Fire-making Apparatus in the U. S. National MuseumHough, Walter
History
Fire-making Apparatus in the U. S. National Museum
Hough, Walter
Firemaking; Indians of North America -- Implements
The Hupa Indians of California are of the Athapascan stock. Their
fire-drill is a carefully made piece of apparatus (fig. 5). The hearth
is of a reddish, punky piece, probably of mesquite, _Prosopis
juliflora_, somewhat harder than the drill, which is charred slightly
for some distance along the grinding end. Fire has been made in one of
the holes; the others show the rough, frayed cavities which have been
made to start the drill. The notches at each end of the hearth seem to
be to facilitate the tying of the pieces together as a precaution to
prevent their loss or separation. They are usually intrusted into the
hands of the most skillful fire-maker, who wraps them up to keep them
from becoming damp. The effectiveness of the sticks increases with use
and age; a stick and hearth that have been charred by the former making
of fire in most cases yields the spark in half the time required for new
apparatus. Another advantage is that the drill is softer from incipient
decay.
That this set is in the highest degree efficient is shown by the fact
that the writer repeatedly got a glowing coal, the size of a pea, from
it in less than twenty seconds. The hearth is 18 and the drill 21 inches
long.
The McCloud River Indians (Copehan stock) make the drill from the
buckeye tree.
The Indians of Washoe, Nevada, from their language, have been classed by
the Bureau of Ethnology as a separate stock, the Washoan. Stephen
Powers, many years ago collected a rather remarkable hearth from these
Indians. It has eight rather small holes, in every one of which fire has
been made. The wood is soft, well-seasoned pine. Apparently sand has
been made use of to get greater friction, as is the custom of the Zuñis
and Apaches. This device, in a measure, obviates the necessity of having
tinder-like wood, or wood in a state of partial decay. For the drill any
hardwood cylindrical stick might be employed. A strip of buckskin about
an inch wide is passed around the hearth over the fire holes to keep
them dry (fig. 6).
At the end of the hearth is a mass of cement made of the resin of a pine
mixed with sand, apparently; a kind of material used by the Indians over
a large area in the Great Basin and southward to fix their arrowheads,
pitch the water-bottles, and for other purposes. It is quite probable
that this stick was the property of an arrow-maker, whose need of fire
to melt the somewhat intractable cement, caused him to combine these
functions in one tool.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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