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]