Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1898 — Live in a Primitive State. [ARTICLE]

Live in a Primitive State.

The Papuans of the Malay coast of New Guinea are still in the most primitive state. They are wholly unacquainted with metals and make their weapons of stone, bones and wood. They do not know how to start a fire, though fire is used among them. When a Russian asked them how they made a fire they regarded it as very amusing, and answered that when a person’s fire went out he got some of a neighbor, and if all the fires in the village should go out they would get it from the next village. Their fathers and grandfathers had told them that they remembered a time or had heard from thedr ancestors that there was a time when fire was not known and everything was eaten raw. The natives of the southern coast of New Guinea, having no iron, shave themselves with a piece of glass. Formerly they shaved with a flint, which they could sharpen quite well and used with considerable dexterity.—Detroit Free Press.