Just when Xu Chen was leading various tribes to green the area, a team of hundreds of people came over the mountains from the east.
The visitors were none other than the Cicha clan who had just surrendered last year.
The team was led by their young shaman, accompanied by several tribal chiefs and a group of strong hunters, as well as more than fifty young men and women participating in marriages. These people carried baskets on their backs, rattan baskets, and rolls of beasts.
Leather and other goods.
The arrival of the Cicha tribe marks the official beginning of this year's Mother's Day.
Xu Chen received a group of people from the Cicha tribe while he was busy.
When everyone in the Cicha tribe saw this magnificent building complex that suddenly appeared in front of them, they were all terrified. They all lay on the ground and kowtowed in the direction of the palace and temple.
They surrendered in October last year, when the construction of the royal city had just begun. It had only been five months since they had been here, but the place had completely changed and was almost unrecognizable.
For primitive tribes like them, which have not changed much for thousands of years, everything in front of them is like a miracle, and only the power of gods can do it.
The tribes near the royal city had become accustomed to the performance of the Cicha people. Many of the men, women, and children who were watching could only laugh loudly and shout "savage croak" several times to express their contempt and ridicule for these remote tribes in the mountains.
It's like city people laughing at country people to prove their dignity, nothing more.
The Cicha clan brought a lot of things to trade this time, but most of them were just animal skins, wild fruits, brocade feathers, bone teeth and other items that were almost out of reach in Bameng.
But they have what Xu Chen is most interested in right now, which is tree paint.
The Cicha tribe brought a total of eight tubes of raw lacquer this time. They were all containers made by retaining bamboo sections on both sides and then using a knife to make a hole in the center.
Bamboo has great uses, especially the thick bamboo found near the Great Lakes. It is easy and convenient to make containers. Bamboo can make almost any imaginable daily utensils, including dishes, cups, plates, and even buckets and jugs.
Thanks to Xu Chen's guidance last year and after giving them some sharp bronze knives and axes and other tools, the Cicha people quickly began to learn to use bamboo to build houses and make various simple living utensils when they returned.
Bamboo tubes can not only carry food and dry food when going out, but can also carry drinking water and store tree paint.
It is precisely because of these wonderful functions of bamboo that the Cicha tribe can better protect themselves from being affected by the water and soil toxins in the lacquer forest when harvesting raw lacquer in the lacquer forest. Coupled with other protective measures, the Cicha tribe can almost no longer harvest lacquer.
If there is no poisoning, even if the skin is slightly itchy, it will be resolved quickly if you go back and clean it carefully. This also makes the Cicha tribe's fear of the lacquered forest that is a forbidden area quickly disappear.
But don't be afraid of returning, but the harvesting of raw lacquer is similar to rubber and rosin, and the yield is extremely low.
The total of these eight tubes of tree paint only weighs seven or eight kilograms.
And this has been the output of the Cicha clan for several months.
Although Xu Chen was slightly regretful, something is better than nothing. Moreover, it is winter and spring now. The temperature is low and the trees have not entered the growing season. The yield will definitely be low. It is estimated that the yield will be much higher in summer. I want to make two a year.
Thirty pounds shouldn't be a big problem.
At present, the annual output of tung oil is only this.
It seems that the collection of these purely natural industrial raw materials is indeed very troublesome. Before large-scale plantations and harvesting teams were developed, these things were still extremely luxuries for a long time and could only be used in the most critical places.
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In view of the scarcity and value of raw lacquer, Xu Chen purchased it at fifty cents a bowl, and Xu Chen's bowl was roughly a pound.
In terms of current practical value, raw lacquer is not as good as copper, or even as good as pottery. However, for future development, raw lacquer is an indispensable and extremely scarce item. There will be huge demand in the practical and artistic fields in the future, especially wooden furniture and
This is especially true for the shipbuilding industry.
The reason why Xu Chen was willing to purchase it at such a high price was to stimulate the Cicha tribe's interest in harvesting raw lacquer and slowly turn this sideline business into their main business.
After the Cicha people also start farming and building houses to meet their needs for food and clothing, they will continuously provide Xu Chen with a large amount of raw lacquer, and eventually, like the Uu people, they will become a supplier of raw materials.
Of course, that lacquer forest will also be like a treasure house, continuously providing countless wealth to the Cicha clan.
Xu Chen scraped together the eight tubes of lacquer and purchased them according to the eight tubes. He paid a total of 400 brand-new copper coins to the great shaman of the Cicha clan.
These four hundred copper coins are worth four hundred kilograms of copper and two thousand kilograms of grain, and they are not light in weight, weighing twenty kilograms, which is enough to buy a large number of bronze knives for daily use.
After getting these small golden copper coins, the great shaman of the Cicha tribe and a group of clan leaders were so excited that they almost had a brain hemorrhage. They all held the copper coins and danced together, and their eyes were filled with little golden stars.
“￥%#@……!”
A group of clan leaders spoke happily, their voices trembling, and then they looked at Xu Chen collectively.
"Your Majesty the Witch King, they said they want to exchange for copperware, pottery and salt now, and also want to exchange some ducks to take back and raise." The leader of the Five Ghost Clan acted as a translator.
Xu Chen waved his hands with a smile and said: "There is no rush to change, we can wait until the Mother's Day trade conference. Maybe they can see more and better things at the trade conference!"
After the Five Ghost Clan leader translated, the Cicha Clan witch and a group of clan leaders nodded in agreement.
After Xu Chen had people put away the paint, he took a group of people to the Cicha settlement to check the rice planting situation.
It has just entered March, and the water in the stream is not very large yet. The paddy field that has been opened up has actually been in a mudflat state of half dry and half water, which is very different from the paddy fields of later generations.
However, because they are all wild rice, they are actually considered weeds, so they are very adaptable. Now they have grown to more than two feet tall, covering the three scattered paddy fields.
Because the seeds are directly sown, some places are very dense and some places are sparse. Xu Chen arranged for the Cicha people to transplant them twice, but they still looked different in density, and they were also covered with various kinds of
There are wild grasses and aquatic plants, and the entire paddy field looks exactly like a lazy man farming.
It's not that the Cicha tribe refuses to weed, but that they simply can't get rid of it.
Everyone is a weed, and rice is considered an outsider here, and it is severely acclimatized.
Moreover, in this mudflat, wild aquatic plants grow so densely in spring and summer all year round that there is no place to stand. Therefore, the Cicha tribe weeded every few days at Xu Chen's request, but they still could not keep up with the growth.
Within a few days, the fields were again densely covered with weeds.
Moreover, people kept weeding and walking around inside, and eventually a large number of seedlings were trampled to the point where they were badly damaged.
So Xu Chen could only make do and let the Cicha tribe try to pull out some fast-growing and big weeds. After several rounds of this, although the rice field still looked ugly, in fact, the rice grew better than the weeds.
Well, if you look around, at least most of it is still rice, and it looks like a rice field in later generations.
"This is rice. It tastes much better than wheat beans, and the yield should be larger. I will try to plant it here. If it succeeds, I will be able to cultivate paddy fields on a large scale on this riverbank in the future!"
Standing next to the paddy field, Xu Chen pointed to the seedlings inside and explained.
The leader of the Five Ghost Clan around him kept making translation gestures. The witches of the Cicha Clan and a group of clan leaders all understood and began to discuss excitedly.
More than 200 people from the Cicha tribe just moved here last winter. They belong to seven tribes. The houses were all built temporarily by Xu Chen. Food and production and living tools were also recruited from the Ba tribe to help solve the problem. After a few months, a group of people have been slow to move.
I slowly got used to the production and life here, and spent every day building the royal city, building roads, digging canals, and taking care of the farmland. My life was very comfortable.
This paddy field has always been the focus of Xu Chen's attention. He would ride a horse to see it every few days. At the same time, he also told the Cicha people to weed and irrigate.
Therefore, the hundreds of acres of dry-weather wheat and beans developed by the Cicha people have grown all over the lake, but the rice still looks unsatisfactory.
The Cicha people seem to be very familiar with rice. From this, it can be seen that rice is widely distributed in the local area, and all tribes should collect and eat it.
In fact, based on the regional environment, Xu Chen felt that there should be wild rice distributed in the Gonghuo Basin, but no one had ever discovered it.
The only explanation is that the environment here is not suitable for large-scale growth of rice, and the tribes live near their residences in the mountains and forests all year round, and generally do not go to the mudflats where water plants are too lush to collect food.
Only tribes like the Cicha tribe, which rely on water, would place more food sources on rivers and lakes.
Just like the Cicha people's daily food contains lotus seeds, they brought a lot of them this time.
There are particularly many lotus roots in the Great Lakes.
Although Xu Chen had not been to the Great Lakes in spring or summer, he had seen large tracts of withered lotus leaves in the mud on the lake beach. He also dug up a few lotus roots and planted them in the Ba people's pond. A few years later, they are now full.
, as soon as midsummer comes, the pond will be filled with the fragrance of lotus flowers.
However, the Cicha people know how to pick lotus seeds, but they don't know that there are more filling lotus roots in the mud.
Human beings had to wait until the Shang and Zhou dynasties to truly discover eating lotus roots.
It can be seen that the evolutionary direction of primitive people's food gathering was from hillsides to plains, and then to lakes. Their history of collecting plant roots in mountains and forests is much longer, and can be traced back to tens of thousands or even tens of millions of years.
When the recipe develops into aquatic plants, it may not appear until you learn how to build a boat.
As for rice, the history of human consumption is much longer. It has been purposefully sown and cultivated since prehistoric civilizations, and even in the matrilineal clan stage.
If the Cicha tribe hadn't spread rice seeds here, Xu Chen wouldn't have discovered it.
It can be seen that in this era, humans already have the conscious behavior of planting, but they have not yet been able to form the concept of farming.
Including the Ba people, it was the same in the past. Women would consciously protect some wild fruits and plants that could be collected on the hillside. They would also protect the wheat beans at the foot of the mountain. They would consciously remove the thorns and shrubs inside to leave space for the wheat beans.
Provide enough growing space.
As time goes by, these protective awareness will slowly upgrade into purposeful planting, and then slowly explore and accumulate experience, pass it on, and eventually evolve to the farming stage.
But this time will be very long, at least thousands of years.
Because the life of primitive humans developed too slowly, as slowly as that of sloths, it would take even hundreds of years to make one step forward.
But things are different now. The emergence of Xu Chen has reduced the speed of evolution from tens of thousands of years to just a few years.
As long as the rice planting is successful this time and the yield can reach the level of wild wheat or wild beans, he can accept it, because this can adapt to local conditions and allow the Cicha people to start cultivating rice on the mudflats around the lake to solve their food problem. In addition,
The Gonghuo Basin has abundant water and low-lying lakes widely distributed. If it can be reclaimed to grow rice, the scale of farmland will be doubled and the variety of food will be richer.
Moreover, rice is more convenient to eat and tastes better than wheat beans.
Xu Chen is from the south, so he has been accustomed to eating rice since he was a child. In fact, he is not particularly fond of pasta, so he has no choice but to use it as a staple food.
Therefore, while inspecting the rice fields, Xu Chen continued to teach the Cicha tribe witches and a group of clan chiefs how to grow rice, so that they could also find suitable places to reclaim paddy fields for planting when they return. In addition, he also asked the Cicha tribe to help collect more rice next year.
If rice seeds are brought, the Ba people can exchange them for wheat, soybean flour or even anything else.
This news made the Cicha people excited again.
The harvest of tree lacquer has made them ecstatic, and if rice can also be traded, then all the tribes of the Cicha tribe will become rich.
Although rice is difficult to collect, all the tribes combined can collect several thousand kilograms a year without any problem. After all, the lake is too big and there are many streams and mudflats around it. As long as you are not afraid of hard work and danger, you can collect a lot in one autumn.
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The arrival of the Cicha tribe immediately stimulated all the tribes near the royal city to start preparing to go to the Ba tribe to participate in the New Year's Mother's Day.
Xu Chen also felt that it was almost time to go back, so he ordered all tribes to suspend tree planting activities. After some preparations, he personally took a group of Tage women who had just joined the Ba tribe and left the Gonghuo Pi by boat.
As for the other participating teams, after gathering, under the leadership of the little witch of the Gonghuo Tribe, tens of thousands of people from dozens of tribes formed a joint participating army. Under the escort of the hunter teams of each tribe, they rode horses and carts, carried baskets and carried burdens, and raised flags.
Sound the horn and march along the Bagong Avenue to the Ba clan. This chapter has been completed!