Page 65 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

nuvdjd zucmiyci. n maiterb ume ir wey cio not return to
their winter settlement. They can build another, or repair an old
abandoned one somewhere else.
There are one or two appointments they must keep. There

is one with the reindeer at the autumn migration, where toll is
taken of the passing herds with harpoons and fall traps. There is

one with the salmon at the estuaries of the great rivers, where the
fish can be caught by hand and tossed ashore without need of
nets or lines. And there is one with the forest people at the great
autumn marts held by the estuaries after the salmon run.

They know the forest people well; the two peoples hold each
other in wary esteem. Throughout the year the arctic hunters

have been amassing a little store of trade goods, walrus and
narwhal ivory, pelts of polar bear and arctic fox, lamp blubber,
and carved knife handles of reindeer antler. And at the mart they

will exchange them for the goods of the forest people, the hollow­
ground stone adzes, the skins of otter and mink, and the birch­

bark boxes of molasses or honey.
The life of the arctic hunters has lasted unchanged for mil­
lennia and will last unchanged for millennia to come. Their an­

cestors had lived much the same life on the edge of an icecap
which, in an age now long forgotten, had stretched down to the
plains of Germany. And their descendants will live much the

same life when Alaska is incorporated as the forty-ninth state.

The forest folk, too, five a life based on thousands of years

of tradition. Through the great pine forest of North America, Rus­
sia, and Scandinavia they have moved along their game trails

during the long days of the previous summer. They have tradi­
tional camping places where they pitch their skin tents for weeks
at a time, fishing and hunting and gathering plants and berries

until the scarcity of game suggests a move. They live and move
in small groups of but a few families, except at the tribal meet­

ings, where, on the banks of one of the rivers, hundreds of fam­
ilies, coming from all directions, pitch their tents and chaffer and
exchange news—and daughters—while the grown men gather

in council to discuss war and peace and tribal boundaries and
game movements and fishing rights and the succession of the