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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 



VOL. 73 



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Fig. 15. — FlEB-MAKING 



SET. Cat. No. 9555, 

 U.S.N.M. NavahoIn- 

 DUN3, New Mexico. 

 Collected by Edward 

 Palmer 



One thinks of the Navaho 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,'" 



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, per- 

 haps 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 cor- 

 rugated. 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 pre- 

 pared 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 otlier between the hands. The 

 friction thus produced by the rubbing of the roughened sur- 

 faces 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 commu- 

 nicated to some fine, dry wood and a fire is obtained. Tlie 

 whole operation occupies but a few minutes. 



In Mexico a number of the uncivilized tribes of 

 the mountains continued the fire drill into recent 

 times. It is probably used now as in other parts 



10 Doctor Matthews's mountain chant of the Navahos, in the fifth annual 

 report (1883-84) of the Bureau of Ethnology, gives some very striking cere- 

 monial uses of fire. No ethnologist should fail to read this important con- 

 'Tibution to science. 



