The Navajo fire-set looks very much like a mere makeshift. The hearth is a piece of yucca stalk and the fire-holes have but a shallow side notch. The drill is a broken arrow shaft, to which has been rudely lashed with a cotton rag a smaller piece of yucca wood ([fig. 15]). This carelessness, which it is rather than lack of skill, is characteristic of the Navajos in their minor implements. They resemble the crude Apache in this. One thinks of the Navajos only with regard to their fine blanket weaving and silver working, so well presented by Dr. Washington Matthews in the reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, and does not consider their arts in other lines.[9]
Fig. 15. Fire-making Set.
(Cat. No. 9555, U. S. N. M. Navajo Indians, New Mexico. Collected by Edward Palmer.)
Mr. Thomas C. Battey, a Friend, long missionary among the Indians, kindly gives a description of the Kiowan fire-making process, not now practiced among them, but shown to him as a relic of an abandoned art:
A piece of very hard and coarse, rough-grained wood, perhaps 8 inches in length, 2 in width, and three-fourths of an inch in thickness is procured. In one side of this and near one edge several holes are made, about one-half an inch in diameter by five-eighths of an inch in depth, rounded at the bottom, but left somewhat rough or very slightly corrugated. In the edge nearest these holes a corresponding number of smaller and tapering holes are made, opening by a small orifice into the bottom of each of the larger ones. These are made very smooth.
A straight stick, also of hard, rough-grained wood, about 8 or 10 inches in length, about the size they usually make their arrows or larger, is provided. Both ends of this are rounded, but one end is made smooth, the other is left slightly rough. The dried pith of some kind of reed, or more probably of the yucca, some fibers of the same loosely prepared like hackled flax, some powdered charcoal, I think formed by charring the yucca, and a piece of hard thick leather similar to sole leather, completes the outfit, which is carried in a leather bag made for the purpose. The first described piece of wood is placed upon the knees of the operator with a quantity of the fibrous substance beneath it which has been powdered with charcoal dust; some of the latter is put into one of the holes and the rough end of the stick inserted, the other end is put into an indentation of the leather placed under the chin, so that a gentle pressure may be exerted. The spindle is then rapidly revolved by rolling it one way and the other between the hands. The friction thus produced by the rubbing of the roughened surfaces ignites the fine coal dust, which, dropping as sparks of fire through the orifice at the bottom of the hole, falls into the dry fibrous preparation, thus igniting that, then by the breath blowing upon it a flame is produced and communicated to some fine dry wood and a fire is soon obtained. The whole operation occupies but a few minutes.
Fig. 16. Fire-making Set.
(Cat. No. 15396. U. S. N. M. Natives of Talamanca, Costa Rica. Collected by Prof. W. M. Gabb.)
One of the rudest fire-making appliances in the Museum was collected by Prof. W. M. Gabb, at Talamanca, Costa Rica. The hearth is a rude billet of charred, black wood, resembling mahogany. It has central holes, with no gutter usually, though sometimes a shallow notch is cut on both sides of the fire-hole. The drill is a light branch, rather crooked, but dressed down roughly with a knife. Another hearth is of partly decayed, worm-eaten wood; with this a hard wood drill can be used, the hearth wasting away instead of the drill ([fig. 16].) The absence of any fire slot, that is, the use of the central fire-hole, is worthy of notice in this locality. I have only observed its use in various parts of the Eskimo area, from East Greenland to Kadiak; outside of this range I have not noticed it anywhere else among the present tribes of the world. From descriptions given it seems to have been practiced by the Caranchua Indians, a recently extinct tribe in Texas and Mexico. (See below.)
These specimens from Costa Rica are the crudest fire tools, not to be mere make-shifts, that have come to my notice or have been described in the literature examined. The Costa Rican Indians are very interesting in their preservation of several other arts that may justly be classed among the most ancient. One may be mentioned, that of bark cloth making. Professor Gabb made quite a collection from Talamanca, but has not left any notes on these remarkable people, who are well worthy of the careful study of ethnologists.
A curious modification of this central hole plan is figured and described in Oviedo, folio 90, as occurring in Hispaniola; that is, the West Indies, Hayti, San Domingo, etc. He says that “two dry light sticks of brown wood were tied firmly together, and the point of the drill of a particular hard wood was inserted between the two and then worked.” Mr. H. Ling Roth[10] thinks that if one can judge from the illustration (which is a miserable one) in Benzoni’s work, the natives of Nicaragua also used three sticks in making fire. Benzoni, however, says:[11]