Chapter 370 - 160: Charcoal Burning and the Native Tribe (Part 2)
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After the rainy season began, the two natives could no longer cook outdoors.
For their convenience, Chen Zhou renovated the small wooden house on the other side of the field, building a fireplace inside for cooking.
This way, the natives could cook by walking just over a hundred meters to the other end of the field every morning.
Moreover, the independent "kitchen" had another advantage—
They could store ingredients, fuel, and utensils in the kitchen, freeing up a lot of space in their home for more clay board learning materials, and even set up two small stools so that they could study by candlelight at night.
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Fully absorbed in the design and construction of the forging room, Chen Zhou spent only a small portion of each day teaching the two natives, rarely checking their learning progress.
Chen Zhou did not realize that both Sunday and Saturday were performing much better in their studies than he had anticipated.
Without paper and pen, they practiced writing on wooden boards filled with sand.
Without a teacher, they repeatedly compared the pinyin chart, looking at the annotations and illustrations on the materials, supervising and correcting each other’s pronunciation.
Many things they had never possessed before, but when the opportunity arose, even if there was only a one in ten thousand chance, they were willing to give everything to seize it.
Now the two natives communicated more fluently with Chen Zhou, able even to combine several learned words to describe things they had not learned but had seen with their own eyes.
Sometimes after finishing work in the forging room for the day, Chen Zhou would invite the two to dine in the kiln cave.
In the process, through occasional questions and answers, Chen Zhou felt in their words the reality of what was happening on that primitive and savage island.
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Unlike this independent Big Island, the scattered small islands were not far apart, and in calm weather, it took less than an hour to row a canoe back and forth.
There was more than one tribe on the island.
According to the two young men, there were as many as six tribes that had conflicts with their tribe.
The Cannibal Tribes that last landed on the island were the largest and most powerful of them.
Sunday said that tribe had a hundred warriors, while Saturday corrected him, saying that it had at least a hundred and fifty warriors.
Through learning math with small stones, they had a relatively clear concept of numbers.
But when people are afraid, they always subconsciously magnify the enemy’s strength, further instilling a sense of fear in themselves.
After serious consideration, Chen Zhou felt that Sunday’s account was more credible.
A primitive tribe with a hundred adult males was not considered small.
Adding women, children, and the elderly, the tribe had at least seven to eight hundred people.
If it were on a resource-rich continent, a tribe of eight hundred would be nothing, but on an isolated island, it’s not easy to sustain seven to eight hundred people with the available resources.
Moreover, Chen Zhou found out that these natives were still in a nascent stage with farming and completely unaware of animal husbandry.
They understood that planting seeds in the soil could yield a new plant but did not know how to keep it alive. Watering and fertilizing were beyond their knowledge base.
Thus, these natives could only rely on luck to grow some food, and this chance was too slim to sustain themselves through farming.
According to "Fishing Expert" Saturday, whether his previous tribe or the one after he was captured, most people were in a state of hunger.
Cannibalism was not new among these tribes, especially during the stormy rainy season.
Due to the difficulty of going out to fish and the lower temperatures during the rainy season, which increased the demand for calories, along with higher rates of house damage, conflicts would frequently break out between tribes over food or labor enslavement during the rainy season.
Many bloody wars occurred amidst the dreary drizzle.
Saturday was young, but even he had experienced three large-scale conflicts personally.
Out of curiosity, Chen Zhou asked the two if they had ever eaten human flesh.
The answer was affirmative.
Even without sacrifices, people in the tribe often died of hunger or disease.
For these corpses, the priests would often find a dignified excuse, then light a bonfire, lead the tribesmen in song and dance, and consume them.
The higher the person’s status, the better the parts they received in the cannibal feast, while young people at the bottom of the tribe often ended up with just a few toes.
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To be honest, upon hearing that the two natives he lived with day and night had eaten human flesh, Chen Zhou still felt somewhat uncomfortable.
As a modern person, he found it difficult to accept cannibalism.
But the events had already occurred; he lacked the power to change the past and could only restrain the two natives, forbidding thoughts of cannibalism in the future.
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Besides cannibalism, Chen Zhou also inquired about the dates and places the native tribes held cannibal feasts.
According to Sunday, cannibal feasts were mostly held in their own Archipelago, only sufficiently large tribes could cross the sea to hold sacrifices on the Big Island.
However, there was no fixed date for hosting the cannibal feasts.
As long as it was the dry season, without significant waves, and the tribe had won a war capturing enemy warriors, with the priests’ and leaders’ consent, they might bring captives to the Big Island at any time for slaughter.
The location for hosting was determined by where each tribe first landed on the island.
Saturday’s tribe, at the peak of its population, had also come to the Big Island for a cannibal feast, but at that time both Saturday and Sunday were too young to know the specific locations.
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"Since there’s so little food on your islands and so many people, with wars happening often, why don’t you move to the Big Island?
The environment here is far better than your islands, sufficient to sustain hundreds of people."
After listening to the natives describe their tribe’s plight, Chen Zhou had once asked this question.
Saturday and Sunday gave different answers.
Saturday, evidently more brainwashed, said that Demons and Gods lived on the Big Island and that it once emitted huge plumes of black smoke.
The elders said that a long, long time ago, there once was a giant tribe on the Big Island, but they were all burned up by the black smoke and fire from the sky.
Survivors from that tribe fled to surrounding islands, which are the predecessors of some of the small tribes today.
But Sunday had his own views.
He believed the root cause was the leader’s short-sightedness in the tribe, being too stubborn, unprogressive, and lacking the courage to change.
The Tribe Leader would rather risk lives raiding other tribes or fishing at sea than spend time building large enough canoes to lead the whole tribe elsewhere, far from those terrible neighbors.
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"The Leader fears this place, the Leader listens to the priests who say there are demons here, he fears death, so he doesn’t dare come."
Sunday shared his perception of the Tribe Leader, a look of disdain on his face.
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Chen Zhou was quite shocked by the young man’s insight.
He never imagined that just two months of learning could produce such awareness among these natives who had never encountered modern thought.
The Tribe Leader, once held in high regard, had now turned into someone they despised.
Was this confidence given to them by knowledge, or by the new life of freedom and no oppression?
As for the black smoke and celestial fire mentioned by Saturday, and the tale of the Big Island once having a great tribe that later disappeared, Chen Zhou considered it very likely due to the volcano.
The Great Tribe might have been situated under the volcano, and when it erupted, most of the tribe were buried in the volcanic ash, annihilated in an instant.
A few survivors who happened to be away from the volcano were scared out of their wits and fled by canoe to surrounding islands, which is how these tales got spread.
All in all, it was the lack of education causing such troubles.
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As the topic came to a close, Chen Zhou had begun to form different perceptions of the two native boys, Sunday and Saturday.
He thought although Sunday was younger, his behavior and thinking seemed more mature, so he asked him a question.
"If the Great Tribe that defeated your tribe doesn’t receive the priests and warriors returning for the cannibal feast, would they rally a large force to land on the island and investigate?"
Hearing this, Sunday paused for a moment, as if contemplating how to respond to Chen Zhou.