Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/63

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52
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
[n. s., i, 1899


A careful study of this wholesale destruction of animal life goes far to explain how, with such meager apparatus of stone and wood and animal integuments, the savage could live; it further explains the later migrations of tribes to regions far away from their priscan homes. Like the lonesome guide of Major Powell, they missed their totemic friends and were driven to seek new ones.

II. THE CAPTURE OF ANIMALS

METHODS OF CAPTURE

The taking of animals from the hand of nature concerns itself with the atmosphere, the earth, and the waters, and the occupations associated therewith go by the general names birding or fowling, hunting, and fishing. These terms are not to be interpreted here except in the most general way. So little is done by savage people in the way of gathering animals from the air, that this chapter will be concerned largely with terrestrial and aquatic capture. The industries associated with capture begin with very simple methods and end with most complicated practices, and in a general way they may be set forth in the following order:—

  1. Gathering or taking with the hand without implements.
  2. Gathering with devices.
  3. Striking, stunning, bruising.
  4. Slashing with edged weapons.
  5. Piercing with a great variety of implements.
  6. Taking in traps and blinds.
  7. By means of dogs or other hunting animals.
  8. With fire.
  9. By means of drugs.
  10. The whole class of accessories to the hunter.
  11. Domestication, the raising of animals in captivity.

The progress of invention, which is the main idea here involved, has proceeded in every class from what Professor Rouleaux calls naturism to manganism, from simplicity to complexity, from individual effort to coöperation, from hand-worked devices to those mechanically and automatically worked, and frequently