112 BULLETIN 139_, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



incessantly until totally consumed). Having made fire they put it 

 into pulverised cedar bark and blow softly until the bark flames."^** 



Thomas Morton, in his New England Canaan, refers to the Indian 

 use of two stones for striking fire. T. G. B. Lloyd says that the 

 Beothuc ignited the down of the blue jay by sparks struck from two 

 pieces of iron pyrites. In their graves "Two 'fire stones' or nodules 

 of iron pyrites lay at its head, such as were used by the red Indians 

 for producing fire by striking two pieces of the substance together. "^^ 



C. C. Willoughby, in the exploration of several burial places in 

 Maine, found worked pyrites in the excavations.^^ 



The pyrites strike-a-light was in rather general use among the 

 eastern and central Eskimo, and were found side by side with the 

 implements for wood friction. There is a pyrites mine on Boothia 

 Felix at Elizabeth Harbor, and there was trade in the mineral for 

 potstone from Wager River.^^ 



Kane saw the Eskimo of Anoatok making fire with quartz and 

 pjTites : 



"On our arrival at the hut an Esquimaux was striking a fire from 

 two stones, one a plain piece of angular milky quartz, held in the 

 right hand, the other apparently an oxide of iron. He struck them 

 together after the true tinder-box fashion, throwing a scanty supply 

 of sparks on a tinder composed of the silky down of the willow 

 catkins (Salix lanata), which he held on a lump of dried moss."^^ 



"For the purpose of obtaining fire the Eskimo use two lumps of 

 common iron pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little 

 leathern case containing moss well dried and rubbed between the 

 hands. If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the 

 white floss of the seed of the ground willow is laid above the moss. 

 As soon as the fire has caught it is gently blown until the fire has 

 spread an inch around, when the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick 

 being apphed, it soon bursts into a flame, the whole process occupy- 

 ing two or thi*ee minutes." ^^ 



Among the Eskimo of Point Barrow, Alaska, the use of flint and 

 pyrites is described on page 97. 



To the east of Point Barrow the Eskimo at Cape Bathurst and 

 Herschel Island used flint and pyrites. ^^ 



The slave and Dogrib Indians of Canada "kindle fire by striking 

 together a piece of white or yellow pyrites and a fhnt stone over a 



30 Le Jeune. Relation de la Nouvelle France, en I'Annee 1634, vol. 1, p. 25. Quebec, 1858. 



siJourn. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 4, 1874, p. 33. Pyrites also found in Eskimo graves at Hudson Strait. 

 (Information by F. F. Payne.) 



22 Prehistoric Burial Places in Maine, Arch, and Ethnol. Papers, Peabody Museum, vol. 1, 1896, 

 No. 0. 



" Information by Dr. Franz Boas. 



3« Dr. E. Kent Kane. Arctic Explorations, vol. 1, pp. 379-380. Philadelphia, 1856. 



'= Parry's Expedition, p. 504. 



" Walter Hough. An Eskimo Strike-a-light from Cape Bathurst, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 1888, p. 181. 



