Fire-making Apparatus in the U. S. National Museum

by Walter Hough

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.

It will be seen from these references given that the Sioux used the customary Indian method. Later, they may have used the bow to expedite the drill when the wood was intractable. The bow may have been borrowed from more northern tribes, the Algonquians are said to use it;[20] Mr. Thomas C. Battey says that the Sac-Fox Indians (Algonquian stock) used a soft wood drill and a hard wood hearth. “The drill was worked by a bow and the fire caught on the end of the drill and touched to tinder.”

Throughout South America the art of fire-making with two sticks of wood is found to be as thoroughly diffused as it is in North America. Many of the tribes still use it; we may say that in all tribes the use of flint and steel was preceded by that of the sticks of wood.

The Guanchos, a mixed tribe of herders on the Pampas of Venezuela, practice a peculiar way of fire-getting. They select a pliant rod, place one end against the breast and the other against the block forming the hearth, held on a line with the breast. By pressing against the rod it is bent and turned rapidly around like an auger. This impracticable and no doubt very local method is described by Prof. E. B. Tylor.[21]

In Brazil, in the Province of Goyaz, the Chavantes, Cayapós, and Angaytés, use the simple fire drill.[22] The Angaytés drill figured looks somewhat like that of the Mokis. It is usually 28^cm. long for the hearth, and for the drill 20^cm. They use the throat skin of the Nandu, Rhea Americana, for a tinder sack. The Lenguas of the same province use a strike-a-light consisting of a tinder horn, flint, and steel, which is also figured in the cited report. This set is very interesting, because from it, we can say with certainty where the Lengua got it. The steel is the English “flourish,” and the flint is the oval, old English shape, probably broken somewhat by blows. The Lenguas, being on the line of travel, have adopted the method from English traders. In Rio Janeiro the Indians had an angular recess at the back of their snuff mills for the purpose of making fire by friction.[23]

The Ainos of Japan formerly used fire-sticks, and are said even yet to resort to this method when they have no other means of getting fire. They use also flint and steel, adopted from the Japanese. A specimen (No. 22257) is figured and described on [page 583] of this paper. The fire-sticks of the Ainos of Yezo (No. 129970, [fig. 17]) were loaned to the Museum by Prof. F. W. Putnam, who also secured the following letter of Mr. D. P. Penhallow, who collected the sticks:

At our request the chief brought several fire-sticks to my house, together with the necessary number of men to get fire in the approved style. Upon examination the sticks were found to be from 6 to 9 inches long, and very dry. Our informant stated that they were from the root of the elm Ulmus campestris, var. lævis, and that it was customary to keep a supply ahead, as the sticks require to be seasoned for about one year, by hanging them from the rafters of the house above the fire. To prepare them for the process of making fire, a shorter stick was cut flat on opposite sides, and about midway of one of the flattened sides a small hole was made with the point of the knife for the purpose of establishing the center of action. Another stick about 9 inches long was then well sharpened at one end. Three men now seated themselves in a circle, facing inward, with the flattened stick notched side uppermost in the center.

The point of the long stick was now placed in the notch, and with the stick in a vertical position and grasped between the extended palms of the hands, a steady and somewhat fast rotating pressure was brought to bear, exactly as in the use of the old-fashioned awl. As soon as the first man became weary, the second brought his hands to bear upon the upper end of the stick, and continued the motion without allowing it to cease. This was repeated as often as necessary until fire was obtained. Owing to the very dry character of the sticks used, the parts in contact rapidly wear away, so that the notch quickly becomes cup-shaped, and the pointed end is correspondingly rounded, while at the same time the powdery product is thrown out, forming a raised ring on all sides. Before long it is observed that the powder acquires a brownish tinge. This gradually deepens as the temperature rises until finally a delicate line of smoke warns the operator that the end is near.

The motion is now continued until the smoke is well established, when the vertical stick is raised, disclosing a spark on its end. The mouth is applied to the opposite extremity, and by means of a few vigorous pulls as if smoking a cigar, owing to the porous nature of the stick, the spark is drawn into a flame.

The actual operation as witnessed by us consumed about two hours, and the Ainos state that the process requires from one and one-half to two and one-half hours.

The sticks figured are the actual ones that were used in the operation above described.

Fig. 17. Fire-making Set with Touchwood.
(Cat. No. 129970, U. S. N. M. Ainos of Yezo, Japan. Collected by D. P. Penhallow. Lent by Peabody Museum, through Prof. F. W. Putnam.)

The Japanese formerly used the simple drill; a few are yet preserved in the temples. Under the name of “Sacred fire drill” it is described[24] as a board 1 foot wide, 1 foot 4 inches long, 1 inch thick, and with a step 1 inch wide or over on one edge. It has holes and grooves like the Eskimo hearth. The drill is a stick twirled between the hands. The parts are of the hi-no-ki, or fire tree, Chamæocyparis obtusa. The drill is called hi-kiri-usu, or fire drilling mortar. It was and perhaps is yet used for the purpose of drilling fire at the four corners of the temple inclosure to ward off the calamity of fire. They are said also to have used the rokuro, or pump-drill. It is interesting to note that the Japanese carpenter’s drill with the iron point is rotated between the palms. They are still in use. The one figured is in the Tokio Museum.

Prof. Romyn Hitchcock has kindly allowed a drawing to be made of a photograph which he procured of a sacred fire drill preserved in the temple called Oyashiro, at Idzumo, Japan ([fig. 18]). The hearth of this set is made of hi-no-ki wood and the drill of the Ut-su-gi, Deutzia scabra.

Fig. 18. Sacred Fire Drill.
From photograph of specimen in Tokio Museum. Lent by Romyn Hitchcock.

Professor Hitchcock says:

The fire drill is used at the festivals of the Oyashiro to produce fire for use in cooking the food offered to the gods. Until the temple was examined officially in 1872, the head priest used it for preparing his private meals at all times. Since then it has been used only at festivals and in the head priest’s house on the eve of festivals, when he purifies himself for their celebration in the Imbidous, or room for preparing holy fire, where he makes the fire and prepares the food.

The art of fire-making by sticks of wood by the method of rotation is, or has been, as far as we know, universal on the African continent as it was in the two Americas at the time of the discovery. There is not a clue as to how the ancient Egyptians generated fire.

The Somalis are a pastoral people of Arab extraction, inhabiting a large maritime country south of the Gulf of Aden. Their fire-sticks ([fig. 19]) are pieces of branches of brownish wood of equal texture, in fact the hearth has formerly been used as a drill, as may be seen by its regularly-formed and charred end. This is another proof that it is not necessary that the sticks should be of different degrees of hardness. The grain of the wood, that of the drill being against and the hearth with the grain, in effect accomplishes what the use of wood of different qualities results in. The hearth and drill are in the neighborhood of 12 inches long, the former with a diameter of three-eighths of an inch and the latter one-fourth of an inch. They were collected by Dr. Charles Pickering in 1843.

It is possible that the Somalis may have carried this method with them from Arabia. They conquered this coast, driving back the earlier tribes inhabiting the country in the early part of the fifteenth century. Long since that time, and even now, some Arab tribes practice the drilling of wooden sticks to produce fire.

Fig. 19. Fire-making Set.
(Cat. No. 129971, U. S. N. M. Somalis, E. Africa. Collected by Dr. Charles Pickering. Lent by Peabody Museum through Prof. F. W. Putnam.)

Fig 20. Taveita Africans Making Fire.
After H. H. Johnston. (See Jour. Soc. Arts, June 24, 1887.)

In eastern equatorial Africa the Wataveita, says Mr. H. H. Johnston, generate fire in the common African way by rapidly drilling a hard-pointed stick into a small hole in a flat piece of wood. An interesting bit of custom comes out in connection with this art among the people. “It is the exclusive privilege of the men, and the secret is handed down from father to son, and never under any conditions (as they say) revealed to women.” I asked one man why that was. “Oh,” he said, “if women knew how to make fire they would become our masters.”[25] The figure ([fig. 20]) shows how this people of the great Bantu stock make fire; this tribe visited by Mr. Johnston lives on the slopes of the beautiful Kilimanjaro Mountain.

Mr. R. W. Felkin[26], in a study of the Maidu or Moru negroes of Central Africa, 5° north latitude, 30° 20′ east longitude, describes the fire-making of that tribe. He says that one piece of wood about the size and shape of a large pencil is rotated in a hole in a flat piece of hard wood. One man holds the wood steady whilst two others take it in turn to rotate the stick. This article of Mr. Felkin’s is commended to ethnologists as a model ethnologic study in method and research.

That veteran and renowned explorer, Dr. Schweinfurth, gives the following:

The method of obtaining fire, practiced alike by the natives of the Nile lands and of the adjacent country in the Welle system, consists simply in rubbing together two hard sticks at right-angles to one another till a spark is emitted. The hard twigs of the Avona senegalensis are usually selected for the purpose. Underneath them is placed either a stone or something upon which a little pile of embers has been laid; the friction of the upper piece of wood wears a hole in the lower, and soon a spark is caught by the ashes and is fanned into a flame with dry grass, which is swung to and fro to cause a draught, the whole proceeding being a marvel which might well-nigh eclipse the magic of my lucifer matches.[27]

Kaffir fire-making is described in some detail in the following:

The Kaffir blacksmith never need trouble himself about the means of obtaining a fire. Should he set up his forge in the vicinity of a Kraal, the simplest plan is to send his assistant for a fire-brand from one of the huts. But if he should prefer, as is often the case, to work at some distance from the huts, he can procure fire with perfect certainty, though not without some labor. He first procures two sticks, one of them taken from a soft-wood tree and the other from an acacia or some other tree that furnishes a hard wood. Of course both sticks must be thoroughly dry, a condition about which there is little difficulty in so hot a climate. His next care is to shape one end of the hard stick into a point and to bore a small hole in the middle of the soft stick. He now squats down * * * places the pointed tip of the hard stick in the hole of the soft stick, and, taking the former between his hands, twirls it backwards and forwards with extreme rapidity. As he goes on the hole becomes enlarged and a small quantity of very fine dust falls into it, being rubbed away by the friction. Presently the dust is seen to darken in color, then to become nearly black, and presently a very slight smoke is seen to rise. The Kaffir now redoubles his efforts; he aids the effect of the revolving stick by his breath, and in a few more seconds the dust bursts into a flame. The exertion required by this operation is very severe, and by the time the fire manifests itself the producer is bathed in perspiration.

Usually two men at least take part in fire-making, and by dividing the labor very much shorten the process. It is evident that if the perpendicular stick be thus worked, the hands must gradually slide down until they reach the point. The solitary Kaffir would then be obliged to stop the stick, shift his hands to the top, and begin again, thus losing much valuable time. But when two Kaffirs unite in fire-making, one sits opposite the other, and as soon as he sees that his comrade’s hands have nearly worked themselves down to the bottom of the stick he places his own hands on the top, continues the movement, and relieves his friend. Thus the movement of the stick is never checked for a moment, and the operation is consequently hastened. Moreover, considerable assistance is given by the second Kaffir keeping the dust properly arranged round the point of the stick and by taking the part of the bellows, so as to allow his comrade to expend all his strength in twirling.[28]

It is an anomaly that the African, to light the fire to smelt the iron out of which he forges his remarkable weapons, should use sticks of wood.