How the Cave-men Learned to Boil and to Dry Foods
Again the salmon feast came, and again the neighboring clans camped at the rapids. This time they caught more salmon than they had ever caught before. And this was the summer that the Cave-men began to dry salmon and to fish with harpoons.
It was Willow-grouse who thought of drying salmon, and carrying it to the caves. She remembered the berries dried on the bushes, and the dried meat she found in a tree. No doubt all the Cave-men had eaten dried meat many times before. Often the Cave-men left strips of meat hanging from the trees.
Anybody could leave meat which he did not care to eat. Anybody could eat meat which had been dried in the sun. But not every one was bright enough to think of drying meat.
Harpoons of reindeer antler used for fishing.
Chew-chew had never dried meat, nor had any of the women. It was enough for them to prepare the meat which they needed day by day. Few of the people ever thought of laying up stores for the morrow. They lived a “hand-to-mouth” life.
But Willow-grouse remembered the famines. She knew food was scarce in the early spring. And when she saw the river full of salmon, she thought of the sun-dried meat.
And so Willow-grouse caught some salmon and cleaned them and hung them on the branches of a tree. And when they had dried, she took them down and the Cave-men said that dried salmon were good. And so all the people caught salmon and dried them in the sun.
The first few days the people fished as they had fished before. They waded in the water and caught salmon with their hands, or they stunned them with clubs or with stones. But soon the men began to catch salmon by spearing them with barbed harpoons.