Among most Eskimo, however, a bow is used to work the drill. The only exceptions to this rule appears to have been the ancient Greenlanders and the people of Hudson Bay (see the passages from Hakluyt, Crantz, and Ellis, just quoted.) Chamisso, however,[403] speaks of seeing the Aleutians at Unalaska produce fire by means of a stick worked by a string making two turns about the stick and held and drawn with both hands, with the upper end of the stick turning in a piece of wood held in the mouth. When a piece of fir was turned against another piece of the same wood fire was often produced in a few seconds. This passage appears to have escaped the usually keen observation of Mr. W. H. Dall, who, speaking of the ancient Aleutians, says: “The ‘fiddle-bow drill’ was an instrument largely used in their carving and working bone and ivory; but for obtaining fire but two pieces of quarz were struck together,” etc.[404]
I had no opportunity of seeing this drill manipulated, but I have convinced myself by experiment that the stick or “light-stock,” to use Nordenskiöld’s expression, must be held down by one foot, the workman kneeling on the other knee.
[Flint and steel.]—
Fire is usually obtained nowadays by striking a spark in the ordinary method from a bit of flint with a steel, usually a bit of some white man’s tool. Both are carried, as in Dr. Simpson’s time, in a little bag slung around the neck, along with some tinder made of the down of willow catkins mixed with charcoal or perhaps gunpowder. The flints usually carried for lighting the pipe, the only ones I have seen, are very small, and only a tiny fragment of tinder is lighted which is placed on the tobacco. Lucifer matches (kĭlĭăksagan) were eagerly begged, but they did not appear to care enough for them to purchase them. Our friend Nĭkawáalu, from whom we obtained much information about the ancient customs of these people, told us that long ago, “when there was no iron and no flint”—“savik píñmût, ánma píñmût”[405]—they used to get “great fire” by striking together two pieces of iron pyrites. Dr. Simpson speaks[406] of two lumps of iron pyrites being used for striking fire, but he does not make it clear whether he saw this at Point Barrow or only at Kotzebue Sound. Iron pyrites appears to have been used quite generally among the Eskimo. Bessels saw it used with quartz at Smith Sound, with willow catkins for tinder[407] and Lyon mentions the use of two pieces of the same material, with the same kind of tinder, at Iglulik.[408] Willow catkins are also used for tinder at the Coppermine River.[409]
No. 89825 [1133 and 1722] are some of the catkins used for making the tinder, which were gathered in considerable quantities at the rivers. They are called kĭmmiuru, which perhaps means “little dogs,” as we say “catkins” or “pussy willows.”
[Kindlings.]—
From the same place they also brought home willow twigs, 9 inches long, and tied with sinews into bunches or fagots of about a dozen or a dozen and a half each, which they said were used for kindling fires. (No. 89824 [1725].)
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