THE HUNTING AND FISHING STAGE.
In this condition of life much the greater part or all of the food-supply is obtained from the products of the forest and stream without the exer cise of care or cultivation. As a rule, little provision is made for the future, the stores laid up for periods of being less in proportion and less providently cared for than those of the squirrel or the ant. As the life of such people is generally migratory, they do not build perma nent residences nor establish durable social institutions. They are with out history, an existence of ceaseless change and struggle for the neces saries of subsistence soon extinguishing the memories of the past. Their arts are confined to those most essential to the pursuit of game and self defence.
Nevertheless, as has been pointed out on a previous page (62), the exi gencies of the life of the hunter are educational to the race. Pitted against the superior strength, the wonderful instincts, and the subtle senses of the brute, he must train his faculties to the utmost to make himself the master. Unprovided himself with fangs or claws, wings or fins, not even
sheltered with a coat of hair, man was forced to enter into the unequal struggle for life with formidable Carnivora, with the fleet deer, the soar ing bird, the darting fish, and had to devise means to capture and conquer all these in order to preserve himself. The labor was not light, and so far from feeling any disdain for the arts of the rudest tribe, the ethnologist will look upon them with profound respect, and astonishment that so much was ever accomplished by a being physically so ill prepared for the conflict.
Probably all the ancient tribes of the Paleolithic Age (see p. 170) were in this stage of development. The Australians, many of the South Sea Islanders, the natives of Canada, of Brazil, and of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego are examples of hunting tribes in recent times. They are rapidly disappearing, the pressure of races of higher culture forcing them to other modes of life or to extinction.