As the temperatures have warmed, food is harder for the Numu to find—the bands have divided with groups of friends and families splitting off and moving into the desert. If they didn’t see one another before then, they will come together for the fall hunts.
This Numu band consists of five families, spanning three generations. There are 15 adults and 18 children. They have moved into the shelter of a lava tube a few miles east of the Deschutes River. In the cave there is no need to set up shelters; they place their baskets around a much used cooking fire.
These tubes are remnants of the ancient lava flows that covered this region. This lava tube was created by lava flowing downhill from a volcanic vent. The flow began as a river of lava flowing in an open channel. As the top of the flow cooled a case roof was formed around the hot flow. In the case of this tube the lava discharge was sufficiently intense so that smaller tubes melted together into a larger one. When the eruption stopped, the lava drained out of the tube faster than it cooled leaving behind a long narrow cave. After the cave’s roof cooled, sections of it collapsed providing an entrance.
Over many years, sand and silt were washed into the tube by winter rains until its floor was covered with more than three feet of soft sediments. The sand in the tube is wonderful to sleep on it’s deep, has few stones or sticks, and holds its shape when molded to the body.
The lava tube is about 40 feet across and nearly 200 feet deep. The roof averages about 12 feet tall but there are shorter sections. In one place the roof has collapsed, providing a sheltered location for cooking and warming fires. An added benefit is that during the day it is much cooler in the cave than on the surrounding desert and during the night, because it is sheltered from the wind, it is much warmer. Water and wood are available from a nearby creek. There are other lava tubes in the area, but the chief prefers this one for its layout, size, and location.
In late spring and early summer there is plenty to eat near the cave. Migratory birds, by the thousands, lay eggs and raise their young in lakeshore marshes—where golden spikes of cattail pollen are also easily collected in baskets.
At first light, a hunter and his eight year old son leave the cave on a quest for the boy’s first bow stave. As his father had taught him, he would teach his son to craft his first hunting bow. Two years before the hunter had cut a bow tree. The wood above the cut was thus deprived of water and nutrients so it would die—drying in place. It should be dried now. Together they would split a stave from the tree and craft it into a bow. The morning was perfect for the trip; a walk of perhaps four hours in each direction. On the way they would hunt.
A young woman is mixing some of the last of the pollen harvest with water and is layering the resulting cakes into a pit oven between layers of cattail leaves. She dug a pit in the sand near the cooking fire and placed heated rocks into the bottom of it covering them with damp cattail leaves. On top of those leaves she placed a layer of cakes, covering them with another layer of leaves. When no more cakes can fit into the oven, she covers the top with more leaves, pours water around the edge, being careful not to overly wet the pollen cakes, and covers the steaming oven with dirt. Her last step is to rake glowing coals over the top of the oven. She will replenish the coals during the four hour baking time.
The plentiful young jackrabbits are not yet as wary as the adults. All day boys and young men will periodically bring to camp rabbits they have taken with their throwing sticks. Throwing sticks are made from gently bent branches or roots. One side may be flattened to produce a bit of an airfoil to enhance their flying ability. The sticks vary in length but are about the length of the thrower’s arm. They are wielded by spinning them at the target, horizontally. The spin is enhanced by flicking the wrist as it is released. As with all throwing it is enhanced with practice.
Two laughing boys are starting off into the sagebrush with newly crafted throwing sticks. Yesterday they spent the day tuning the flight of the sticks by carving away chips and smoothing the surfaces using obsidian scrapers. Last night they painted good hunting symbols onto the surfaces. The process took longer than they expected, but today they are off to try their skill against the rabbits.
A group of three women are cutting rabbit skins into strips. Two are slicing the hides into narrow strips starting from the eye hole and spiraling into the center with knives held in their teeth. The third is twisting the strips into a furry rope on her thigh. She adds new hides to the rope by feeding the end through the eye hole. When they have processed all of the day’s hides they will tie the rope between two trees and let it dry in the sun. But there are a t least a dozen more to process.
A father is showing his young son how to weave a sling. The boy is already adept at waving straps. They are just finishing braiding the end of the strap. The boy gives the new sling a spin over his head and they head out into the sage away from camp.
The mother of the chief’s wife is sitting at the cave’s entrance with two babies. She is twining a gift basket—working a design into it in contrasting colors. She twisted the warp of the basket from tule stalks and the weft from dogbane. Her fingers deftly work the cordage, a half turn to change colors and a full turn to preserve them.
As she worked, she thought back to previous times she had stayed in this cave. Over her life there had been many, many, happy times here. Her son had brought her his first rabbit in this cave. He was a small child but he presented it to her with all the dignity of an established hunter. As tradition dictates, she had taken some fat from its back and rubbed it on his wrists and hands. Later that evening she presented the rabbit to her husband. She watched her son’s eyes as he watched his father take the first bites of it. “The best rabbit ever!” he had said. And it was. She would remind her daughter of this life milestone tonight—something mothers can share.
Her thoughts are returned to the present by the fidgeting of one of the babies. Her attempts to comfort the child fail so she prepares to change out the moss bag; it has been awhile.
A group of three young girls race by laughing. They are off to the creek to fill water bottles for their mother, who is seated near the cooking fires splitting willow stems. She has carefully cut three notches into the end of a willow stem. At these places she split the cutting into three sections down its length. In her mouth, she holds one. Her fingers deftly tracing the crack in the stem down its length applying pressure in just the right way so that three even splits are created. Once she has separated the splits she cleans any pith from them with a small flake of yellow jasper. Then she coils the splits, with the bark on, and sets them aside to dry for a couple of weeks.
These splits will be made into a water bottle or perhaps a new cradle when her friend’s baby arrives. The thought brings a smile to her face—a new child. But, she thinks, it’s too early to collect materials for a cradle-it would be bad luck to weave one before the baby is a few months old and that would not be until the end of the year. No, these will go into a new water bottle. There will be time to collect and process more willow for a cradle.
Father and son stop in the shade of a straggly juniper at the edge of the rim rock. They squatted and scanned the land in front of them for movement. They each wore buckskin breach clouts around the waist, bobcat skin quiver on their backs, and knives and pouches at their waists. The hunter has eight arrows, a hand drill, and a digging stick in his quiver and his bow is held in a buckskin sheath. Around their waists about twenty feet of quarter inch twisted dogbane cord is wrapped. The boy is carrying two jackrabbits in a small net slung from his shoulder—the morning’s harvest taken with the throwing sticks.
As they carefully scan the landscape they drank water from red pitch and clay coated baskets hung from their shoulders. It’s getting hot.
The hunter noted the lighter green of willow leaves to their left. They would stop to refill their water bottles then up the hill to the narrow draw. Beyond the willows at the mouth at the base of a rock wall would be the junipers on which he had cut three staves. If they had properly seasoned, he would harvest two—one for his son and one for himself. In the same way he learned from his father, over the next week he will show his son the proper way to make a bow.
This thought brought to mind the first hunting bow he made with his father. The trip to cut the stave; what had they done? Oh, yes!
“What do you see?” asked the hunter.
“There are rabbits by the willows in the valley. I think that I saw a coyote over there by those rocks. Dogbane is growing near the edge of those junipers, mother will want some stalks. There is a trail along the ridge; the people have come this way, but not for some time, it’s seems too overgrown in some parts,” his son replied.
The hunter stood. “Lead us down to the willows; take care that we are not seen.” The boy rose and set off through the juniper trees along the slope.
“Where were the vultures? How many?” He asked the same questions his father had asked him.
“Two over the ridge ahead, one off over the desert, and one behind us over the ridge we passed,” replied the boy.
“Yes.” He hadn’t seen the vulture over the desert; perhaps his father had missed a few also; something to remember.
The boy lead them a twisting path between the trees keeping close to higher brush, when they became sparse. In a short time they arrived at the willows.
From a clump of sagebrush the hunter examined the seep. Tracks of antelope, deer, fox, and coyotes marked the dried mud. There were no footprints of people.
From his quiver the hunter extracted a stout pointed stick. It was made from Mountain Mahogany, pointed and fire hardened at both ends. With it he loosened the mud near the center of the seep. In a few moments he had excavated a hole deep enough to contain a water bottle. The hole was slowly filling with muddy water.
“Go collect some of the dogbane you saw for your mother. Leave your bottle here and I’ll wait for the water to settle and fill both of them. When we have water, we will find you a bow stave.”
As he waited in the cool shade, he thought of the excitement he felt on his first trip. His stave had come from the hills to the northeast. The trees there grew in a power spot. For ages Numu men had marked the rocks with their particular power symbols. It was not until years later that he added his mark to them. If the splitting went well there might be time to paint a symbol with his son. He knew just where they could do it.
The walk to the bow trees was short. He had selected an old juniper whose grain was straight from growing sheltered from the wind by the rocks of the draw. The tree was two hand breadths across. Two years ago the hunter had cut notches at three places on the trunk. The notches had isolated the wood above them from further growth. Leaving the wood in place it would strengthen as it dried out.
He chose the section he thought would make the best bow and retrieving the sharpened stone with which he and cut the notch from its perch in the tree, he cut another notch about three-quarters of his arm span above the first one. Then the hunter made two incisions about a hand’s breadth apart connecting the two notches and peeled away the bark. He showed his son how to deepen the incisions and let him work with the stone until there was a trough outlining the stave. Then forcing his digging stick into a small crack at the top he enlarged it down to the old notch. He let his son repeat the process on the other side widening the crack until the stave split away from the tree. While his son worked, he repeated the procedure cutting a second stave from the next best section. Then he invested in the future by cutting two new notches, one into a neighboring tree, and returning the tools to their hiding spot—ready for a future need.
By the time they had finished, it was late afternoon. Father and son rested in the shade drinking water and chewing dried meat. Using some of the bark he had stripped from the bow tree, the hunter mixed a bit of red pigment from a ball in his pouch with fat from one of the rabbits. He offered it to his son to paint a symbol on the rock wall sheltering the bow tree from the wind.
The boy carefully climbed the rock and with a small chisel-pointed stick, painted a lizard on the rock. While his son was busy, the hunter kindled a small fire and lit a few sprigs of sagebrush. Reaching up he offered the smoldering sprig to this son. The boy gently blew smoke over his new drawing carrying word of it and the harvest of his first stave to the spirit world.
They extinguished the fire and set off for camp. It would likely be dark before they arrived.
After the sun had set but before it was fully dark the hoots of a Great Horned Owl could be heard from the opening of the lava tube. The owl was not far off into the darkness, perhaps in one of the trees near the creek. A mother stopped to remind her children that they were the cries of the old woman of the forest. She was out looking for children to eat. They had best stop their crying and complaining lest she find them and toss them onto the spike in the basket she carried on her back.
Father and son return to the cave just after full dark. The air is full of the smells of burning sage and roasting meat. The sounds of laughter and singing greet the pair before they see the entrance. These confirm for the hunter that no light from the fires can be seen outside the cave; another advantage.
The boy takes the staves and lays them on the ground next to his father’s bed then presents the day’s game to his mother. They have collected three rabbits and two sage hens. His mother smiles, but she is ever so grateful for the dogbane stalks her son has pulled from his quiver. In her heart she wants to draw him close and to hold him, as she did so many times just a few short years ago, but he is a warrior now so she drops her eyes and thanks him. The boy senses his mother’s sadness and reaches for her hands. Their eyes meet and she is happy again. This is the way of mothers, to be near and far from their sons.
The boy walks to the cooking fire to get his meal. Tomorrow he will start work on his first real bow.