This book is included in the Children, Parents & Home Economics section.
FOREWORD
Hidden in a drawer in the antique highboy, back of the moose head in my studio,
there are specimens of Indian bead work, bits of buckskin, necklaces made of the
teeth of animals, a stone calumet, my old hunting knife with its rawhide sheath
and - carefully folded in oiled paper - is the jerked tenderloin of a grizzly
bear!
But that is not all; for more important still is a mysterious wooden flask
containing the castor or the scent gland of a beaver, which is carefully rolled
up in a bit of buckskin embroidered with mystic Indian signs.
The flask was given to me as "big medicine" by Bow-arrow, the Chief of the
Montinais Indians. Bow-arrow said - and I believe him - that when one
inhales the odor of the castor from this medicine flask one's soul and body are
then and forever afterwards permeated with a great and abiding love of the big
outdoors. Also, when one eats of the mystic grizzly bear's flesh, one's body
acquires the strength and courage of this great animal.
During the initiation of the members of a Spartan band of my boys, known as the
Buckskin Men, each candidate is given a thin slice of the grizzly bear meat and
a whiff of the beaver castor.
Of course, we know that people with unromantic and unimaginative minds will call
this sentimentalism. We people of the outdoor tribes plead guilty to being
sentimentalists; but we know from experience that
old Bow-arrow was right, because we have ourselves eaten of the grizzly bear and
smelled the castor of the beaver!
While the writer cannot give each of his readers a taste of this coveted bear
meat in material form, or a whiff of the beaver medicine, direct from the wooden
flask made by the late Bow-arrow's own hands, still the author hopes that the
magical qualities of this great medicine will enter into and form a part of the
subject matter of this book, and through that medium inoculate the souls and
bodies of his readers, purify them and rejuvenate them with a love of the World
As GOD Made It.
Dan Beard
June, 1920
CONTENTS
Chapter I. FIRE MAKING BY FRICTION
How to make a fireboard, bow, drill & thimble. Indian legend of the source of
fire. Record firemakers, Burning-stick outfit. Eskimo thimble. Bow, bow-string,
thimble, fireboard, fire-pan. Tinder, charred rags, puff balls. Firemakers of
the Balkan. Fire without a bow. Co-li-li, the fire saw. Fire pumping of the
Iroquois. Pyropneumatic apparatus.
Chapter II. FIRE MAKING BY PERCUSSION
The white man's method. How to use flint and steel. Where to obtain the flint
and steel. Chucknucks, Punk boxes, Spunks and Matches. Real Lucifer matches.
Slow Match. How to catch the spark. Substitutes for flint and steel.
Chapter III. HOW TO BUILD A FIRE
How to lay and light a fire. An experience with Tenderfeet. Modern fear of doing
manual labor. Matches. Fire-makers and Babylonians. The palpitating heart of the
Camp. Gummy fagots of the pine. How to make a fire in wet weather.
Backwoodsman's fire. The necessity of small kindling wood. Good firewood.
Advantage of split wood. Fire-dogs. How to open a knife. How to whittle. How to
split a stick with a knife. Bonfires and Council fires. Camp meeting torch
fires. Exploding stones. Character in fire. Slow fires, signal fires and
smudges.
Chapter IV. HOW TO LAY A GOOD COOKING FIRE
A personal experience on short rations. The most primitive of cooking outfits.
Camp pot-hooks. The gallow-crook. The pot-claw. The hake. The gib. The spetgelia
and the saster. Telegraph wire cooking implements. Wire grid-iron. Skeleton camp
stove. Cooking fires. Fire-dogs. Roasting fire-lay. Camp-fire lay. Belmore lay.
Frying fire-lay. Baking fire-lay. The Aures crane.
Chapter V. CAMP KITCHENS
Camp pit-fires. Bean holes. Cowboy
fire-hole. Chinook cooking fire-hole. Barbecue pits. The Gold Digger's oven. The
Ferguson camp stove. The adobe oven. The altar campfire place. Camp kitchen for
hikers, scouts, explorers, surveyors and hunters. How to cook meat, fish and
bread without pots, pans or stoves. Dressing small animals. How to barbecue
large animals.
Chapter VI. CAMP FOOD
How to make ash cake, pone, corn
dodgers, flapjacks, Johnnycake, biscuits and doughgod. Making Dutch ovens.
Venison. Banquets in the open. How to cook beavertail, porcupines and muskrats.
Camp stews, Brunswick stews and burgoos.
Chapter VII. PACKING HORSES
How to make a packhorse of your own.
How to make an aparejo. How to make a cincha. How to make a latigo. How to throw
a diamond hitch. How to throw a squaw hitch. How to hitch a horse in open land
without a post, tree or stick, or stone. Use of hobbles and how to make them.
How the travois is made and used. Buffalo Bill and General Miles. How to throw
down a saddle. How to throw a saddle on a horse. How to mount a horse. How to
know a Western horse.
Chapter VIII. THE USE OF DOGS. MAN PACKING.
Hiking dogs. Pack dogs. How to pack a
dog. How to throw the dog hitch. How to make dog travois. Dog as a beast of
burden in Europe and Arctic America. Man Packing. Pack Rats. Don't fight your
pack. Portage pack. Great men who have carried a pack. Kinds of packs. Alpine
rucksack. Origin of broad breast-straps. Make your own outfits.
Chapter IX. PREPARING FOR CAMPING TRIP
Porters of the portage. Old-time
Indian fighters and wild animals. Modern stampede for the open. How to get ready
for camp. Cut your fingernails. Go to your dentist. Get a hair cut. A Buckskin
man's pocket. Fly dope. Protection against black flies, mosquitoes, midgets and
no-see-ums. The call of the wild.
Chapter X. SADDLES
How to choose a saddle. Evolution of
the Mexican saddle. Birth of the bluff-fronted saddle. The Cowboy Age. Sawbucks,
or pack saddles. Straight leg and bent knee. Names of parts of saddle. Center
fire and double cinch.
Chapter XI. CHOOSING A CAMP SITE
'Ware single trees or small groups of
trees. Safety in woods or forest. Keep your eyes open for good camp sites. Cross
streams while crossing is good. Keep to windward of mosquito holes. "Ware ants'
nests. How to tell when wind blows. Evolution of the shack. How to sweep. How to
make camp beds. How to divide camp work. Tent pegs. How to pitch a tent
single-handed. How to ditch a tent. Use of shears, gins and tripods.
Chapter XII. AXE AND SAW
Our greatest axeman. Importance of
the axe. What kind of axe to use. How to swing an axe. How to remove a broken
axe handle. How to tighten the handle in the head. Accidents. The brains of an
axe. How to "Fall" a tree. How to swamp. How to make a Beetle or Mall. How to
harden green wood. How to make a firewood hod. How to make a chopping block. The
proper way to chop. How to make sawbucks for logs. How to use a Parbuckle. How
to split a log. How to use a sawpit.
Chapter XIII. COUNCIL GROUNDS AND FIRES
Cherokee Indian Council Barbecue.
Camp meeting council ground. The Indian palisaded council fire. Indian legends
of the fire. Stealing the fire from the sun maidens of the east. Myths of the
Mewan Indians. Totems of the four winds, four mountains and four points of the
compass. Impractical council fires. Advantages of the oval council ground. How
to make an ellipse. How to divide the council ground in four courts. Council
ceremonies. Ghost walk and path of knowledge. What the different colors stand
for. Patriotism, Poetry and Americanism. Camp meeting torch fires.
Chapter XIV. RITUAL OF THE COUNCIL FIRE
Program of a council fire.
Invocation. The Pledge and Creed of all Americans. Appeal.
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