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.
Fig. 44. a Strike-a-light.
(Seven Barrows, Berks County, England. From Lubbock’s Early Man in Britain, p. 258.)
b Strike-a-light.
(Cat. No. 1861, U. S. N. M. Indians of Fort Simpson, Mackenzie River district, B. C. Collected by B. R. Ross.)
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.
Fig. 45. 1. Tinder Pocket. 2. Fire Bag. (Part of Strike-a-light set).
(Cat. No. 128405, U. S. N. M. Mackenzie River District, B. C. Collected by E. P. Herendeen.)
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).
Fig. 46. 3. Pyrites. 4, 4a. Flint Striker and Handle. (Part of Strike-a-light set.)
(Cat. No. 128405, U. S. N. M. Mackenzie River District, B. C. Collected by E. P. Herendeen.)
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], 4a).
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]
Fig. 47. Method of Using the Strike-a-light.
(Cat. No. 128405, U. S. N. M. Drawing by W. H. Burger.)
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.