Some Of These Things Were Doubtless
Gifts To Their Fathers When They Went To Pay Tribute To The
Representative Of The Shogun And The Prince Of Matsumae, Soon After
The Conquest Of Yezo.
Others were probably gifts from samurai, who
took refuge here during the rebellion, and some must have been
obtained by barter.
They are the one possession which they will
not barter for sake, and are only parted with in payment of fines
at the command of a chief, or as the dower of a girl.
Except in the poorest houses, where the people can only afford to
lay down a mat for a guest, they cover the coarse mat with fine
ones on each side of the fire. These mats and the bark-cloth are
really their only manufactures. They are made of fine reeds, with
a pattern in dull reds or browns, and are 14 feet long by 3 feet 6
inches wide. It takes a woman eight days to make one of them. In
every house there are one or two movable platforms 6 feet by 4 and
14 inches high, which are placed at the head of the fireplace, and
on which guests sit and sleep on a bearskin or a fine mat. In many
houses there are broad seats a few inches high, on which the elder
men sit cross-legged, as their custom is, not squatting Japanese
fashion on the heels. A water-tub always rests on a stand by the
door, and the dried fish and venison or bear for daily use hang
from the rafters, as well as a few skins. Besides these things
there are a few absolute necessaries, - lacquer or wooden bowls for
food and sake, a chopping-board and rude chopping-knife, a cleft-
stick for burning strips of birch-bark, a triply-cleft stick for
supporting the potsherd in which, on rare occasions, they burn a
wick with oil, the component parts of their rude loom, the bark of
which they make their clothes, the reeds of which they make their
mats, - and the inventory of the essentials of their life is nearly
complete. No iron enters into the construction of their houses,
its place being supplied by a remarkably tenacious fibre.
I have before described the preparation of their food, which
usually consists of a stew "of abominable things." They eat salt
and fresh fish, dried fish, seaweed, slugs, the various vegetables
which grow in the wilderness of tall weeds which surrounds their
villages, wild roots and berries, fresh and dried venison and bear;
their carnival consisting of fresh bear's flesh and sake, seaweed,
mushrooms, and anything they can get, in fact, which is not
poisonous, mixing everything up together. They use a wooden spoon
for stirring, and eat with chopsticks. They have only two regular
meals a day, but eat very heartily. In addition to the eatables
just mentioned they have a thick soup made from a putty-like clay
which is found in one or two of the valleys. This is boiled with
the bulb of a wild lily, and, after much of the clay has been
allowed to settle, the liquid, which is very thick, is poured off.
In the north, a valley where this earth is found is called Tsie-
toi-nai, literally "eat-earth-valley."
The men spend the autumn, winter, and spring in hunting deer and
bears. Part of their tribute or taxes is paid in skins, and they
subsist on the dried meat. Up to about this time the Ainos have
obtained these beasts by means of poisoned arrows, arrow-traps, and
pitfalls, but the Japanese Government has prohibited the use of
poison and arrow-traps, and these men say that hunting is becoming
extremely difficult, as the wild animals are driven back farther
and farther into the mountains by the sound of the guns. However,
they add significantly, "the eyes of the Japanese Government are
not in every place!"
Their bows are only three feet long, and are made of stout saplings
with the bark on, and there is no attempt to render them light or
shapely at the ends. The wood is singularly inelastic. The arrows
(of which I have obtained a number) are very peculiar, and are made
in three pieces, the point consisting of a sharpened piece of bone
with an elongated cavity on one side for the reception of the
poison. This point or head is very slightly fastened by a lashing
of bark to a fusiform piece of bone about four inches long, which
is in its turn lashed to a shaft about fourteen inches long, the
other end of which is sometimes equipped with a triple feather and
sometimes is not.
The poison is placed in the elongated cavity in the head in a very
soft state, and hardens afterwards. In some of the arrow-heads
fully half a teaspoonful of the paste is inserted. From the nature
of the very slight lashings which attach the arrow-head to the
shaft, it constantly remains fixed in the slight wound that it
makes, while the shaft falls off.
Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous paste, and
has also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it is
made, the Aconitum Japonicum, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of
blue flowers are brightening the brushwood in all directions. The
root is pounded into a pulp, mixed with a reddish earth like an
iron ore pulverised, and again with animal fat, before being placed
in the arrow. It has been said that the poison is prepared for use
by being buried in the earth, but Benri says that this is needless.
They claim for it that a single wound kills a bear in ten minutes,
but that the flesh is not rendered unfit for eating, though they
take the precaution of cutting away a considerable quantity of it
round the wound.
Dr. Eldridge, formerly of Hakodate, obtained a small quantity of
the poison, and, after trying some experiments with it, came to the
conclusion that it is less virulent than other poisons employed for
a like purpose, as by the natives of Java, the Bushmen, and certain
tribes of the Amazon and Orinoco.
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