2012 Survival Guide: Acquiring Skills in Native Arts

If modern civilization collapsed tomorrow, could you build a cart to haul firewood out of the forest? If your shoes fell apart hiking over rocky ground, would you be able to fabricate replacements from animal hide?

When evening arrives, what will you do for light? If called upon, could you make a candle out of beeswax? The next morning, if you're sent out to hunt game with no gun or ammunition, will you be ready to improvise a spear, snare, or a bow and arrow?

Evidently, few of us were paying attention during those field trips to the Indian museum back in grade school. Now we realize that with a potential doomsday approaching, the ingenuity of Native Americans could be our ticket to long-term survival -- that is, if the power grid go down for a year or more. (Even the National Academy of Sciences warns that this a realistic possiblity.)

Maybe those much-maligned rural cousins of ours living out in the hinterlands will take us in for the duration. Maybe not.

Fortunately, it's not too late to enroll in courses at community colleges or private schools that teach native skills. Thanks to a resurgence of interest in the old-fashioned way of doing things, curriculums have popped up all over the country in recent years, with courses in blacksmithing, flintknapping, horseshoeing, how to a build a canoe, and other specialty trades.

Below you'll find a description of a few of the more essential skills you'll need to know if calamity strikes big in the years ahead.

Carpentry and Woodwork

In addition to providing resin to light fires, glue, syrup for sweetening food and bark for medicinal use, trees offer the raw material for building and boat construction.

You can carved out food and storage bowls with woods, clubs for weapons, sharp points for traps and flat surfaces for map drawing and signs. A basic knowledge of joinery is indispensable when it comes to building a log cabin, cart, a cabinet without nails or any metal part. To make a wheel or other object where wood has to be shaped in curve, you'll have learn how to use water to soften the wood and what thicknesses and lengths work best for this application.

The construction technology departments at most community colleges offer the basic coursework in framing, cabinet work and joinery. Local hobby shops specialize in teach wood carving, shaping and how to sharpen your tools.

Sewing and Needlework

In a survival situation, you may be able to get by for a time with broken zippers, holes in your socks, lost buttons and torn garments. Eventually, however, you'll be reduced to rags if you don't engage in mending and repair jobs. While shoes are your most important clothing item, protecting your skin from the elements is essential during the hot and cold months. Hand stitching, braiding and medical suturing are three essential skills for success in a primitive environment. Basketweaving can also be a lifesaver in locations where the mineral clay is unavailable for pottery making.

Sewing starts with a needle. You stick thread through the eye , then stab the needle's point through the fabric, leather, skin or wool. The method of inserting and withdrawing and reinserting the needle is called a stitch. If you're sewing a seam, when you reach the end of it, you pull out the last bit of thread tight until it catches on the knot you created when you first started out. That's all there is to it.

You should learn a few different kinds of stitches, each serving a particular purpose. Embroidery needles have larger eyes, for instance, to accommodate thicker thread. Serrated edge scissors or knives are used for cutting through skin or fabric. Thimbles come in handy, too, protecting your thumb and forefinger from getting pricked. Beeswax is good at keeping thread stiff and less inclined to tangle. You'll also need some approximation of a cloth tape measure to help you size everything out.

Community adult schools and recreation centers are the first place to look for courses in needlework, knitting, crocheting, quilting. weaving other forms of stitch work. Many fabric and crafts stores also offer classes. For basketweaving, you may have to check with the nearest Indian tribe or museum. Both are known to provide hands-on training and/or demonstrations from time to time.

Pottery and Ceramics

Since the Neolithic Age, clay shaped and fired in kilns has provided civilization with durable bricks, cookware, storage containers, even sewage pipes and other plumbing. Much easier to fabricate than either metal or wood, clay also requires fewer tools. With little more than your two hands and a little water, you can create products that may last for literally thousands of years.

Expensive terra cotta museum pieces, earthenware, stoneware and the porcelain crowns in your mouth all got their start from a clump of clay. As a matter of fact, the first cuneiform inscriptions discovered in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. were inscribed on clay tablets.

The clay that's used for ceramics comes from feldspar-rich igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks like claystone and shale. What makes it a perfect building material is its plasticity, which is the ability to be twisted around over and over and still hang together like tough pizza dough. Clay comes in different colors, including dull gray, green and red.

While most pottery is "thrown" on a wheel, traditional cultures still do the job the old-fashioned way. Artisans start by "wedging" the clay - that is, repeatedly throwing it down on a surface, then moving its pieces around on the lump in order to disperse the moisture evenly and remove any air pockets. Then the lump is molded by hand into the desired shape. Adjoining pieces like handles are attached using "slurry", a runny mixture of clay and water. Sand or "grog" (previously fired clay mashed into a powder) may be added to the joints for strength.

After drying out the new pot, a decorative design or writing can be carved on its surface. A glaze is frequently applied to waterproof and harden the material further. Then the pot is left out to dry in the hot desert sun or (more often) baked in a mud oven kiln.

Local colleges offer ceramics courses through their art departments.

Incidentally, clay is also an effective healing agent. Wild animals will sometimes bury themselves in the side of a clay ledge and stay put there a long time in order to a heel broken limbs or open wounds. Clay also heals skin related diseases and leprosy, and some types kill bacteria like E. coli, MRSA and other drug-resistant strains even better than the drugs that doctors prescribe i some cases. Ask an herbalist for more information.

Leather Work

In the backcountry, durable footwear and clothing are procured from the hide of animals (called rawhide), just as they have since the Stone Age. Deerskin is considered one of the best leathers around, due to this animal's adaptation to thorny and thicket-filled habitats. (Snakes, alligators, birds, furry animals and sheep wool provide other options for outfitting.)

Since any animal's hide can quickly decompose after it dies, the first step is to quickly convert it into leather by "tanning" it. To do this, the skin and hair are soaked (preferably in brine or salt water or urine) in order to kill bacteria and prevent putrification. Use hot water only if you want to harden the material, say for the soles of moccasins, or a saddle. For regular uses, keep the water cool and soak it only as long as needed. Otherwise it will shrink and discolor.

When the hair comes off the hide easily in your hands, you can remove it from the water. While it's still wet, lay it across a flat rock or log (with the bark removed) and scrape both sides with a bone, dull blade or other makeshift tool. Don't over-scrape the hide in the quest to remove every single imperfection. Keeping the grain in its natural state will preserve the durability of the leather. This natural grain also breathes better, making it more comfortable to wear.

Next, rub the material with a simmered mixture of equal parts animal fat and brains. You heat up this combination, then let it cool down before applying it. After rubbing the fat and brain mixture into the hide, leave the newly created leather alone for several days. Then wash it and gently wring out the moisture. Pull, rub and stretch leather while it’s drying to prevent it from shrinking and stiffening - except in the case of footwear, which you want to be stiff. Then hang it near the smoke (but not the heat) of a birch fire for several days. Leather becomes brittle and cracks when it absorbs too much heat.

Once the leather has been tanned, it's ready to be tailored into a coat, belt, satchel, saddle, lacing, reins, book cover, pair of shoes or other product. You can also make a waterskin from leather. The craft of leatherworking utilizes awls and serrated-edged blades or scissors. A strong thick thread is needed to sew leather, and you can also cut leather strips to use for binding, as a harness or leash. Patterns and instructions for making simple moccasins and gloves are routinely included in books on wilderness survival.

To improve its water resistance and durability, leather can be rubbed with oil, preferably mink oil if you can get hold of some.

Flintknapping

When the Paleolithic tribes set out on hunting expeditions 20,000 years ago, they couldn't have brought down those wooly mammoths without the obsidian, cretaceous chert and other rocks they cleaved into sharp arrowheads. This ancient art of flintknapping is still practiced by hobbyists around the United States.

If you check the internet, you'll find clubs and newsletters, books and even e-commerce sites selling obsidian by the pound. You'll also learn about the tools and methods employed to craft obsidian and other stones into weapons and tools.

Other Skills

Living without modern technology requires quite a few other skills not mentioned here. These include expertise in

food storage and preservation
harnessing small-scale power sources
use of natural materials
knowledge of geometry and measurement
practical mechanics
basic chemistry
reading and drawing schematics, maps and mock-ups
sustainable home construction

For more information on these subjects, check the links in the gray box or surf the web on your own.

Blacksmithing

Humans have been heating iron ore to red-hot temperatures to make nails, swords and plowshares since prehistoric times. Around 1,500 BC, the Hittites began smelting the first wrought iron. Andean civilizations were using the material 500 years before the arrival or Cortez.

In Africa, the oldest mine dates back 40,000 years! Since gold, silver and copper can be shaped without heat, they were the probably first metals shaped into objects by primitive men and women. Later, bronze (a mixture of copper and tin) became the metal of choice, since it was stronger and more durable.

Throughout the Common Era, village life across the planet depended on the skill of the local blacksmith. With a furnace, grinder, hammer, tongs and a few other implements, this tradesman produced all the hardware, knives, weapons and tools essential to civilization.

Iron ore is found in meteorites, volcanic rock (as magnetite) and oddly enough, in bogs, where nodules of ore are created from bacteria. In rock strata, the deeper the red hue of the ore, the higher its iron content. However, the color may also be dark grey, bright yellow, deep purple or rusty red. Hematite is considered a natural ore in that's easiest to extract and smelt into wrought iron. While not as hard as steel and modern metal alloys, iron is more malleable and therefore practical to work with if you're eeking out a primitive existence.

To work the material, you start by heating it up. Casting is the process of liquefying the iron (or other metal) and then pouring into a mold. After it solidifies a little, you start the process of shaping it on an anvil.

In the past half century, a resurging interest in blacksmithing has spawned a number of privately-run schools and apprenticeship programs in the United States.

Of course, nowadays the most accessible source of iron, steel and other alloys is the local landfill and automobile junkyards. It's possible to melt down and reshape the junk metal into new objects and tools without needing any electrically-powered equipment. That's why it's a skill worth learning in the event of the worst-case scenario playing out in modern times.

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