caves, waiting for the cold to go away, as it always had before. But this time the cold did not go away, but got worse and worse, and the snow whirled down and covered all the valley, and the ice got thicker and thicker. The cave people had never seen anything like this before, and they were afraid. After a while, when they had eaten all the food they had in the caves, they began to get hungry, so hunting parties went out to find food. These parties searched everywhere through the valley, and the marsh-land outside, but they could find hardly anything. The ice on the marshes kept them from spearing fish; they broke holes in it here and there, but the fish would not come near the holes, and they could not reach them with their spears. The thick snow which covered the ground prevented them from finding any of the sweet roots they often ate when other food was scarce, and there were scarcely any animals about that they could kill. The few that they saw easily got away, for the cave people could not run through the thick snow fast enough to catch up with them. Party after party came back to the caves with little or nothing at all; a few wild fowl that they had managed to knock down with stones, and some small animals that they found frozen in the snow. There was not enough food to go around, only a mouthful apiece, and as the days went by, and the cold got worse, the cave people once more found themselves starving.
Many of them went to the cave of the Sacred Fire, and prayed to it, for they thought the fire was a god, the spirit of warmth and heat, which could drive away the cold. But they brought no offerings of food to place before the fire, because they had none to bring. Even to the fire watchers they could bring nothing.
This, however, made no difference to Ra-Na and his companion, because the fire cave was full of food, and they had plenty to eat.
Ra-Na got to thinking about how hungry the people were, and of all the good food in the cave, so when any came to worship the Sacred Fire, he gave them something to eat. Soon all through the valley the people were saying that the Fire God was taking care of his children by giving them food, and they came, and were fed with the smoked meats, and fish, and the roots and nuts which the two old men had stored away.
It did not take very long to eat all this food up, for there were many people in the valley, but by the time it was all gone, the storm had passed, and under the heat of the sun the snow and ice began to melt, so that the hunting parties were once more able to find fish and animals for food. They had a hard time, and many starved to death, but the tribe was saved.
Ra-Na explained to the people how the Sacred Fire had kept the meat and fish for them, and they thought it a very wonderful thing, a miracle. After that, when food was once more plentiful, they brought great offerings of it to the Fire Cave, to show how grateful they were for their escape from starvation, and they laid away stores in their own caves too, all through the summer, for they had learned a great lesson, the need of storing food for use during the winter. From that time on the cave people were never in danger of starving in the cold months, and for this they gave thanks to the Fire God, and to Ra-Na and Sut, who came to be looked upon as the Sacred Fire's priests.
When the first men began to worship Fire, they were giving thanks to one of God's great forces, which had brought them comfort and happiness in the shape of warmth and cooked food and safety from their enemies, the wild beasts, who feared the hot flames. This worship of God's great natural forces was the beginning of religion. Later on, they came to worship the Sun, the Rain, the Wind, the Sea, the Lightning, the Rivers and Mountains, seeing in each the power of the Great Spirit which had created them all. This early kind of worship was in many ways very beautiful, but it was not long before the priests of the Fire or other god began to change it to suit themselves. Having nothing to do but live in the cave or temple, and be fed by the tribe, they found life very easy and comfortable, and this made them think themselves better than the common people. So they became proud and arrogant, and made every one believe they could get special favours from the gods. In this way they came to rule the people, for they would threaten any one who did not obey them with the anger of the gods. It was very easy for these priests, they had great power, and instead of being two old men who watched the fire, younger men became priests, with many followers about them, all of whom the people had to feed and support in idle luxury. Soon the priests began to make all sorts of rules, telling the people what they should eat, and wear, ordering them to build fine temples, in which the priests might live, forbidding them this and that, and claiming to have wonderful powers given to them by the gods. They became very cruel, too, and not only frightened the people by clever tricks, which to these simple creatures seemed like wonderful miracles, but told them to make all sorts of sacrifices to the gods, sometimes even human beings, men, women and children, who, they said, had to be killed and offered upon altars so that the gods would not be angry. All this work by the priests soon changed the simple religion of the people, worshipping God through His great forces into a brutal kind of religion which we call Paganism. This rule by the priests lasted for a very long time; it was found among all the ancient peoples, in Nineveh and Babylon, in Egypt, Greece and Rome, and it was only when Christ came to teach people a better way to worship the Divine Creator that people began to understand that God is not cruel and angry, asking sacrifices, but a God of Love.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST BOW AND ARROW
Among a people whose whole life was spent in fighting, and in killing animals for food, weapons were the most important things. We have seen how the cave men used clubs and spears, and later stone axes and knives. But as the tribe increased in numbers, so that the whole valley was filled with them, it became harder and harder to get enough food.
The cave men were very swift runners, and often pursued and overtook the smaller beasts, but there were many that they could not overtake. There were also great flocks of waterfowl that flew over the marshes. The hunters tried in every way to kill these, but it was hard work. Sometimes they would manage to hit one with a well-aimed pebble or stone, but even though they became skilful throwers, it was not easy to throw a stone far enough, or with enough force, to kill an animal or a large bird. So they all tried to think of some way to kill birds and animals at a distance.
One of the first things they did was to invent the sling. Some early hunter found out, that by placing a smooth round pebble in a leather thong, and whirling it about his head, he could throw the pebble much further and harder than he could by hand. It was not long before the cave men became very skilful in the use of the sling. They found out just the right moment to let go one end of the thong, so that the pebble would fly straight and hard toward the mark, and soon they were able to hit and kill the marsh birds, something like our ducks, or geese, without much trouble. But the sling, although useful against such small game, did very little harm to animals of larger size. A wolf or a bear paid no attention to the pebbles that hit him, and either ran away, or turned against the hunters and attacked them.
Of course the cave men soon learned how to throw their spears, hurling them at the enemy with great force and skill. But they could not throw them very far, because they were so heavy, so they made smaller, lighter ones called javelins, which they could fling a great distance. The further they threw them, however, the less certain was their aim, so they often missed.
On this account the early people tried in many ways to find out how to throw their sharp-pointed javelins a long distance, and at the same time with correct aim. One way was to use a throwing stick – a short piece of wood with a handle to it, and a groove along the top in which they laid the javelin or spear. With these throwing sticks they could hurl a spear a greater distance, than they could in the ordinary way. Some of these early peoples may have used the blow-gun, such as is used to-day by the savages of the forests in South America. These blow-guns are made of long, hollow tubes of wood, such as bamboo, and little poisoned darts are shot from them with great force by blowing through one end of the tube, just as boys to-day blow beans or bits of putty from a bean shooter. But it was not until man invented the bow and arrow that he found a really serviceable weapon for killing things at a distance.
Just how the bow and arrow came to be invented we shall of course never know. Some people think it came from the use of bent saplings in making snares or traps. Such a sapling, springing back when released, would throw a small object a considerable distance. Some think the bow may have developed from the bow-drill. One of the first ways of making fire, as we have said, was by rubbing two sticks together. A simple way to do this was to twirl one stick between the palms of the hands, like a drill, while pressing it against a piece of softer wood. Later on, men found that by twisting a double cord between the ends of a bent stick, they could twirl the drill by moving the bent stick from side to side, and they used these bow-drills, as they are called, not only to make fire, but to drill holes in bone, or bits of wood, or even stone. But it is very likely that man discovered the bow for shooting with first, and later used the idea of the bent stick to make the bow-drill.
Sometimes, when making and seasoning the long handles of their spears, the early men may have found that, if a spear shaft was crooked, it could be straightened by bending it like a bow in the opposite direction and tying the two ends together with a cord. This would have made a sort of bow, and it may be that in some such way as this man found that a string tied between the two ends of a bent piece of wood could be used to shoot a javelin or arrow a greater distance than it could be thrown by hand.
But however the invention of the bow and arrow came about, it was one of the most important steps taken by early man. He was now able to kill his enemies, his game, at a distance. As he learned to use his new weapon, he slowly found out the best kinds of wood to make it from, picking out those which were tough, strong and elastic. Not being able to cut down large trees and saw them into strips, he was forced to make use of small saplings, cut in the forests. He soon found out that these saplings, when green, were not hard and elastic; he had learned this in making his spear shafts. But when such saplings had been dried for many days before the fire, they became fit to use. Then he would scrape off the bark with a stone knife, make notches at each end, to hold the bow-string in place, and cut down the thicker end of the sapling until both ends of his bow were of the same size. For his arrows he used thin strong reeds at first, but later on made them of seasoned saplings too, using a smaller size. He knew, from making spears and javelins, how to fix at the end of the arrow a stone point, or a head of sharp bone, but he found out very soon that the arrows would not fly straight unless they had a bit of feather, or a tuft of grass fastened to their ends. It may be that these feathers were first fastened to the ends of the arrows as ornaments, just as they had been fastened to the shafts of spears, but when the cave men found that they would make their arrows fly straighter, they used them for that purpose.
The bow and arrow made it much easier for the cave dwellers to get food, and in those days, the getting of food was the chief object of their lives. Always there stood before them the fear of hunger. They had not felt this fear, when the days were all pleasant and warm, and there was plenty of fruit and nuts and game, but when the cold came, and food was scarce, the hunter who could bring back the most food became a very important man in his tribe. So the cave men tried very hard to become skilful in the use of their new weapon. With fire to keep them warm, caves to keep out the cold and rain, and the bow and arrow to help them get food, they became stronger and more fearless all the time. But the tribe in the valley had grown so large that there was no longer food enough for all near at hand, and soon parties in search of game began to wander farther and farther away from the valley, building huts of brush in the forests beyond the hills, or digging caves in the earth to protect them from the storms.
Mother Nature, who was watching the doings of her children very carefully, saw that the valley was getting too full, and began to make plans to find a new home for some of her people.
"How will you do it?" asked the Sun, to whom she had spoken of her plan.
"Watch carefully," Mother Nature replied, "and you will see."
CHAPTER XIV
KA-MA THE TRAVELLER
Ka-Ma was a young man who was very restless and unhappy in the valley. Ever since a child he had heard the story of Tul and Ni-Va, and how they went out from the valley and found the sea, which the valley people called the Great Water. Tul and Ni-Va had been dead for a very long time, but still the old men, who had heard the tale from their grandfathers, told it about the fires at night, until the story became a legend, and Tul and Ni-Va were spoken of as children of the gods.
None of the valley people had ever tried to find the Great Water again; they were happy and contented where they were, and had no wish to travel so far from their fires, their caves. But Ka-Ma, who listened to the story with eager eyes, vowed that some day, when he grew to be a man, he too would brave the unknown dangers of which the old men spoke, and make his way to the river, and from there to the ocean.
He forgot this plan, when he grew older, but sometimes at night it would come to him again, and make him restless and sad. But still he did not go.
There was a young girl in the valley called Tula, and she and Ka-Ma had played together when they were children. They liked each other very much, and when they grew older, they fell in love with each other, and wanted to marry.
In those days, when a young man saw a girl he liked, he would go to the rocks in the hillside and prepare himself a cave. Then he would hunt for her through the valley until he found her, and when she saw him coming, she would run, trying to escape him, yet hoping in her heart, if she liked him, that he would be swift enough to catch her.
Then, if the young man did catch her, he would take her in his arms and carry her to the cave he had made ready, and it would be their home from that time on.
Now Tula was swift, and strong, with long yellow hair, and smooth white teeth, and as she grew up, Ka-Ma said to himself that he would take Tula for his wife.
But Tor, who was the strongest man in the tribe, and was called its chief, also liked Tula, and wanted her for himself. He had many other wives, but none of them was as young and swift and strong as Tula. So one day, Tor, seeing Tula bathing in the river, waited for her in the rushes beside the bank. When she came out, he struck her lightly over the head with his stone axe, and then took her in his arms and began to carry her to his cave.
Ka-Ma, who had also been waiting for Tula, saw this and it made him very angry. At first he crept along after Tor, afraid to do anything, because Tor was the chief of the tribe, but soon his anger and courage rose, at the sight of Tula in Tor's arms, and he ran up, axe in hand, and demanded that Tor let her go.
The chief roared at him, and beating his breast with his fist, told Ka-Ma to go away, but Ka-Ma stood his ground, for he saw that Tula who had now recovered her senses, was smiling at him. Then Tor dropped the woman, and drawing the axe from his girdle, came at Ka-Ma to kill him.
The chief was very strong, but Ka-Ma was younger and more active and quick. For a long time the two fought, so that they were wounded on the shoulders, and arms and chest, and the blood ran down their bodies to the ground. Then Tula, who wanted Ka-Ma to win, picked up a stone and threw it at Tor, and struck him on the side of the head, so that for a moment he was stunned. With a great shout Ka-Ma raised his axe, and springing forward, brought it down with all his might upon Tor's skull. The heavy, sharp axe broke through the bone, and into Tor's brain, and he fell to the ground dead.
Ka-Ma was frightened by what he had done, for he knew that Tor had many friends, who would seek to kill him. So he hid the body beneath some leaves, and telling Tula to wait for him, he went back to his cave, and got his spear, and his bow and arrows, and tied what food he had in a piece of skin and hung it over his shoulders. Then he returned to the place where he had left Tula, and together they fled from the valley.
Ka-Ma, remembering what he had heard about the journey of Tul and Ni-Va to the Great Water, made up his mind that he and Tula would go there too. The story told by the men said that the path lay along the edge of the great marsh, to a river, many times bigger than the one in the valley, and that here the travellers had been sent a log boat by the gods. Ka-Ma made his way along the marsh, with Tula following him, carrying the bundle of food.
It took them three days to reach the wide river, because twice they lost their way, but at last they found themselves on its banks. There was no log boat in sight, however, and Ka-Ma made up his mind to build a raft. He hunted through the woods until he found eight or ten smaller logs, and these he tied together with thin strong vines, like grapevines, which he tore from the trees. Then he and Tula got on the raft and began to drift down the river.
Suddenly a shower of stones and arrows began to fall about them, and looking toward the shore, they saw a number of the valley people, friends of Tor, who had followed them to the river. Ka-Ma snatched up his bow to return the fire, while Tula, whose mind was very quick, began to paddle the raft toward the opposite shore with Ka-Ma's broad-bladed spear. It was slow work, and meanwhile the stones and arrows kept on falling about them, but moving along in the river current, they were a hard mark to hit. So while a few of the arrows and stones struck the raft, they did no harm. Tula kept on paddling and the raft slowly began to drift in toward the farther shore, and finally grounded in the mud. Snatching up their weapons and food the two voyagers quickly waded to the bank and hid behind a clump of trees.
Their pursuers, however, did not give up the chase. Soon they began to bring logs from the forest, and Ka-Ma saw that they, too, were building a raft. There were five of them in all and they worked very quickly. In a little while a second raft started across the river, on which were four of the men. The fifth stayed on the other bank. The four who stood on the raft paddled very hard with their spears, as they had seen Tula do, and soon the clumsy craft was in the middle of the stream. Then Ka-Ma took his bow, and fitted an arrow to it. Very carefully he took aim, and fired. One of the paddlers on the raft fell, with an arrow through his shoulder. The others, however, came on.
Again Ka-Ma fired, this time at closer range, and again his arrow found a mark in one of the men. Then, as the raft drifted toward the shore, Tula began hurling stones at it.
Unable to shoot their arrows with careful aim while on the shaky raft, the two who were unhurt began to retreat, paddling furiously in their haste to get back out of range. One of the men, who had been killed by an arrow from Ka-Ma's bow, they pushed from the raft into the river. In a moment the snouts of huge crocodile-like creatures appeared from the water, and the body of the dead man was torn to pieces.
The taste of blood made the crocodiles furious; they pushed their great bodies against the frail raft, driving it this way and that, and soon the vines which bound the logs together broke, and the two passengers found themselves struggling in the water. Their struggles did not last long; the hungry crocodiles rushed at them, and quickly ate them up.
The fifth man, who had stayed on the shore, set up cries of fear and rage, and ran away. Ka-Ma and Tula, on the other side, watched him go, glad of their narrow escape. They did not try to continue their journey that day, but made a camp on the river bank. They had no fire, to keep away wild beasts, so Ka-Ma watched all night, spear in hand, while Tula slept.
In the morning, after eating the last of the smoked meat they had brought with them, Ka-Ma added some new logs to his raft, and bound it with stronger vines, so that there would be no danger of its coming apart, in case the crocodiles attacked them.
When they pushed off from the shore in the morning, they found the current much stronger than it had been the afternoon before; there was a tide running toward the ocean, but Ka-Ma and his wife, who did not know what a tide was, were thankful that their raft moved so swiftly. There were no crocodiles to be seen.
All day long they drifted toward the sea. The forests on each side of the river became thinner and thinner, and by the time the sun was sinking below the trees, the raft had come to the mouth of the river, and the voyagers saw before them the wide curving surface of the ocean.
The sight of the Great Water terrified them, they were drifting right toward it, and their raft, unlike the log of Tul and Ni-Va, did not ground on a sand bar, but kept right in the middle of the rapid current. They were very hungry, for they had had nothing to eat since morning, and their tongues were dry and swollen from thirst. The legend told by the old men in the valley had said that the river water as it neared the ocean was salt and bitter, not fit to drink. They had tried to drink it, as the day wore on, but could not, and the salt made them more thirsty than ever.
These troubles, however, they soon forgot in the terrible fear that they would be washed out to sea. Being land people, they were afraid of the great, wide ocean; they wanted to feel the earth, solid and firm, under their feet. And each moment they saw themselves being carried farther away from it. The mouth of the river was now so wide, that in the twilight they could scarcely see the low, sandy shores.
Both Ka-Ma and his wife knew how to swim; they had learned this, in the river which flowed through the valley at home. With his spear in hand, while Tula carried the bow and arrows, Ka-Ma sprang into the water, and Tula followed him. Afraid as they were of the crocodiles, they were more afraid of the sea, so they struck out for the shore with all their might.
When they were almost tired out, they felt the sandy bottom under their feet, and a few moments later they had waded to the bank, where they lay for a time in the warm sand, resting.
Hunger and thirst drove them to their feet, for they knew they must find food and water before the darkness came. Ka-Ma remembered that the tale of the old men spoke of strange food, in shells like nuts, which Tul and Ni-Va had dug from the sand. With the point of his spear he also began to dig, and soon a pile of shell-fish lay before him. When they broke the shells open, they found soft, jelly-like creatures inside, which tasted very good and were moist enough to take away a little of their thirst. At last, when night came, they threw themselves on the sand tired out, and without keeping watch, slept until the dawn.
In the morning, Ka-Ma's first thought was to find water. Even the shell-fish they ate for breakfast did not satisfy their burning thirst. They went up to the higher ground of the shore, but the sand was hot and dry, with no sign of a stream anywhere. Only a few low bushes and trees grew about, and they tried to relieve their thirst by chewing the tender green leaves.
Mother Nature, who saw the danger they were in, called Wind and Rain to her and told them to make a storm. When noon came, the waves of the ocean were dashing against the shore with a roar like thunder, and the rain poured down in torrents. Ka-Ma and Tula lay on the ground, with their mouths open, but the few drops which fell upon their tongues was not enough to satisfy them.
When the storm was over, however, and the sun came out again, they found many pools in hollow places in the rocks, and from these they drank their fill. Then, feeling stronger, they went back farther and farther from the ocean, until they found a clump of trees, with coarse grass growing about, and a spring of fresh water forming a little pool. The place where these trees grew was on a fairly high hill, overlooking the ocean, and here Ka-Ma decided to make their home. He knew, of course, that they could never again go back to the valley.
He had always been used to living in a cave in the rocks, until now, but here there were no rocks, except those which jutted out along the seashore. So he built a strong hut of saplings and rushes. First he cut with his stone axe two posts, higher than his head, and as thick around as his arm. At the top of each of these posts was a fork, where the sapling had branched into limbs. He dug two deep holes in the ground with his spear, and set the two posts in them, pounding down the earth about them until it was firm and hard. Then he cut a third pole, and laid it across the top of the other two, its ends resting in the two forks. Tula, using rope made of plaited marsh grass, bound the cross-pole firmly to the posts.
When this was done, Ka-Ma cut many more long slender saplings, and placing one end of each on the ground, rested the other end against the cross or ridge pole, to which Tula tied them fast. These long slanting poles on each side, from the ridge pole to the ground, made a sort of tent. Then they gathered great bundles of the long tough rushes which grew in the salt marsh along the river bank, and wove these in and out of the slanting poles, until they had made a sort of ragged frame like coarse basket work. On top of this they laid more rushes, running the same way as the poles, that is, from the ridge pole to the ground, until the roof was many inches thick. Over these they tied more poles, to hold the rushes in place. One end of the little hut they blocked up with earth and brush; the other they left open, for a door, so that they could crawl inside and keep dry when it rained. Ka-Ma was very proud of his hut; he had built smaller ones like it, with his companions from the valley, when hunting trips kept them away from the caves for several days, but he knew this one was to be his home, so he took great pains to make it large and strong.