I am a Primitive Man
Chapter 920: The Kind People of the Green Sparrow Tribe
Bai Xue held a small knife in one hand while pulling the goose’s skin with the other, slowly peeling it off.
Compared to rabbit, deer, or sheep skin, goose skin was harder to remove. The main reason was that goose skin was very thin and adhered closely to the muscle beneath it.
With animals like rabbits, one hand could pull the skin while the other sliced with the knife, and it would come off quickly. Even a beginner could master it easily.
But Bai Xue was clearly not a beginner when it came to skinning.
Although most of her focus was on spinning, weaving, sericulture, caring for the children, and occasionally giving her older brother a sleeping draught, she was not unfamiliar with handling prey.
Thus, even though goose skin was difficult to remove, after careful work, she managed to peel it off relatively intact.
After removing the skin, she didn’t immediately process it. Instead, she gutted the goose, taking care not to waste anything. The liver was preserved, and even the intestines were cleaned using her small copper knife, salted, and scrubbed with fresh well water.
She placed the prepared meat on a raised platform in the kitchen and covered it with a clay basin before turning her attention to the goose skin.
She treated it much like other animal hides: scraping off excess fat and oil with thin bamboo strips, then stretching and drying it, possibly curing it with salt.
Initially, Bai Xue focused only on the goose. Once that was done, she turned to the duck coop, scanning the ducks with her sharp eyes.
Before long, she found a melancholy duck.
Influenced by her husband, the great Divine child, Bai Xue was kind-hearted and treated everyone equally.
Having cared for the goose, she naturally couldn’t neglect the duck.
Thus, the gloomy, sulking duck was soon rescued and treated by her, just like the goose.
The process need not be detailed; the end result was that the duck, now brought to the kitchen, appeared peaceful and calm, just like the goose.
After attending to the geese and ducks, Bai Xue’s eyes fell on the chicken coop. A quick glance revealed several chickens in need of care.
She chose one that was seriously ill to begin with.
Compared to geese and ducks, chicken skin was even harder to peel, but Bai Xue still managed it.
After all this work, whether these skins could be turned into warm clothing remained uncertain. But another discovery was immediate, one that Bai Xue and many others in the Green Sparrow Tribe—including the shaman, the senior apprentice, Shi-tou, and Yuan—recognized.
That discovery was: skinning the geese and ducks made their meat much tastier and easier to chew.
Previously, cooking them with the skin on made the outer layer tough, even after long cooking, affecting the texture. Ducks without skin tasted good only when roasted over charcoal.
With this understanding, skinning ducks and geese became a natural practice in the tribe.
In the past, the tribe had been less particular about food. But as life improved and food became more abundant, under the influence of their food-loving shaman, it was natural for the tribe to become more discerning in their eating habits.
This also gave Bai Xue more materials to experiment with, making new clothing, instead of spending all her time near the goose and duck coops, first finding and treating the melancholic ones.
The geese and ducks no longer had to pretend so hard. Every time this fierce woman approached, even those dozing off had to honk loudly to show they weren’t sad.
As time passed, Bai Xue’s primitive down jacket continued to improve.
Dried duck skins became stiff, but shedding feathers was rarely an issue. She tried curing them as other animal hides, but the effect was limited.
Additionally, duck and goose skins weren’t as durable as rabbit or deer skins, making them harder to sew.
After attempting to piece several skins together, Bai Xue abandoned the idea of making clothing solely from skins.
Instead, she returned to her previous method: sewing the feather clusters into a hemp garment as lining.
As time passed, temperatures gradually dropped. Before she knew it, early winter had arrived, and even the wind carried a chill.
Bai Xue, however, felt no cold; on the contrary, she even felt warm.
This was simple to explain—she was wearing her new hemp clothing, lined with goose and duck feathers.
Because this garment was lined with feathers, Bai Xue called it a feathered garment.
Once the tribe experienced its warmth, the feathered garment quickly became popular throughout the Green Sparrow Tribe.
If it weren’t for the fact that geese and ducks still laid eggs, they might all have been caught for “melancholy treatment” to harvest their feathers.
Bai Xue’s innovation was significant.
It wasn’t that the feathered garment exceeded animal fur in warmth, but that with the tribe’s growing population, fur supplies were becoming insufficient.
The tribe relied primarily on agriculture, supplemented by hunting and herding, so the yearly yield of animal skins was limited. Trade didn’t supply as much as before.
Thus, a shortage of skins was unsurprising.
Bai Xue’s feathered garments, combining previously overlooked feathers with hemp, provided warmth comparable to fur clothing, a real benefit for the tribe.
Even better, these garments were extremely light, far more comfortable than heavy fur.
Consequently, after Bai Xue successfully produced them, they became fashionable in the tribe.
The shaman, after receiving one specially made for him, couldn’t bear to take it off.
However, because there weren’t enough geese and ducks, and mass slaughter wasn’t an option, the number of feathered garments remained limited.
While people regretted the previous waste of feathers, the Green Sparrow Tribe’s lotus root-digging teams set off for Lotus Island along the Bronze Highway.
On Lotus Island, the shaman decreed that no birds were to be caught, and no one dared to break this decree.
But in spare moments, hunting wild ducks near the old duck station, now the Dragon Gate Inn, was permissible.
Thus, the wild ducks quickly suffered the consequences.
Though lively and active, the tribe diagnosed them as “melancholy” and treated them in their usual manner.
Not just ducks—some geese resting during their southward migration also had to undergo the tribe’s treatment.
There was no choice. Under the continued influence of their wise, noble, and benevolent shaman, this was how the Green Sparrow people acted—with care and compassion.
Within the tribe, Bai Xue sat sewing processed goose skins into a garment.
Her movements were careful and meticulous, with dense, precise stitches.
Unlike other garments sewn with a mix of duck and goose feathers, this one used only goose feathers, resulting in a uniform, aesthetically pleasing appearance.
This garment wasn’t for herself or anyone else in the tribe—it was for her older brother, Cheng-ge, working far away in Jingguan City.
Humans are strange. Even when far apart, when something good is made, one naturally wants to give the best to someone they care about—sometimes deriving more joy from giving than from receiving.
The cold wind blew, rustling the greenish, somewhat scorched leaves, which cracked crisply underfoot.
Downstream of the Green Sparrow Tribe’s main village river, people gathered at the hemp retting pools.
Bundles of soaked hemp were pulled out, and the tribe busily stripped the fibers.
After long immersion, the outer layers had rotted, leaving only fine fibers with an unpleasant odor.
Yet the tribe didn’t mind; even the shaman sat on a small wooden stool, happily stripping hemp.
Over the years, hemp had become essential in the tribe for ropes, cloth, and countless uses.
Thus, even during this laborious, smelly work, people worked with smiles.
Near the pungent retting pools, raw, primitive songs rang out: “The black hemp skin is yours…”
A male would sing first, followed by a female, with lyrics simple and direct, often about matters of mutual concern.
As the population grew, neighboring tribes—Sheep, Green, Donkey, Bone—gradually merged with the Green Sparrow Tribe. The traditional “joyful gatherings” had not been held for years.
Because of continuous integration, such festivals were no longer necessary.
Singing while retting hemp evolved into an important social ritual for selecting and confirming mates.
Now, those singing while stripping hemp were generally adults or near-adults.
If two people sang in harmony and were mutually interested, they could sneak off into the dry grass as a sign of intimacy.
Even then, formal recognition required the shaman to issue a “marriage certificate” praised by the shaman deity.
The certificate was a small rectangular bronze plate, with names etched by a meteorite-crafted small knife.
The north side bore a rough “double happiness” symbol and a Green Sparrow engraving.
The certificate was hard to tear; divorce required returning to the shaman, who would revoke it and repurpose it.
Divorce had never occurred; marriage customs remained primitive. People hadn’t considered it yet, and the communal lifestyle minimized differences, making divorce unnecessary.
In the Green Sparrow Tribe, becoming a spouse meant remaining a spouse. Only death could dissolve the bond.
It’s also worth noting that the Green Sparrow Tribe did not practice monogamy.
This wasn’t Han Cheng’s influence—it was dictated by the tribe’s practical circumstances.
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