X 
THE INDIANS GAVE US RUBBER 
I SN’T IT ODD that the 
balloon tires on modern 
automobiles are made from 
the same material as the 
bouncing balls of the Indians, 
which puzzled and mystified 
the Spaniards when they first 
came to America! 
The Spaniards were puzzled for the reason that no Eu¬ 
ropean at that time had ever seen rubber. The natives 
all through the American tropics were using it, but people 
on the other side of the Atlantic did not know about it. 
The Mexicans were putting it on their coats to make 
them shed the rain. The natives along the Amazon were 
making shoes and bottles out of it. 
Early explorers carried this material, of which bounc¬ 
ing balls were made, back to Europe. It was two hundred 
years later that an Englishman found out that lead-pen¬ 
cil marks could be erased with it. It was put on the ends 
of pencils. Because of this use it came to be called rub¬ 
ber. It was three hundred years after it was found in 
Mexico that Britons began to put rubber on their coats 
to make them shed the rain. The man who did it 
first was named Macintosh, and one type of raincoat is 
called a mackintosh to this’day. Rubber is now used, 
as you know, in the manufacture of the tires that* 
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