Hunter-gatherer

“ Over the platform bears and men went rolling and struggling, in the wild battle of life and death. Through the trees, and into the deep drift, staining the snow with their mingled blood! Here, two or three men were engaged with a single foe—there, some brave hunter stood battling alone. ”

“ Such sagas would naturally have their origin in an age when the ideas of shepherd and hunter occupied a great portion of the intellectual horizon of the people; when the herdman saw in the ravenous bear one who was his equal, and more than his equal, in force and adroitness, the champion of the woods and wilds; when the hunter, in his lonely ramble through the depths of the forest, beheld in the hoary wolf and red fox, as they stole along,—hunters like himself,—mates, so to say, and companions, and whom he therefore addressed as such.... ”

“ The little hunter spirit has frightened them.
"When the tired hunter stops, far from his lodge, to roast his meat, the little mischief-maker blows out his fire and fans the smoke into his eyes.
"He catches the arrows which are aimed at the birds and hides them. He puts slippery clay in the path and laughs when the children fall. No one can tell all his tricks of mischief." ”

“ THE STRONG HUNTER. There's a warrior hunting o'er prairie and hill,
Who in sunshine or starlight is eager to kill,
Who ne'er sleeps by his fire on the wild river's shore,
Where the green cedars shake to the white rapids' roar.
Ever tireless and noiseless, he knows not repose,
Be the land filled with summer, or lifeless with snows;
But his strength gives him few he can count as his friends,
Man and beast fly before him wherever he wends,
For he chases alike every form that has breath,
And his darts must strike all,—for that hunter is Death!! ”

“ While I was trying to drag it toward the herd, the hunter bound all my limbs and I fell to the ground, head foremost. And the herd of deer vanished, seeing no hope of saving me.
When the hunter came up, he did not put me to death, for pity softened his heart at the thought: "He is a fawn, fit only for a pet." Instead, he carefully took me home and gave me as a plaything to a prince, who showed his delight at seeing me by giving the hunter a generous reward. ”

“ A hunter is born to them—a hunter of the race of the Suns. Ask of the bears, of the buffaloes, of the tigers, and of the swift-footed deer, whose arrows they fear most! They tremble and cower when the footstep of the hunter with the beard on his chin is heard on the heath. But I was born with brains in my head as well as a beard on my chin, and I pondered on my mother's words. One day, when a panther which I slaughtered had torn my breast, I painted my beard with my own blood, and I stood smiling before her. ”

“ Now his finger ran into the hole made by the bullet, and he gave a little laugh of modest triumph. Minutes passed as they studied, felt, and admired the skin, the hunter proud of his son, the son alive with a primitive passion, which inflicts suffering to get the beautiful thing. Perhaps the tenderness as well as the wild passion of the animal gets into the hunter's blood, and tips his fingers at times with an exquisite kindness—as one has noted in a lion fondling her young, or in tigers as they sport upon the sands of the desert. ”

“ The hunter understood, for in those days men and birds could talk together.
The bird asked the man what he could do for him, and the hunter whispered, "You are strong. You can fly a long trail. Go and tell the chief of my people." ”

“ He had been an expert hunter, and had traversed the wild forests, and threaded the mazes of the wilderness, with a success rarely equalled. As a warrior there was none to surpass him: he could transfix two enemies with the same spear; his arm could bend a bow of twice the size of that bent by an ordinary arm; and his war-whoop sounded loud as the thunder of the moon of early corn. ”

“ Once more the farmers hustled about and craned over each other’s shoulders to look at a wonderful specimen of a hunter which was put up to sale last. Without warranty, of no definite age, with a suspicious lameness, and timid, lack-lustre eye, the brute, which had evidently mistaken its vocation as a hunter, was led up and down amidst the jeers of the knowing ones,—and who is not knowing when a horse is in question? ”

“ A hunter was one who killed animals for their fur, for their meat or horns, or for some lust for blood—that was Helen's definition of a hunter, and she believed it was held by the majority of people living in settled states. But the majority might be wrong. A hunter might be vastly different, and vastly more than a tracker and slayer of game. ”

“ He lived a hunter's life till war broke out between his own and some distant nation, and then he took the war path. He was as brave a warrior as he was a skillful hunter, and slew a great multitude of the enemy, till all were lying dead around him, except one, who was a mighty man of valor, and in an unguarded moment the hunter received a blow from his tomahawk on the head, which felled him to the earth; his enemy then took his scalp and fled. ”

“ The hunter, though startled to hear the animal speak in human voice, said, mustering up his courage: "My charming antelope! I cannot but kill you at once. My wife and child are dying at home from hunger. You must be their food tonight." "Even so, hunter, I have a dear husband and an affectionate child at home. I must take leave of them before I fall down dead by your shaft. ”

“ We shall therefore suppose that we are now about to follow the true hunter, as the Still Hunter is also called, through the interior of the tangled woods, across morasses, ravines, and such places, where the game may prove more or less plentiful, even should none be found there in the first instance. We shall allow our hunter all the agility, patience, and care, which his occupation requires, and will march in his rear, as if we were spies, watching all his motions. ”

“ Prayer sticks are made, prayers are said and each man carries a tiny stone image of some animal, such as the mountain lion, which is a good hunter. When the organized town hunts are planned, the hunt society holds ceremonies in its kiva the night before the hunt begins. Unless these ceremonial preparations are made, a hunt cannot be successful. If a man were to neglect the ceremonies it would be worse than if he were to forget to take his weapons. ”

“ Aqueducts and tailor work may be alike out of my individual and personal knowledge, yet I may not necessarily be an ignorant man. The primitive hunter stood in the forest. For him to be a hunting-sage, was to know the weather, traps, weapons, the times, and the lairs and ways of beasts. ”

“ In short, we may conceive of the man-ape thus gathering a magazine of weapons,—clubs and stones,—sought or shaped during hours of leisure for use in hours of conflict. In this way our animal ancestor doubtless slowly became a skilful hunter, carrying his weapons with him in the chase, and using them efficiently in the conquest of prey. ”

“ Cut off from all Christian companionship and the informing influences of civilized arts, all their news was of red men and of game, their entertainments the ever-varying moods of Nature, their labors of the rudest, their dangers familiar, their solacements simple and solitary. Alone the sturdy hunter beat the woods all day, on the track of panthers, bears, and deer ”

“ Our hunters had been as successful as could be wished, and at evening we assembled around a full feast of "marrow-bones;" a treat whose value must for ever remain unknown to those who have not tried the adventurous life of the hunter. We were often surprised to witness in ourselves a proof of the facility with which a part at least of the habits of the savage could be adopted. ”

“ Oh! indeed, no hunter is like him, when he comes down from the north, bringing frost, his bride, along with him; he hunts the leaves from the trees, and destroys the animals which inhabit the earth, even in their holds and fastnesses. ”

“ Out in the lonely forest the hunter may set his offering upon a log for the spirit owner of the game, or if in the region of a balete tree, he may think it prudent to show his deference to its invisible dwellers by offering them this humble tribute. ”

“ The old hunter being anxious to save a portion of his kindred, took two girls—his grandchildren—each by the hand and silently led them some distance into the surrounding woods, amid the darkness, and informing them the direction they were to go—to be judged by the wind, and fast falling flakes of snow, he bade them save their lives by flight and inform their people of his fate. ”

“ But before they could thus, like the Patriarchs, become herdsmen, they perforce still, like their much loved Hebrew prototypes, had to become hunters, and clear the land of savage beasts and savage men. The hunter's instincts, the hunter's tactics were theirs, and no hunter comes out into the open if he can help it. It is no branch of his business to make a display of his courage and to court death. ”

“ If ye were to fall in with a hunter, very speedily ye should be taken.' So thy servant restrained them from fighting together, and having wiped them and cleansed their blood-stained hair, eventually let them go, thus saving both their lives. ”

“ Then again the elk and bison on thy grassy banks shall feed, And along the low horizon shall the pluméd hunter speed; Then again on lake and river shall the silent birch canoe Bear the brave with bow and quiver on his way to war or woo: Then the beaver on the meadow shall rebuild his broken wall, And the wolf shall chase his shadow and his mate the panther call. From the prairies and the regions where the pine-plumed forest grows Shall arise the tawny legions with their lances and their bows ”

“ The hunter—if a stranger to the feat—would expect to see the creature crushed or crippled by the fall. No danger of that. Even the watchful dog that is waiting for such an event, and standing close to the spot, has not time to spring upon it, until it is off again like a flying bird, and, almost as quick as sight can follow, is seen ascending some other tree. ”

“ It is necessary to have been present at such a chase, to have seen this hunt on the prairies, to form an idea of the magnificent sight offered by all these noble brutes, their eyes afire, their mouths foaming, their heads haughtily thrown up, and their manes fluttering in the wind, as they bounded and galloped in the fatal circle the hunters had formed round them. ”

“ Earl Eberhard von Wurtemberg rode one day alone into the forest to amuse himself with the chase. Suddenly he heard a loud roar and noise, as of a hunter riding furiously past; he was terrified, dismounted in haste from his horse, and approaching a tree, as if for defence, cried aloud to the imagined huntsman, asking if he intended violence. ”

“ But so deep an impression have the thousands of years of hunting made upon the race, that even among the most highly civilised people hunting is the most popular of all enjoyments, and the hunter is a hero while the shepherd is looked on as a poor sort. ”

“ And this is the more confirmed when we consider that when once the hunter started on his career, he would have determined their avocation also for his posterity. At his death he would not have had herds of cattle to apportion to any one of his sons, and thus the taste for wild life, necessarily perpetuated, would be bred in the bone, as an indomitable characteristic of race, and the first hunter by choice would inevitably come to be the progenitor of generations of hunters by instinct and necessity. ”

“ His companions agreed with him, and the delighted pioneers engaged in hunting at once. They could not fail to bring down a great many buffaloes and elk, when the splendid game had scarcely seen enough of their great enemy, man, to learn to fear him. ”

“ What of the hunting, hunter bold? Brother, the watch was long and cold. What of the quarry ye went to kill? Brother, he crops in the jungle still. Where is the power that made your pride? Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side. Where is the haste that ye hurry by? ”

“ And plumes her wings; but thy sweet waters run
Crimson with blood. Then, as the sun goes down,
Amid the deepening twilight I descry
Figures of men that crouch and creep unheard,
And bear away the dead. The next day's shower
Shall wash the tokens of the fight away.
I look again—a hunter's lodge is built,
With poles and boughs, beside thy crystal well,
While the meek autumn stains the woods with gold,
And sheds his golden sunshine. To the door
The red-man slowly drags the enormous bear
Slain in the chestnut-thicket, or flings down
The deer from his strong shoulders. ”

“ There are parks, but no palaces—there are fertile fields, but none to till them—for it is even dangerous to traverse them in the open light of day. The trapper skulks silently along the creek—scarcely trusting himself to whisper to his companion—and watching warily as he renews the bait of castoreum. The hunter glides with stealthy tread from copse to copse—dreading the echo of his own rifle. ”

“ To the man belongs not only the business of hunting, for this is an employment and not a pastime, but the care of the territory, and keeping off intruders and enemies, and the preparation of canoes for travel, and of arms and implements of war. The duties of cooking and dressing meats and fowl, and whatever else the chase affords, carries on the other hand, to the share of the hunter’s wife, the entire care and controul of the lodge, with its structure and removal, and the keeping it in order, with all its utensils and apparatus. ”

“ Even the Indian felt it a strange departure from the usual mode of hunting to travel and climb hundreds of miles over hot desert and rock-ribbed canyons, to camp at last in a spot so wild that deer were tame as cattle, and then not kill.
Nothing could have pleased me better, incident to the settling into permanent camp. The wild horses and tame deer added the all-satisfying touch to the background of forest, flowers and mighty pines and sunlit patches of grass, the white tents and red blankets, the sleeping hounds and blazing fire-logs all making a picture like that of a hunter's dream. ”