CONTROL! THE BOOK-TEXT PLEASE!
17 He opened
his gun-cabinet, took out the first
completed Henry-Stutzen, explained to me
composition and use of it and guided me
to his shooting range where I was
supposed to test the unsurpassable gun
and to comment on it. I was, of course,
delighted but I repeated my warning that
dissemination of this automatic gun would
cause great harm in the West to the world
of animals and humans as well.
»Know it, know it,« he nodded;
»explained it to me already; going to
produce only a few. This first one is a
gift for you. Made my old bear-killer
famous, shall keep it and this Stutzen
with it. Calculate, will be of good
service during your travels beyond the
Mississippi.«
To produce only a few? ...
Ridiculous!
Never met this man. What did you say,
whats his name?
Karl May!
During your time, and far beyond, his
adventurous travel-stories did guide
generations of German speaking readers
into exotic worlds although he never had
been there himself only as an old
man when the profit out of book-sales
allowed it and a public debate
about his claims of authenticity forced
him to travel alas, as a tourist.
Nowadays, his way of describing foreign
territories and foreign people would be
called virtual travelling.
Wilbur Smith never was present when and
where his stories happened, and he never
claimed to be part of them as Karl May
did. However, May was, as Smith, a
meticulous researcher, although it was,
at his time, much more difficult for him
to access such detailed information as
presented by him in an astonishing
diversity to his readers.
He never met you, Mr. Henry, but he
obviously had access to some sort of
contemporary reporting about technical
innovations, a newspaper perhaps or a
book? Who knows
There is a rifle, or Stutzen
as he called it, on display for visitors
of his museum-turned Villa
Shatterhand in Radebeul, Germany
however, it is well known that he
had tasked a gunsmith in nearby Dresden
to built it for him.
Anyway, that automatic weapon which you
invented was introduced by Karl May to
the world of literature not as a tool to
kill but as a tool to bring into effect
ethical principles.
And, at the beginning of his serial of
novels about his friendship with Chief
Winnetou, he made this so convincingly
clear in this fictitious conversation
with the inventor of the Henry-Stutzen
that no one actually asked what effects
your invention in reality meant to
history and environment of North America
We are going to make up for it and invite
you, together with everyone on this
train, to have a look through the
windows!
ratingtingting ratingtingting
ratingtingting ...
On the time-line we drove back
again into another period of history, and
geography has changed as well. We are in
North America
again as a
ghost-train because there is no railway
yet, even no white settlers
A cloud of dust at the horizon! Is it a
tornado?
My goodness! It looks like a huge dark
wave, like an avalanche, which is rushing
closer
Now the windowpanes vibrate, now the
metal plates
The whole train trembles! Are we safe?
Its closing in, it pounds, it
rambles, it stamps
there is life
in that wave, dark, furry, compact
bodies!
Fifty million bison roved the
prairies between the Rocky Mountains in
the West and the Mississippi in the East,
between the Rio Grande in the South and
the Great Slave Lake in the North. That
was at the beginning of the Nineteenth
century. No other mammal has been
observed by human eye in such huge herds.
The roving bison whose bodies darkened
the prairie had been like a gift from
Manitou, a source of food, which never
dried up ...
The wave is splitting
They are storming before and behind us
over rails and gravel
We are lucky that the train does not
move!
Not for long! We are going to
roll forward again on the
timeline. Watch what is happening on the
other side of the train
ratingting ratingting
ratingting ...
But what is this?
Scattered, limy heaps
where the
huge herd should have come together
again.
Where are the buffalos, which approached
the train?
Bulky, like splints in the landscape
unmovable
heaps of bones!
ratingting ratingting
ratingting ...
We left behind us the middle of
the Nineteenth century. A year ago,
another train passed these rails. All
windows wide open, on both sides. Men
lean forward, almost hanging out of the
frames, pointing their Winchester guns.
They fire left; they fire right.
A second train follows, stops repeatedly
to release skinners men with
knives whose task it is to save the skins
of the killed bison, not the meat, not
the bones.
Hunters and skinners have been tasked to
remove the herds of buffalos as quick and
as efficient as possible; they were in
the way of the railroad.
In addition, by extinguishing the herds
the resistance of the Indsmen could be
weakened, their food being shot away.
And now, please, everybody on the other
side of the train again, we have reached
the year 1867
rating rating rating ...
Bison again
but this time men
mounted on horses too.
These are cowboys! But cowboys were
driving cattle not bison!
They dont drive them, they shoot
them!
rating rating rating ...
We are rolling along the line of
the Kansas Pacific Railway, part of the
transcontinental rail-network, which is
in the making. The owners thought it a
good idea to save not only the skin of
the bison. Instead of the Indsmen, their
rail-workers should have the meat. And,
by the way, they invented the
instant-beef-powder as a way to make
money out of beef their workers could not
consume.
Therefore, they contracted that gentleman
over there who is just waving from the
saddle of his horse. Memorize his
turned-up moustache we are going
to meet him again in another context.
The mans name is William Frederick
Cody, and since he according to
his own estimation succeeded to
shoot four thousand two hundred eight
bison within eighteen months he was known
as Buffalo Bill.
Of the fifty million bison, a couple of
thousand animals survived until 1883
thanks to the railway and to the
development of a very efficient weapon
18 The history
of the civilisation of so-called wild or
semi-wild people by the colonial powers
is connected inseparably with the
technical advancement of the civilizers
on the one hand and with the primitive
way of life of the civilized
on the other.
Ownership and command of the machine are
pivotal when it comes to decisions about
freedom or subjugation.
In Karl Mays Winnetou-cycle,
written in a time when bloody fights
between indigenous people and white
invaders were on a peak and about to be
decided such correlations between
technique and civilisation are abundantly
present.
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