Reprinted from the SPT Bulletin of Primitive Technology,
Fall, 1996.
Copy
obtained with permission from:
http://www.abotech.com/Articles/Campbell02.htm
It
has been questioned whether Californians possessed the
sling before European contact. Stephen Powers, however,
reported it among the remote Mountain Winton during
his travels in the early 1870s and wrote that miners
before that knew its sting from these Indians. It was
reputed more deadly than an arrow and its missile said
to have gone farther. The Western Mono mountaineers
employed the sling for war. Among the Yokuts, boys hurled
the sling as well.
Gerardo
Aldama and his son Gerardo, Kumeyaay of La Huerta in
the Sierra Juarez of Northern Lower California recently
told me they have made and used the sling which they
always considered Indian, not Spanish. They twirled
it against small game and birds. They felt it had more
stopping power than an arrow. An arrow often only wounds
or passes through a bird while a stone from a sling
stuns or kills it. Of the Indians of Lower California
in general the explorer Jose' Longinos Martinez wrote
in 1792, they are very expert with the arrow, a curved
club for rabbits and the sling.
The
Pomo made a sling for hunting or war. E.M. Loeb described
the technology: A strip of deerhide about 4-1/2 inches
long and between 2 and 2-1/2 inches wide formed the
pocket. At either end, they attached sinew or nettle
fiber strings, approximately 2-1/2 feet long each. A
knot was tied at the far end of one string and the end
of the other had a loop for the middle finger. A ball
or stone was placed in the pocket and the pocket then
folded over it. With the middle finger inserted in the
loop, the thumb and forefinger of the same hand grasped
the knot at the end of the other string and the hunter
or warrior twirled the sling twice around his head and
released the knot. Thus was the missile hurled.
Sling
throwers stood a little to the rear of the front battle
line. Boys brought them stones in baskets. For geese,
hunters hurled a round stone 1-1/2 to 2 inches in diameter.
But for ducks or mud hens balls of clay 1-1/2 to 1-3/4
inches in diameter were used. The clay or adobe had
been rolled in the hands while moist, then dried over
a fire or in the sun. Clay balls were preferred to stones
for ducks or mud hens because their lighter weight allowed
them to skip along the water, sometimes taking more
than one mud hen at a shot. Fernando Librado Kitsepawit,
John Peabody Harrington's famous Chumash informant,
gave important detail on the manufacture of the sling.
The center strap or pocket to hold the stone he cut
from elkskin: he trimmed the corners and made it broad
in the center and narrow at the ends-he doubled it transversely
and trimmed the entire edge-then made a hole in each
end for the string. (He also spoke of a strap with a
3-inch slit in the center to grasp the stone though
he had never seen one of these.)
He
made two tok (Indian hemp) stings, about 33 inches long
each. He opened or untwisted one closed end of a string
enough to insert an end of the elkskin strap.This done,
the other end of the string he inserted and pulled through
the hole in the end of the strap, firmly fixing it to
the strap. It weaves or ties itself said Librado (see
Fig. 1). He did the same with the other string on the
other side.?
He
also made the finger loop "without tying."
About 3 inches from the end or tip, he untwisted a small
opening in the string. He put the end of the string
through the opening. He then untwisted the string just
below the tip and inserted the other end of the string
all the way through this second opening (see Fig. 2).
He pulled snug the finger loop that this procedure created.
As
an alternative and to the same effect, instead of the
other end of the string, the loop itself was inserted
through the opening just below the tip after the tip
had passed through the first opening around 3 inches
beneath it.
A
knot was tied in the end of the other string, even with
the loop of the first string. Some string beyond the
knot was left dangling. A completed sling measured about
3 feet long. You swung the sling three times around,
then let go of the knot and the stone would fly said
Librado Kitsepawit.
There
were other Chumash ways and sometimes well worked bark
of the "curly" willow was made into a sling
pocket. Indian hemp string also could be woven into
a pocket. There were undoubtedly many Indian ways of
making the sling.
-
Paul Campbell
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