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

by Walter Hough

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: