Primative cultures only remain primative until they find (or are given) a better option. A lot of us on the forum do things the hard way because we love the challenge and enjoy the "academic factor" but the reality is that we're not lighting our cooking fires with our ferro rods every single day. Mankind has almost always opted for the "work smarter not harder" option.
Don't get me wrong, I carry a MagFire with me all the time, and I am rarely without a lighter to boot. The only reason I mentioned Ishi using something modern is that he and his tribe may have been using some modern items for so long that they may have forgotten how to do things the old way. So, when his things were stolen there may have been gaps that he didn't know how to fill with the knowledge he had.
To put it another way, if someone stole my matches, I'd use my knowledge of friction fire making to fall back on. If a person who didn't know how to use friction to start a fire had his matches stolen, he might not be able to fill the gap because he doesn't know how to make matches.
I love studying and practicing primitive skills and take all of the courses in them that I can. When you know how to do something at the absolute bottom of the technology curve then you can improvise in just about any situation.
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