---

The Most Important Survival Skills of the 1800s

Copyright © 2017,2018 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.

---

Click here and you will be taken to the Amazon web page that features this book.

Click on Bow Drill or on Honey or on Tinder to read three of the chapters in this book.

ISBN: 978-1732788350
Type of Book: Paperback
Book Size: 8.5 inches by 11 inches
Number of Pages: 188
Number of Full Color Pictures: 281
Number of Sketches and Illustrations: 32
Normal Price: $29.95

---

Book Description on Amazon.com

Learn the basic survival skills your ancestors used in the 1800s to improve the quality of their daily lives. The author is an old man who invested more than 40 years of his life testing, modifying, and perfecting these skills to make them more reliable and easier to learn. The skills discussed in this book could be successfully used by almost anyone who can follow simple instructions.

This book contains detailed instructions and full color pictures on the following topics: Homemade Soap, Primitive Clay Cook Pots, Homemade Candles, Friction Fires, Spark Fires, Homemade Bow & Arrows, Leather Hunting Sling, Spears, Fish Nets, Animal Traps, Snares, Butchering and Processing and Cooking Wild Game Animals, Smoking Meat, Nutritious Edible Wild Plants, Food Preservation, Home Remedies, and a variety of other survival skills that were of critical importance during the 1800s.

---

Preface to
The Most Important Survival Skills of the 1800s

In the 21st century we are bombarded with information overload from a wide variety of different sources, such as television, YouTube, books, the internet, radio, Facebook, and magazines. We can easily find an overwhelming amount of information about any topic we are interested in. The major problem today is that the information from different sources can frequently contain conflicting claims that lead to totally different conclusions. And there is no easy way to determine what is correct and what is not. For example, how long should meat be smoked to significantly extend its shelf life but still retain as much of the original flavor in the meat as possible? If you look this up on the internet today then you will find many different answers to this one simple basic question.

Another problem that I have noticed is that some of the people who write about "primitive skills" are simply repeating what they read on the internet, or learned from a book, or they are repeating what they learned from someone who learned that skill from a book. Although they can provide detailed instructions and pictures on how to do a specific skill they may not know if the method they are describing is actually the best possible way to do that specific skill.

This book on primitive survival skills is different because the chapters in this book were not simply copied from another source. Although some of the information in this book can be found elsewhere, most of the information in each of the chapters is from my own personal files and it is based on my own personal life experiences.

My life experiences include approximately six months living deep in the backwoods of Maine with my wife and our three small preschool age children from June to November of 1975 while I was building a rustic log cabin using pine trees that grew on the 12 acres of land we had purchased. I wore a pistol every day while I was building our cabin in that primitive wilderness environment. I hunted with a bolt-action rifle and I used steel traps to capture wild game animals. We cooked our meals over a campfire every day. After returning to "civilization" in late November of 1975 I continued to study about pioneer life and the primitive survival skills that were widely used in the 1800s. Since 1975 I have actually used a wide variety of "primitive skills" and I have accumulated a tremendous amount of practical hands-on knowledge and experience on each of these skills. And it has all been tempered by my actual experience of living a primitive existence in the backwoods of Maine during the summer and fall of 1975.

This book is the result of my life experiences. This book contains easy to follow instructions on a wide variety of skills that were of critical importance to a family's survival in the 1800s. This book is unique because it frequently explains the reasons why the various steps should be followed and it describes the most likely consequences of not following the recommended procedures. For example, when making meat jerky the salt should be added to the sliced meat strips before drying the meat and the salt will help to protect the exterior surface of the dried jerky. However, when making pemmican the salt should not be added to the meat before drying. Instead the strips of unsalted dried meat should be ground into small pieces, mixed with some ground dried fruit, and then the salt should be added and stirred throughout the dry mixture. Then some melted animal fat should be added to the mixture and stirred to hold everything together. By adding salt after drying and grinding the meat, the salt helps to protect the entire surface of the tiny ground meat particles (and not just the outside of the meat strips), and the dried fruit, and the melted fat. This explanation is included in the meat jerky chapter and in the pemmican chapter so that my readers will understand why salt should be added when recommended in each of those two chapters. This is just one example of how this book takes the time to clearly explain why the recommended sequence of steps should be followed in each chapter.

Respectfully,
Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E. (Grandpappy)
October 1, 2018

---

Table of Contents

Chapter		Page
	Section One: Tools and Weapons
1	Knives	1
2	Hatchets and Tomahawks	3
3	Bow and Arrows	4
4	Spears and Clubs	7
5	Leather Slings	8
6	Ropes and Whips	9
7	Hand Tools	11
8	How to Sharpen Tools and Weapons	12
	Section Two: Primitive Skills
9	How to Render Animal Fat	13
10	Soap	15
11	Candles	25
12	Clay Pottery	29
13	Sundials	33
14	Navigation	35
	Section Three: Fire
15	The Importance of Fire	38
16	Types of Fire and Fire Safety	39
17	Tinder	40
18	Matches and Lighters	41
19	Flint, Friction, and Solar	44
20	Bow Drill	45
21	Fire from a Bullet	53
	Section Four: Fuel
22	Wood	54
23	Natural Gas and Propane Gas	56
24	Coal, Coal Oil, and Kerosene	58
	Section Five: Cooking Options
25	Campfires	59
26	Fireplaces	61
27	Cast Iron Stoves	64
28	Cast Iron Cookware	65
29	Dutch Ovens	70
30	Camp Ovens	71
31	Reflector Ovens	72
32	Solar Ovens	75
	Section Six: Water
33	Water Importance	77
34	Water Sources	78
35	Water Purification	81
36	Water Storage	86
	Section Seven: Fish and Meat
37	Primitive Fishing Techniques	89
38	Gill Nets	90
39	Traps and Snares	97
40	Skinning and Butchering	100
41	Other Edible Creatures	103
	Section Eight: Edible Wild Plants
42	Edible Wild Plants	104
43	Acorns	109
44	Hickory Nuts	117
	Section Nine: Gardens and Orchards
45	Criteria for Selecting Vegetable Seeds	119
46	How to Grow Vegetables	121
47	Crop Rotation and Mulch	125
48	How to Grow Your Own Seeds	127
49	Seed Harvesting and Storage	135
50	Fruits, Nuts, Grapes, and Berries	137
51	Fruit Trees From Seed	146
	Section Ten: Food Preservation
52	Food Safety	149
53	Smokehouses	150
54	Root Cellars	155
55	Drying Food	156
56	Parched Corn and Rockahominy	158
57	Meat Jerky	160
58	Pemmican	162
	Section Eleven: Farm Animals
59	Chickens and Rabbits	165
60	Cows and Goats	166
61	Horses, Ponies, and Mules	167
	Section Twelve: Health and Hygiene
62	Honey	168
63	Apple Cider Vinegar	169
64	Herbal Home Remedies	171
65	Insect Bites and Skunk Deodorizer	173
66	Head Lice	174
67	Aspirin	178
68	How to Wipe Without Toilet Tissue	181
	Index	182
	About the Author	184

Click here and you will be taken to the Amazon web page that features this book.

---

Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com