Part 5

The wood is a light corky variety, probably of the _Hibiscus tiliacus_, which is used for this purpose at Tahiti, or perhaps it is of the paper mulberry. The rubber may be of some hard wood, although fire may be made by means of a rubber of the same kind of wood as that of the hearth, though no doubt it requires a longer time to make fire if this is done. In the Sandwich Islands, Mr. Franklin Hale Austin, secretary of the King, states that the rubber is of _koh_ or _ohia_, that is, hard wood and the hearth of _hon_, or soft wood, and the friction is always in soft woods; this is true, I believe, everywhere this method is practiced, in spite of the fact that a soft rubber on hard wood will answer as well.

Lieut. William I. Moore, U. S. Navy, gave the writer a complete description of the manipulation of the Samoan fire-getting apparatus.

The blunt pointed stick is taken between the clasped hands, somewhat as one takes a pen, and projected forward from the body along the groove at the greatest frictional angle consistent with the forward motion which has been found to be from 40 to 45 degrees. Kneeling on the stick the man forces the rubber forward, slowly at first, with a range of perhaps 6 inches, till the wood begins to be ground off and made to go into a little heap at the end of the groove; then he gradually accelerates the speed and moves with a shorter range until, when he pushes the stick with great velocity, the brown dust ignites. This is allowed to glow and if it is required to be transferred to dry leaves or chips of wood it is done by means of a tinder made of frayed or worn tapa cloth.

The groove (fig. 43_a_) is the most characteristic feature of this apparatus, there being apparently no definite form of implements for this purpose. Fire is made on any billet of dry wood that is available. It is not necessary to cut a slot, or even a groove, the hard wood rubber will form one, so that there is no more need of apparatus than among the Navajos, where two bits of yucca stalk collected near by form the fire tools.

That making fire by this way is difficult to those inexperienced in it is not strange. Mr. Darwin found it quite so, but at last succeeded. The Samoan gets fire in forty seconds, and so great is the friction and the wood so well adapted that Mr. Austin, before quoted, says it sometimes actually bursts into flame.

The Australians in some parts use a method very much like the one described. They rub a knife of wood along a groove made in another stick previously filled with tinder.[46]

IV.—PERCUSSION.

1. FLINT AND PYRITES.

Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates Suscepitque ignum foliis atque arida circum Nutrimenta dedit, rapuitque in fomite flammam. (Æneid B. 1, 174-176.)

One of the oldest methods of fire-making that we know of is, that by the percussion of flint and pyrites. It is believed to have been the original discovery. If there is any difference in the difficulties of conception and execution in either of the inventions, it lies in favor of the sticks of wood.

The distribution of the flint and pyrites method, both in time and place, is very interesting. Mr. Evans, in his epoch-making work, “Ancient Stone Implements,” page 14, remarks that the name of pyrites (πυρ, fire) is itself sufficient evidence of the purpose to which the mineral was applied in ancient times. Whatever the fact is in Roman history, the Eskimo calls pyrites firestone, some Indian tribes call flint firestone, the German name for flint is _feuerstein_, and it is a reasonable supposition that whatever people used flint or quartz, pyrites, or other forms of iron ore for making fire, would call the stone firestone The statement of Pliny that fire was first struck out of flint by Pyrodé, the son of Cilix, Mr. Evans thinks, is a myth which points to the use of silex and pyrites, rather than to steel.

Mr. Thomas Wilson calls my attention to a discovery of a pyrites nodule by M. Gaillard, in a flint workshop on the island of Guiberon in Brittany. The piece bore traces of use. Mr. Wilson thinks that the curved flakes of flint like the one figured, found so numerously, were used with pyrites as strike-a-lights. The comparative rarity of pyrites is, perhaps, because it is easily decomposed and disintegrates in unfavorable situations in a short time, so that the absence of pyrites does not militate against the theory that it was used. A subcylindrical nodule of pyrites 2½ inches long and bruised at one end was found in the cave of Les Eyzies, in the valley of Vézère, Perigord, mentioned in Reliquae Aquitanicæ, page 248. This is supposed to have been a strike-a-light.

Prof. W. B. Dawkins thinks that—

In all probability the Cave-man obtained fire by the friction of one piece of hard wood upon another, as is now the custom among many savage tribes. Sometimes, however, as in the Trou de Chaleux, quoted by M. Dupont (Le Temps Prehistorique en Belgique, second edition, page 153), he may have obtained a light by the friction of a bit of flint against a piece of iron pyrites, as is usual with the Eskimos of the present day.[47]

Mr. Dawkins also says that fire was obtained in the Bronze Age by striking a flint flake against a piece of pyrites, sometimes found together in the tumuli. He figures a strike-a-light from Seven Barrows, Lambourne, Berks, England, an outline of which is reproduced here for comparison with the one from Fort Simpson, British Columbia (fig. 44_a_ and _b_). Pyrites has been found in a kitchen-midden at Ventnor, in connection with Roman pottery.[48] Chambers’s Encyclopædia, article, Pyrites,[49] is authority for the statement that pyrites was used in kindling powder in the pans of muskets before the gun flint was introduced.

It is thus seen that this art has a high antiquity, and that on its ancient areas its use comes down nearly to the present day, the flint and steel being its modern or allied form.

In North America this art is distributed among the more northerly ranging Indian tribes, and the Eskimo of some parts. Its use was and is yet quite prevalent among the Indians of the Athapascan (formerly Tinné) stock of the north. By specimens in the Museum, and notes of explorers, it is found to range from north of Dixon’s Sound to Labrador, the following localities being represented, viz: Stikine River, Sitka, Aleutian Islands, Kotzebue Sound, Point Barrow, the Mackenzie River district, at Fort Simpson, and probably Hershel Island, Pelly Bay, Melville Peninsula, Smith Sound, and Labrador. The Canadian and Algonquins strike two pieces of pyrites (_pierres de mine_) together over an eagle’s thigh, dried with its down, and serving instead of tinder.[50] From other sources we know that the extinct Beothucs, of Newfoundland, did the same.[51]

As far as can be ascertained, the Eskimo and Indians both use the method, so that it is not characteristic of either, as the four-part drill is of the Eskimo, as contrasted with the simple rotation sticks of the Indians. A description of a flint and pyrites outfit, as at present used, will give a general idea of the status of the invention. In different localities the manipulation differs somewhat, as will be noted farther on.

The strike-a-light (No. 128405) was collected by Capt. E. P. Herendeen from natives who told him that it came from Cape Bathurst, hence he assigned the specimen to this locality on the evidence. Mr. John Murdoch has, with a great deal of probability, questioned this and thinks that it came from Herschel Island with the rest of Mr. Herendeen’s collection and did not come from as far east as Cape Bathurst. While there is no improbability that this method is practiced at Cape Bathurst, yet the specimen has the appearance of the Mackenzie River strike-a-lights, hence it is deemed advisable to locate it in the Mackenzie River district at Herschel Island.

The essential parts of the apparatus are a piece of pyrites, a piece of flint and tinder. In the more northern parts of the Eskimo area, tinder is made from the down from the stems and catkins of various species of dwarf arctic willows. At present the natives often soak the tinder in a strong solution of gunpowder and water to make it quick; an older way was to mix powdered charcoal with it. This plan is like the charring of the linen rags used in the old-fashioned tinder boxes of forty years ago. The Eskimo then puts the tinder into a little round, flat pouch, with a flap in the middle (fig. 45, 1).

The pyrites (fig. 46, 3) looks like a short pestle, too much of which appearance the repeated scraping has no doubt given rise. The upper end is concave, while the lower end has the original smooth surface of the concretion. Pyrite is found at Point Barrow in spherical masses of various sizes up to several pounds in weight. These spheres are nearly always cracked in two and scraped on the plane surface for very obvious reasons. This gives the shape seen in Fort Simpson and Long Barrows specimen. Mr. Murdoch says that the Eskimo think that pyrites comes down from above in meteors. They call it “firestone.” A native related that in old times they did not use flint, but two pieces of pyrites, and got “big fire.”

The flint (fig. 46, 4) is an oblong piece of chert, square at the base and rounded at the forward end. It is more elaborately made than the flakes so numerous in Europe, one of which was found with the piece of pyrites in the English Barrows. The Mackenzie River scraper is more like the curved ancient one (fig. 44_b_). In most cases the flints used are not mounted in a handle; this specimen, however, is fixed in a handle made of two pieces of wood held together by a thong of sealskin (fig. 46, 4_a_).

The bag (fig. 45, 2) is made of reindeer skin. The little bag that hangs from the larger has a double use; it is a receptacle for reserve tinder, but its chief use is for a toggle; being passed under the belt it prevents the loss of the outfit, which is said to be carried by the women.

An oblong pad, stuffed with deer hair, is sewed to the mouth of the fire-bag to protect the hand from sparks and blows of the flint.

To get a spark, the Eskimo places (fig. 47) the piece of pyrites on the pad held in the left hand over the curved forefinger, the large end down and the thumb set in the cup shaped cavity in the top. The flap of the tinder pocket is turned back and held on the forefinger under the protecting pad. The flint is held in the right hand and by a scraping motion little pieces of pyrites at a dull red heat fall down into the tinder. The pellet that glows is transferred to the pipe or fire, and the flap of the tinder pocket is turned down, serving to keep the tinder dry and to extinguish it if necessary.[52]

There comes in here appropriately a note of B. R. Ross on the burial customs of the Kutchin Indians of the eastern Athapascan stock. He says:

They bury with the dead a flint fastened to a stick, a stone to strike it on (pyrites) to make fire, and a piece of the fungus that grows on the birch tree for tinder and some touch-wood also.[53]

There is no mention of this process of fire-making by the older writers on Greenland, Cranz and Egede, though they carefully note and describe the plan by wood-boring. Later explorers going higher north in western Greenland have found it. Dr. Emil Bessels, writing about the Itah Eskimo of Smith Sound, says:

The catkins of the arctic willow are used as tinder to catch the sparks which have been produced through the grinding of two pieces of stone.[54]

Dr. E. K. Kane gives a more complete account from nearly the same locality, the Arctic Highlands of northwest Greenland. He says that the Eskimo of Anoatok struck fire from two stones, one a plain piece of angular milky quartz, held in the right hand, the other apparently an oxide of iron [pyrites or iron ore?] They were struck together after the true tinder-box fashion, throwing a scanty supply of sparks on a tinder composed of the silky down of the willow catkins (_Salix lanata_) which he held on a lump of dried moss.[55]

Very much farther west on Melville Peninsula Parry gives a complete and interesting description of the primitive way. This account gives us a link between the western and eastern Eskimo. He writes:

For the purpose of obtaining fire, the Eskimo use two lumps of common pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leathern case (see fig. 25, pl. LXXIV) containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands. If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the white floss of the seed of the ground willow is laid above the moss. As soon as a spark has caught it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when the pointed end of a piece of wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame, the whole process having occupied perhaps two or three minutes.[56]

The Museum was in possession of a specimen catalogued, “Moss-bag and lumps of pyrites used by Innuit for getting fire,” collected by Capt. C. F. Hall at Pelly Bay, in latitude 69°, longitude 90°, several degrees west of Melville Peninsula.

The only other record of the process under consideration among the Eskimo is found in the Aleutian Islands. There is absolutely no evidence had by the writer that the Eskimo south of Kotzebue Sound (Western Eskimo) use the pyrites and flint for making fire. The latest information about the Aleutian Islanders is given in a manuscript of the careful explorer, Mr. Lucien M. Turner. His observation will serve to explain the description of striking a light by earlier travelers.

They use the four part drill but they also use pyrites. A stone containing quartz and pyrites is struck against another similar one, or a beach pebble, into a mass of sea bird down sprinkled with powdered sulphur. This ignites and is quickly caught on finely shredded blades of grass or beaten stalks of wild parsnips. This method prevails to this day on the islands west of Unalashka.

The people told Mr. Turner that this was the ancient way. There is a doubt in the writer’s mind that Sauer’s (Billing’s Expedition, page 59), and Campbell’s (Voyage, page 59) observations, brought together by Bancroft,[57] were accurate with regard to the stones used. All the other details are correct, but they say they took two pieces of quartz, rubbed them with sulphur, and struck them together. It is well known that pieces of quartz even when rubbed with sulphur will not strike a spark of sufficient heat to cause ignition. The pieces used must have been pyritiferous quartz as noticed by Mr. L. M. Turner.

To resume, the following facts arise out of the foregoing considerations of the flint and pyrites method:

(1) It is very ancient, inferring from the few reliable finds of pyrites and flint in juxtaposition.

(2) Its distribution is among high northern tribes, both Eskimo and Indian.

(3) As far as known, its range is limited to this area, only one other instance coming to our notice, that of the Fuegians.

2. FLINT AND STEEL.

The flint and pyrites method is the ancestor of the flint and steel. The latter method came in with the Iron Age. It is found in the early settlements of that period. A steel for striking fire was found in the pile dwellings of the Ueberlinger See.[58] The Archæological Department of the Museum has a specimen of a strike-a-light of the early age of iron in Scandinavia. It is a flat, oval quartz stone with a groove around the edge; it is thought to be for holding a strap by which it could be held up and struck along the flat surface with the steel. It is scored on these surfaces. The specimen in the Smithsonian is from the national museum at Stockholm. In Egypt it is believed to have been used for a long period, though there is no data at hand to support the conclusion.[59] In China it has been in use for many centuries. Chinese history, however, goes back to the use of sticks of wood. The _briquet_ must have been carried nearly everywhere by early commerce from the ancient countries around the Mediterranean, as it was into new lands by later commerce.

Many persons remember the tinder-box that was taken from its warm nook beside the fire-place whenever a light was wanted; the matches tipped with sulphur used to start a blaze from the glowing tinder are also familiar to the older generation. The tinder-boxes in use in this country were just like those in England from time immemorial down to fifty years ago (fig. 48). Mr. Edward Lovett, of Croydon, England, who has studied this matter thoroughly, calls attention to the resemblance of the old English tinder-flints to the neolithic scrapers. These scrapers, picked up at Brandon, can scarcely be discriminated from those made at the present time at that place, and there is a suspicion that the present tinder-flint has come down directly from neolithic times. The old English steel, or “Flourish,” (fig. 48) is the characteristic shape, and has been carried by English commerce into many places. A picture of a strike-a-light used by the Lenguas of Brazil, seen lately, shows the unmistakable old “flourish.”

The tinder-boxes had also a damper to extinguish the tinder of burnt linen and to keep it dry. The lids were furnished often with a candle socket. This feature, says Mr. Lovett, has led to their preservation as candle-sticks long after they were superseded by matches.

Many devices were invented in order to improve on the crude way of holding the flint and steel in the hands to strike the spark into the tinder-box. One of these was the wheel tinder-box (fig. 49). The compartment near the wheel held the tinder. The flint was placed in a socket on the sliding lid, and the wheel was turned by unwinding a string from off its axle with a sharp pull as in spinning a top. The flint was pressed against the rapidly revolving wheel and a shower of sparks fell into the tinder. The tinder pistol, whose name suggests its use, was another device.[60]

Other devices were intended to be carried in the pocket, and were probably brought out by the introduction of tobacco and the need of smokers for a convenient light.

The pocket strike-a-light is still used. The one shown (fig. 50) was bought in 1888 by Mr. E. Lovett, at Boulogne-sur-mer. They are still used by the peasants and work-people of France. An old specimen in the Museum of this character is from Lima. The roll of tinder, or “match,” is made of the soft inner bark of a tree.

Among many of our North American tribes the flint and steel superseded the wooden drills as effectually as did the iron points the stone arrow-heads.

Some of these tribes were ripe for the introduction of many modern contrivances. Civilized methods of fire-lighting appealed to them at once. Among the Chukchis, Nordenskiöld says, matches had the honor of being the first of the inventions of the civilized races that have been recognized as superior to their own.[61] It was so among our Indian tribes; the Mandan chief “Four Bears” lighted his pipe by means of a flint and steel taken from his pouch when George Catlin visited him in 1832.[62]

The Otoes (Siouan stock) made use of the flint and steel shown in fig. 51. The flint is a chipped piece of gray chert, probably an ancient implement picked up from the surface.

The steel is a very neatly made oval, resembling those of the Albanian strike-a-lights,[63] or the Koordish pattern, (fig. 54). Here arises one of the perplexities of modern intercourse, perhaps both of these steels were derived from the same commercial center.

The flint, steel, and tinder were always carried in a pouch, usually suspended from a belt as in specimen No. 8481 from the Assiniboins (Siouan stock) of Dakota. This is a buckskin waist-belt, beaded and fringed, ornamented with bells of tin. It supports a flapped pouch for the flint, etc. The tinder used was fungus.

The pouch of the Cheyennes (Algonquian stock) is compact, and neatly made of leather (fig. 52). The equipment is complete and of a superior order. The bone cup is used to hold the tinder while striking a spark into it. It is the tinder horn of early days, a cow’s horn which was used to hold tinder before sheet-iron boxes came into use. The Lenguas of Brazil use a horn for the same purpose.[64] In the Aino set, (fig. 57), and the Eskimo strike-a-light, (fig. 45), can be seen this feature. The tinder with this set is rotten wood. Nearly all Indians know the value of fungus tinder.

The Comanche Indian strike-a-light is a similar pouch to the one described, but much poorer in equipment (fig. 53.) A broken rasp, a piece of chert, and a piece of spunk, is enough for the purpose, and a bag made from a saddle skirt to hold them, completes the outfit.

The flint and steel is still used nearly all over Mexico, Dr. Palmer informs me. There is at present a manufacture of gun and strike-a-light flints at Brandon, England, whence they are shipped to Spain, Mexico, Italy, and other civilized countries. Doubtless this flint from Guadalajara (fig. 54) came from Brandon. It is real calcareous flint, such as does not exist in this country. The flint is the “swallow-tail” pattern. The tinder is of prepared fungus sold in little packets.

The Koords of Bhotan, Eastern Turkey, carry a pipe pouch containing besides flint, steel, and tinder, a pipe pick and a pair of pincers, to transfer the lighted tinder to the pipe (fig. 55). The tinder is prepared from a fungus, probably _polyporus_ species. The steel, shaped like an old-fashioned bell pull, is a very good form for holding in the hand.

The Chinese strike-a-light is the customary appendage to the pipe pouch. It is a very ingenious way of combining the steel with a pouch in which to keep the flint and tinder (fig. 56). In Thibet they are made very large and are finely decorated. One owned by Mr. W. W. Rockhill has a curving steel between 5 and 6 inches long, finely carved. The pouch was trimmed with encrusted silver set with jewels.