Primitive skills: Starting a fire without matches is empowering.

[MEinWV]

I was trying to figure out where to post this, and I thought this would be the best place for it.

This is a speech by Big Soldier, of the Osage Nation, in 1820.

"I see and admire your manner of living, your good warm houses, your extensive fields of corn, your gardens, your cows, oxen, workhorses, wagons, and a thousand machines that I know not the use of.... In short you can do almost what you choose. You whites possess the power of subduing almost every animal to your use. You are surrounded by slaves. Everything about you is in chains and you are slaves yourselves. I hear that I should become a slave. Talk to my sons, perhaps they may be persuaded to adopt your fashions, or at least to recommend them to their sons; but for myself, I was born free, was raised free and wish to die free."

Food for thought! We have come a long way since then, but are we really better off today?

 

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[pippinwhitepaws]

i found someone living close to the earth yesterday...i was surveying some 'caves' in the lava flow...the sinagua had carved rooms into the lava flow...

the rooms are not tall enough to stand in, so i had entered the one to take a pic and here is a pile of fresh firewood, and the poker for the coals...low impact fire, brushed out so you really had to look to see where...cave brushed flat, no prints...
trail to the cave clean and well used, also brushed clean of prints.

i'm impressed...someone is living old school out there.

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

it was like viewing an artwork in progress ms texas...
the trails were clearly used often...the lack of tracks had me thinking a mountain lion was living in the caves...

it does seem to be the polar of my previous post...sorry for that one...