FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE 97 



pigs' heads are carved, the artist having seen two of these creatures 

 at St. Michael's several years before. 



An excellent account of the methods of fire making among the 

 Point Barrow Eskimo is given in the Report of the Ray Expedition: 



" The fUnt and steel is the most common method of procuring fire, 

 using for tinder the down of the seeds of plants, impregnated with 

 mealed powder or charcoal. Sometimes two pieces of iron p3Tites 

 are used, and we found the ancient fire drill in use among some of 

 the old, conservative men; the drill was a shaft of spruce 18 inches 

 long and three-fourths of an inch in diameter, the lower end termi- 

 nating in a frustrum of a cone, the upper end made to fit the socket of 

 a stone rest that is held between the teeth; a block of hard wood 

 with a cavity in the center is used as a friction block; a small quan- 

 tity of tinder is placed in the bottom of the cavity and the drill press- 

 ed down by the mouth rest and turned rapidly with a small bow like a 

 jeweler's bow. They are anxious to obtain matches, but they are 

 not considered a necessity, and will not buy them as a rule. FUnts 

 are an article of traffic, and are brought from Cape Lisburne and the 

 Romanzoff Mountains, there being none indigeneous to this part of 

 the coast. They believe that the pyrites come down from heaven in 

 the form of meteors, and they call it firestone for that reason. "^^ 



Fire making among the central Eskimo is performed with the bow 

 drill. A piece of ground willow serves for shaft and a piece of di'ift- 

 wood for hearth piece. Moss or the woolhke hair of Eryophorum 

 serves for tinder. ®^ 



Farther eastward, in Greenland, there is little that is different from 

 the western Eskimo apparatus, the whole being one culture exhibiting 

 only minor tribal and environmental phases. For a more extended 

 study of the Eskimo fire-making apparatus see Fire-making Appara- 

 tus in the United States National Museum. ^* 



CANADA AND NORTHERN UNITED STATES 



In some Athapascan tribes and generally among the northern Al- 

 gonquians the bow drill is employed in making fire. The apparatus 

 is rude compared with that of the Eskimo. In only a few instances 

 is the bow drill found south of the Canadian boundary, as among 

 the northern Sioux and the Sac and Fox Indians, of Nebraska. 

 From the latter a sacred fire drill used by the medicine men in 

 procuring ritual fire was collected by Prof. Frederick Starr. The 

 Penobscot Indians, who are also Algonquians, placed a band wheel 

 on the spindle of the bow drill to guide the cord. The Iroquois of 

 Canada and New York employed the pump drill for making fire in 



" Lieut. P. H. Ray. Report of the Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, 1885, p. 46. 

 »» Frana Boas. 6th Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1888, p. 526, fig. 476. 

 "Ann. Rept., U. S. Nat. Mus., 1888, p. 555. 



