Front Porch Tales with Barbara Belding Gibson. Come on, pull up a rocking chair, grab a glass of iced tea and let's visit a while. The Way it Could Have Been 3 By the year 547 B.C. when we see Eagle Feather squatting on the hillside above Backbone Spring* working flint blanks, 10 years have passed since his Medicine Quest. He has become an expert at his job. He travels light, carrying with him his weapons and leather pouches for various items. The main weapon is a dart (what I would call a spear). He has several dart foreshafts that are designed to slide into the business end of the dart. Each of these foreshafts has a point attached with leather strips. This dart is designed to be placed on the hook of another stick known as an atlatl. The atlatl is a tool that was developed by his ancestors to make the dart a more effective weapon. It is held with a dart slipped onto the hook, then the atlatl is used to throw the dart. The additional length the atlatl gives the thrower's arm results in great thrust to the dart. With much practice, Eagle Feather has become very skillful in killing game with the dart and atlatl. In one of his pouches he is carrying some additional points and a flint knife mounted on a short, strong antler. These flint blades and points are extremely sharp and deadly. By Eagle Feather's side is a pile of flint nodes he has gathered. He studies each node to better understand the kind of point, tool, or blade that the Great Spirit has trapped inside. Then he begins carefully chipping away at the edges with rocks and a piece of deer antler and rawhide to release the trapped point. As each piece begins to take a vague shape, he stops work and places it in another leather pouch hanging at his side. He ruins one of the blanks in the process and tosses it aside with the flint chips. He works at this job most of the day, but as the sun gets lower on the horizon his stomach tells him it is time to get some food. Eagle Feather remembers Small Cave from past trips and knows that nearby he will be able to find a fish or two for his evening meal and that the cave will provide a dry place to sleep; a place where the early morning rays of the sun will shine, waking and warming him; a place where he is suspended between the gravel bed above and the stream bed below, giving him some protection from wild animals and human enemies that might choose this time to come to the quarry. When he reaches the stream below the cave, he quickly takes his smaller dart and kills a fish. Then, on the way up the slope to the cave, he throws the dart at a bird startled from its perch in a bush. The dart, which he had retrieved from the fish and used again on the bird, this time has the shaft broken. So he leaves the dart shaft where it fell and, taking the bird and the fish, retreats into the cave where he stashes his meal while he finds some branches with which to build a fire. Using some punk and a fire drill taken from one of his pouches, Eagle Feather quickly builds a fire and roasts the fish and bird. During the cooking process, the small point falls from the bird into the fire where Eagle Feather leaves it, knowing the fire will have weakened the delicate edges past repair. Before he goes to sleep, he carefully places his pouch of blanks, his pouch of fire starting materials, and his weapons close at hand in case of trouble. Tomorrow he plans to finish his flint gathering project and return to his home camp. *Hidden in a grove of large trees is a spring where once was found a complete cow's backbone. Our children strung this treasure on a rope so they could take it to school for show-and-tell. Thus the name "Backbone Spring." NOTE - the atlatl pictures are taken from the Bucket Photos web site.