ART. 14 



FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS — HOUGH 



59 



J^a 



To get a spark, the Eskimo places (fig. 43) the piece of pyrites on 

 the pad held in the left hand over the curved forefinger, the large end 

 down and the thumb set in the cup-shaped cavity in the top. The 

 flap of the tinder pocket is turned back and held on the forefinger 

 under the protecting pad. The flint is held in the right hand and by 

 a scraping motion little pieces of pyrites at a dull red heat fall down 

 into the tinder. The pellet that glows is transferred to the pipe or 

 fire, and the flap of the tinder ^^^^.-.^ 



pocket is turned down, serving 

 to keep the tinder dry and to 

 extinguish it if necessary.^* 



There comes in here appro- 

 priately a note of B. R. Ross 

 on the burial customs of the 

 Kutchin Indians of the eastern 

 Athapascan stock. He says: 



They bury with the dead a flint 

 fastened to a stick, a stone to strike 

 it on (pyrites) to make fire, and a 

 piece of the fungus that grows on 

 the birch tree for tinder and some 

 touchwood also.^* 



There is no mention of this 

 process of firemaking by the 

 older writers of Greenland, 

 Cranz and Egede, though they 

 carefully note and describe the 

 plan by wood boring. Later 

 explorers going higher north in 

 western Greenland have found 

 it. Dr. Emil Bessels, writing 

 about the ItahEskimo of Smith 

 Sound, says : 



Fig. 42.-3. Pyrites. 4, 4a. Flint striker and 

 HANDLE. (Part of strike-a-light set shown in 

 FIG. 41.) Cat. No. 128405, U.S.N.M. Mackenzie 

 River District, British Columbia. Collected 

 BY E. P. Herendeen 



The catkins of the Arctic willow are used as tinder to catch the sparks which 

 have been produced through the grinding of two pieces of stone.^s 



Dr. E. K. Kane gives a more complete account from nearly the 

 same locaHty, the Arctic Highlands of northwest Greenland. He 

 says that the Eskimo of Anoatok struck fire from two stones, one a 

 plain piece of angular miJky quartz, held in the right hand, the other 



»« Extracted from an article by the author in Smithsonian Report, vol 2, 1888, pp. 181-184. 



»» Smithsonian Report for 1866, p. 326. 



«« Die amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition, p. 358. Leipzig, 1879. 



