Part 2

Viewed in another aspect than as an implement of necessary or common use, this set is an important cult apparatus in the wonderfully complicated religious worship of the Zuñis. These people make the sacred fire that burns always in their estufas by friction of wood that has been wet. New fire is made at the beginning of their new year with great ceremony. The house is swept and everything is moved out of it until the fire is made. Their regard for fire and their customs with reference to it add them to the list of peoples who have held it in similar reverence and have practiced similar customs all over the world, ranging widely in time. The wetting of the drill, increasing their labor, may be done to please their Gods.

This art must have been practiced for a long time in this region, for Mr. Henry Metcalf found a hearth (Fig. 13) with three fire-holes in a cave-dwelling at Silver City, New Mexico. It is apparently very ancient. The wood is much altered and has become heavy by impregnation with some salt, probably niter.

The Apaches and Navajos belong to the great Athapascan stock, that ranges so widely in North America. Capt. John G. Bourke, U. S. Army, collected the hearth of yucca wood shown (Fig. 14), and says:

With the stick you now see, the Apache Indians in my presence made fire in not quite eight seconds by the watch, and one asserted that he could make it in a number of motions, which, on the watch, occupied exactly two seconds, that is, under most favorable circumstances. The experiments, made under my own observation, ran all the way from eight to forty-seven seconds; sand is generally used, although not essential to success.

Captain Bourke’s observation is very interesting, as it records the fact that the Apache is the most skillful fire-maker in the world. Many other tribes can make fire in less than a minute; I think by far the majority of them, but there is no eight-second record, while if he could prove his ability to do it in two seconds he would arrive at the facility of striking a match.

Mr. William F. Corbusier has noticed the fire-making of the Apache-Yumas of Arizona (Yuman stock).[7] They use a drill about 2 feet long and one-half inch thick, made of _o-oh-kad-je_, or “Fire-stick bush.” Its end is dipped in sand and drilled on a soft piece of agave or yucca stalk held down by the feet. They carry a slow torch of dead wood (spunk) and also use a flint and steel. For tinder they use dry grass or bark fiber. They use also a fungus, _polyporus_ sp., for the same purpose.

Another reference to the fire making of this stock (Yuman) is found in the translation by the late Dr. Charles Rau of the writings of Father Baegert on the Californian Peninsula.[8] He says:

To light a fire, the Californian makes no use of steel and flint, but obtains it by the friction of two pieces of wood. One of them is cylindrical and pointed at one end, which fits into a round cavity in the other, and by turning the cylindrical piece with great rapidity between their hands, like a twirling-stick, they succeed in igniting the lower piece if they continue the process for a sufficient length of time.

The Navajo fire-set looks very much like a mere makeshift. The hearth is a piece of yucca stalk and the fire-holes have but a shallow side notch. The drill is a broken arrow shaft, to which has been rudely lashed with a cotton rag a smaller piece of yucca wood (fig. 15). This carelessness, which it is rather than lack of skill, is characteristic of the Navajos in their minor implements. They resemble the crude Apache in this. One thinks of the Navajos only with regard to their fine blanket weaving and silver working, so well presented by Dr. Washington Matthews in the reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, and does not consider their arts in other lines.[9]

Mr. Thomas C. Battey, a Friend, long missionary among the Indians, kindly gives a description of the Kiowan fire-making process, not now practiced among them, but shown to him as a relic of an abandoned art:

A piece of very hard and coarse, rough-grained wood, perhaps 8 inches in length, 2 in width, and three-fourths of an inch in thickness is procured. In one side of this and near one edge several holes are made, about one-half an inch in diameter by five-eighths of an inch in depth, rounded at the bottom, but left somewhat rough or very slightly corrugated. In the edge nearest these holes a corresponding number of smaller and tapering holes are made, opening by a small orifice into the bottom of each of the larger ones. These are made very smooth.

A straight stick, also of hard, rough-grained wood, about 8 or 10 inches in length, about the size they usually make their arrows or larger, is provided. Both ends of this are rounded, but one end is made smooth, the other is left slightly rough. The dried pith of some kind of reed, or more probably of the yucca, some fibers of the same loosely prepared like hackled flax, some powdered charcoal, I think formed by charring the yucca, and a piece of hard thick leather similar to sole leather, completes the outfit, which is carried in a leather bag made for the purpose. The first described piece of wood is placed upon the knees of the operator with a quantity of the fibrous substance beneath it which has been powdered with charcoal dust; some of the latter is put into one of the holes and the rough end of the stick inserted, the other end is put into an indentation of the leather placed under the chin, so that a gentle pressure may be exerted. The spindle is then rapidly revolved by rolling it one way and the other between the hands. The friction thus produced by the rubbing of the roughened surfaces ignites the fine coal dust, which, dropping as sparks of fire through the orifice at the bottom of the hole, falls into the dry fibrous preparation, thus igniting that, then by the breath blowing upon it a flame is produced and communicated to some fine dry wood and a fire is soon obtained. The whole operation occupies but a few minutes.

One of the rudest fire-making appliances in the Museum was collected by Prof. W. M. Gabb, at Talamanca, Costa Rica. The hearth is a rude billet of charred, black wood, resembling mahogany. It has central holes, with no gutter usually, though sometimes a shallow notch is cut on both sides of the fire-hole. The drill is a light branch, rather crooked, but dressed down roughly with a knife. Another hearth is of partly decayed, worm-eaten wood; with this a hard wood drill can be used, the hearth wasting away instead of the drill (fig. 16.) The absence of any fire slot, that is, the use of the central fire-hole, is worthy of notice in this locality. I have only observed its use in various parts of the Eskimo area, from East Greenland to Kadiak; outside of this range I have not noticed it anywhere else among the present tribes of the world. From descriptions given it seems to have been practiced by the Caranchua Indians, a recently extinct tribe in Texas and Mexico. (See below.)

These specimens from Costa Rica are the crudest fire tools, not to be mere make-shifts, that have come to my notice or have been described in the literature examined. The Costa Rican Indians are very interesting in their preservation of several other arts that may justly be classed among the most ancient. One may be mentioned, that of bark cloth making. Professor Gabb made quite a collection from Talamanca, but has not left any notes on these remarkable people, who are well worthy of the careful study of ethnologists.

A curious modification of this central hole plan is figured and described in Oviedo, folio 90, as occurring in Hispaniola; that is, the West Indies, Hayti, San Domingo, etc. He says that “two dry light sticks of brown wood were tied firmly together, and the point of the drill of a particular hard wood was inserted between the two and then worked.” Mr. H. Ling Roth[10] thinks that if one can judge from the illustration (which is a miserable one) in Benzoni’s work, the natives of Nicaragua also used three sticks in making fire. Benzoni, however, says:[11]

All over India they light fire with two pieces of wood; although they had a great deal of wax, they knew no use for it, and produced light from pieces of wild pine wood.

From Oviedo’s description I am inclined to believe that the dust in which the fire starts was allowed to fall below on tinder placed beneath the hearth.

Through the kindness of Prof. F. W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum, at Cambridge, Mass., I have received an extract from a manuscript written by Mrs. Alice W. Oliver, of Lynn, who, as a girl, in 1838 resided on Matagorda Bay, and learned the language and customs of the Caranchua Indians, a separate stock, now thought to be extinct.

Mrs. Oliver says:

After the hut is built a fire is made, the squaws usually begging fire or matches from the settlers, but, in case their fire is out and they have no other means of kindling it, they resort to the primitive method of producing it by friction of wood. They always carry their fire-sticks with them, keeping them carefully wrapped in several layers of skins tied up with thongs and made into a neat package; they are thus kept very dry, and as soon as the occasion for their use is over, they are immediately wrapped up again and laid away.

These sticks are two in number. One of them is held across the knees as they squat on the ground, and is about two feet long, made of a close-grained, brownish-yellow wood (perhaps pecan), half round in section; the flat face, which is held upward, is about an inch across. Three cylindrical holes about half an inch in diameter and of equal depth, the bottoms slightly concave, are made in it. The three holes are equally distant apart, about 2 inches, and the first one is the same distance from the end of the stick, which rests upon the right knee. In one of the holes is inserted the slightly-rounded end of a twirling stick made of a white, softer kind of wood, somewhat less than the diameter of the hole, so as to turn easily, and about 18 inches long.

Holding the twirler vertically between the palms of the hands, a gentle but rapid alternating rotary motion is imparted. After continuing this for about five minutes the abrasion of the softer wood causes a fine, impalpable dust to collect in the hole, from which soon issues a thin, blue line of smoke.

As soon as the Indian sees this he quickly withdraws his twirler with one hand, while with the other he catches up and crushes a few dry leaves previously placed on a dry cloth close by (having been produced from thin wrappings, in which they have been preserved for this very purpose, to serve as tinder), and quickly but lightly sprinkles them in and around the hole, over which both hands are now held protectingly, the head bent down, and the incipient fire fanned to a blaze with the breath. As soon as the blaze has fairly caught, the stick and tinder are deftly turned over upon a little pile of dry twigs and leaves, got ready beforehand, and the fire is started.

This operation of getting fire is always performed by the men, and not by the squaws. The fire is invariably built in the center of the hut, upon the ground, and, is usually kept burning, for the Indians never slept regularly, but whenever they pleased, often asleep in the day time and awake nights, or _vice versa_, as they felt inclined.

3. IROQUOIS WEIGHTED DRILL.

The Iroquois are unique in America, and perhaps in the world, in making fire with the pump-drill. Several other tribes in America use the pump drill to pierce stone and shell, for which purpose it is an excellent tool, but the mechanical difficulties lying in the way of making fire with it have only been overcome by the Iroquois. Pump-drills are intended for light, fine work, with uniform, light pressure; hence, with little friction. The Iroquois have added this element by increasing the size of the balance-wheel and stock. Mr. Morgan, in his “League of the Iroquois,” p. 381, figures a fire drill with a wooden stock 4 feet long and 1 inch in diameter. This stock has at the upper end a string and bow, while near the lower end is a “small wheel.” Mr. Morgan says this is “an Indian invention of great antiquity.”

Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, of the Bureau of Ethnology, has kindly given the writer a set of apparatus and valuable information with reference to fire-making among the Iroquois, especially the Onondagas and Tuscaroras. He states that at times when there is disease among the people they say it is because the fire is “old.” They then determine to make “new fire,” so all fires are put out and two slippery-elm logs are selected and one of these is laid on the ground and a V-shaped notch is cut on the upper side. In this notch some tinder of dry slippery-elm is put and three (mystic or sacred number) men at either end work the other log backward and forward until fire is generated, and from this the fires are lighted. He believes that the new fire is made at the winter feast of the Iroquois. They say that the drill with the weight is their own invention. They use elm for that also. In making the pump-drill they sometimes cut an elm sapling and work out the drill, leaving the tap root for the fore part, the knot for the weight, and part of the stem for the top part of the drill.

It is not improbable that the Iroquois—the most advanced Indians in some respects on the continent, invented this use of the widely diffused pump-drill. It scarcely seems to be a practical way to make fire, and, despite the assurances and belief of the Iroquois, is not very ancient, but was perhaps suggested by the white man. Indeed, Pere Lafitau, that keen and careful observer, in his “Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains,” written in 1724, on page 242, gives a description of Indian fire-making that includes the Iroquois. He says:

The Hurons, the Iroquois, and the other peoples of North America do not make fire from the veins of flint, but rub two pieces of wood one against the other.

Then follows a description of fire-making, taken probably from the Iroquois, that is as good an account of the Indian apparatus and the way of working it as exists in the literature of the subject.

The drill was sufficient for its time for the reason that there was at that period rarely necessity for generating fire; the art of fire preservation was at its height.

The Cherokees, the most southerly of the Iroquois, Mr. James Mooney states, kept fire buried in the mounds upon which the council houses were built, so that if the house was destroyed by enemies the fire would remain there for a year or so. The Cherokees use the simple rotation apparatus, and, as far as Mr. Mooney can ascertain, never used the pump-drill. They have a tradition that fire originally came out of an old hollow sycamore tree (_Platanus occidentalis_).

Capt. John Smith tells how the Indians of Virginia made fire. He says:

Their fire they kindled presently by chafing a dry pointed sticke in a hole of a little square piece of wood, that firing itselfe, will so fire mosse, leaves, or anie such like drie thing that will quickly burn.[12]

Writing in the first quarter of the next century, Beverley says:

They rubbed Fire out of particular sorts of Wood (as the Ancients did out of the Ivy and Bays) by turning the end of a Piece that is soft and dry, like a Spindle on its Inke, by which it heats and at length burns; to this they put sometimes also rotten Wood and dry leaves to hasten the Work.[13]

Loskiel says of the Delawares:

Formerly they kindled fire by turning or twirling a dry stick, with great swiftness on a dry board, using both hands.[14]

The Cherokees used for a drill the stalk of a composite plant (senecio), and twirled it on a piece of wood. The art has long been out of common use, but they employed the wooden drill to make fire for the Green Corn Dance into the present century, though flint and steel was then in vogue. Sometimes they passed the bow over drill. The tinder was of a fungus or dried moss. Mr. James Mooney collected this information from some of the older men of the tribe in North Carolina, who have retained the ancient customs and traditions, which the part of the tribe removed to the West has entirely lost.

The Creeks (Muskogean stock) had a regularly authorized fire-maker, who early in the morning made fire for the Green Corn Dance. The apparatus that he made use of was four sticks placed end to end to form a square cross. This was oriented, and at the junction of the sticks new fire was made by friction.[15]

The Choctaws (also Muskogean) of Mississippi, Mr. M. F. Berry writes, make fire in the following way: One stick of dry wood that has a hole in it, with a smaller hole at the bottom going through, is placed between the feet. Another piece made round and about 3 feet long is made to revolve rapidly back and forth between the hands in the hole, and the fire drops through the small hole below. When new fire was wanted for the Green Corn Dance, or other purposes, three men would place themselves so that each in turn could keep the stick revolving without a stop, until fire would drop down through the hole, which was nursed with dry material into a flame.

This form of the fire hearth is not represented in the collections of the Museum; the only other description of a process closely like it was given by Mr. Thomas C. Battey, who observed it among the Kiowas. It was shown him at that time as a revival of the ancient method (p. 543). The pierced fire hearth is somewhat impracticable, except in the Malay sawing method. In the rotary drill the small hole would come over the axis of least friction and heat. Unless provision was made for the dust to fall freely underneath by a double cone perforation worked from both sides the dust is likely to become obstructed and smother the fire. It will be seen, too, that it departs very much from the simplicity of the usual fire drill in the fact that a hole must be made through the piece of wood, a matter of some difficulty before the introduction of iron awls.

The Seminoles of Florida, the most Southern Muskoki, have neglected the art of fire making by simple friction, unless at the starting of the sacred fire for the Green Corn Dance, says Mr. Clay MacCauley.[16] A fire is now kindled either by the common matches, _ma-tci_, or by steel and flint.

Thus it is seen that wherever in the earlier period of the exploration in this country the observation has been made, the Indian, almost without exception, was found to be using the friction apparatus, consisting of two sticks of wood. Some tribes had improved on the working of the invention, while a very few others had perhaps arrived at the use of the higher invention of the flint and pyrites.

Returning to the tribes of the wide central plains of our country, we find that the flint and steel soon displaced the fire-sticks, except for religious purposes. The Mandans, of the great Siouan stock, were using flint and steel at the time of Mr. Catlin’s visit in 1832.[17]

There seems to be a great misapprehension among some of the writers on ethnology, as to the general use of the bow-drill among the Indians. In mentioning that the Sioux use the bow-drill, Schoolcraft is quoted as authority. As a matter of fact the reference is to a “made-up” figure of a bow-drill set, marked “Dacota.” On the same plate there is a representation of an Iroquois pump-drill that is obviously wrong. The lower part of the plate is taken up by a picture of an Indian woman (presumably Californian) pounding acorns in a mortar. To complete the absurdity the whole plate is entitled “Methods of obtaining fire by percussion,” and is placed in the text of a _questionnaire_ on the Californian Indians, opposite a description of the Californian way of making fire by twirling two sticks.[18]

Mr. Schoolcraft is not to blame for this state of affairs; in those days illustrations were not ethnological, they were “padding” gotten up by the artist. Nowhere in his great work does Mr. Schoolcraft describe either the Dacota or Iroquois drill. Among the northern Indians in central and northern Canada, however, the bow is used.

Sir Daniel Wilson, in his work on Prehistoric Man, notes that the Red Indians of Canada use the drill bow. In August, 1888, at the meeting of the American association, at Toronto, he gave an account of the facility with which these Indians make fire. He said that at Nipissing, on the north shore of Lake Superior, while he was traveling in a pouring rain, and not having the means wherewith to light a fire, an Indian volunteered to light one. He searched around for a pine knot and for tinder, rubbed up the soft inner bark of the birch between the hands, got a stick from a sheltered place, made a socket in the knot and another piece of wood for a rest for the drill, tied a thong to a piece of a branch for a bow. He put the tinder in the hole and rested his breast on the drill and revolved it with the bow and quickly made fire.

It is perhaps true that some of the Dacotas did use the bow at times, but it is not correct to place it as the customary tool of the whole stock. On the contrary, there is evidence that they used the simple means. Dr. J. Owen Dorsey writes:

I was told in 1879 by the late Joseph La Flèche, that the Omahas, prior to the advent of the white men, made fire by using pieces of the “du-à-du-á-hi,” a grass (?) that grows in the Sand Hill region of Nebraska, near the sources of the Elkhorn River. One piece was placed horizontally on the ground, and a slight notch was cut at one end, wherein a few grains of sand were put. The other stick was held between the palms of the hands, with one end in the notch of the horizontal stick, and then rolled first in one direction then in the other till fire was produced. A fresh notch was made in the first stick whenever the old one became useless, and so on until it became necessary to procure a new stick.

In the Green Corn Dance of the Minitaries, another Siouan tribe, the “corn is boiled on the fire, which is then put out by removing it with the ashes and burying them. New fire is made by desperate and painful exertion, by three men seated on the ground facing each other and violently drilling the end of a stick into a hard block of wood by rolling it between the hands, each one catching it in turn from the others without allowing the motion to stop until smoke, and at last a spark of fire is seen and caught in a piece of spunk, when there is great rejoicing in the crowd.”[19] The desperate exertion was not necessary, except in imitation of the Zuñi fashion of wetting the drill to create sacred fire.