The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

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."