204 



EARLY AMERICANS 



possibly to cannibalism, using in the main weapons of con- 

 venience, as stone and wood clubs, and having httle moral 

 sense. 



The inhabitants of North America, when discovered by 

 Columbus and his predecessors, as doubtless America was 

 discovered many times by navigators in the last one thou- 

 sand years, were not savages in 

 this sense ; they were many 

 grades higher. That they were 

 savage, brutal, cannot be denied ; 

 but it is well to remember that 

 our ancestors had no right to 

 land on American soil and force 

 the natives to give up their homes 

 and lands at the point of the 

 gun. The native Americans re- 

 sented the white invasion and 

 brought to bear all the hor- 

 rors of savage warfare to pre- 

 vent it. 



The more ignorant, the more primitive a nation, the 

 more simple their possessions. So we find primitive man 

 living in caves, using stones or clubs as weapons, shells as 

 drinking cups. It was a long time, doubtless, before they 

 discovered the use of metals ; there is a long gap between 

 the stone club, the flint chip, and the modern machine gun. 

 Recognizing this fact, students of man have called the 

 time of the earHest man they know anything about, the 

 " Stone Age," or the time when man knew nothing about 

 metal. Then another term, the *'Age of Bronze," is given 

 to the period when metals came to be used ; and there are 



Fig. 195. — Native Weapons 

 OF Stone. 



