FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTUBE 89 



as The Master on High, Big Raven, and the malevolent kalau are 

 deities or spirits of the entire tribe, excepting those kalau that 

 serve individual shamans. 'Guardians' form a class of objects that 

 avert evil from men. Those about which Jochelson was able to 

 obtain information include the sacred implements for fire making, 

 which comprise a fireboard (gicgic or gecgei), a bow (eyet), a wooden 

 drill (maxem, 'arrow,') and a headpiece of stone or bone (ceneyine). 



"The fireboard is of dry aspen wood, which ignites easily, and has 

 holes in it for receiving the drill. It is shaped roughly to resemble a 

 human being. The consecration of a new fireboard to the office of 

 protector of the hearth and herd is accompanied with the sacrificing 

 of a reindeer to 'The Master on High,' the anointing of the fireboard 

 with the sacrificial blood and fat, and the pronouncing of an incan- 

 tation over it. It would thus appear, Jochelson thinks, that the 

 power to direct some vaguely conceived vital principle residing in a 

 crude inanimate object to an activity beneficial to man lies in the 

 ncantation pronounced over it. 



"The headpiece has a hollow socket, which is placed upon the thin 

 upper end of the drill. 'The headpiece is held by one person, the 

 board by another, while the bow is turned by a third person,' the 

 drill rotating on its thick lower end in one of the holes of the fire- 

 board. The charcoal dust produced by drilling is collected in a 

 small leathern bag, for it is considered a sin to scatter this dust."'^" 



That the bow drill was in general use in Siberia is shown by the 

 quotations presented and the following by Bush : 



"The natives (Koraks, Lamuts, Tungus) on the west shore of 

 Okhotsh Sea use agates as fiints, tinder from the fungi of the birch 

 boiled in lye, in fire making. They also use the fire drill. Sulphur 

 is well known, and each one wears suspended to his tinder bag a 

 small bone or wooden basin of it, in which to put the tinder when 

 lit and by blowing create a blaze."'' 



JAPAN 



The Ainos of Yezo commonly use the simple two-stick drill, but it 

 is recorded that they also had the bow drill, in common with the 

 Siberians. ''- 



So far as can be ascertained by the writer the bow drill was not 

 known to the Japanese. Singularly, it appears not to be included 

 among the tools belonging to any of the arts of Japan. The simple 

 drill, however, is the common tool. The primitive fire drill survives 

 only in sacred usages. "The fu-e drill used at the Shinto temples 

 of Ise is far more compHcated in construction, and certainly repre- 



" M. A. Czaplicka. Aboriginal Siberia. A study in social Anthropology, Oxford, 1914, pp. 265-266. 



" Bush. Reindeer, Dogs, and Snowshoes, New York, 1871, p. 323. 



" B. Douglas Howard. Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, New York, 1893, p. 83. 



