ART. 14 FIKE-MAKING APPARATUS — HOUGH 63 



a string from off its axle with a sharp pull as in spinning a top. The 

 flint was pressed against the rapidly revolving wheel, and a shower of 

 sparks fell into the tinder. The tinder pistol, whose name suggests 

 its use, was another device.^^ 



Other devices were intended to be carried in the pocket and were 

 probably brought out by the introduction of tobacco and the need of 

 smokers for a convenient light. 



The pocket strike-a-light is still used. The one shown (fig. 46) was 

 bought in 1888 by E. Lovett, at Boulogne-sur-Mer. They are still 

 used by the peasants and workpeople of France. An old specimen in 

 the Museum of this character is from Lima, Peru. The roll of tinder, 

 or "match," is made of the felt lining of an ant's nest {Polyrachus 

 hispinosus) . 



Among many of our North American tribes the flint and steel super- 

 seded the wooden drills as effectually as did the iron points the stone 

 arrowheads. 



Fig. 46,— Strike- A-LiGHT (briquet). (Cat. No. 129693, U.S.N. M. Boulogne-sur-Mer. France. 

 Collected by Edward Lovett) 



Some of these tribes were ripe for the introduction of many modern 

 contrivances. Civilized methods of fire lighting appealed to them at 

 once. Among the Chukchis,Nordenskiold says, matches had the honor 

 of being the first of the inventions of the civilized races that have been 

 recognized as superior to their own.^^ It was so among our Indian 

 tribes; the Mandan chief "Four Bears" lighted his pipe by means of 

 a flint and steel taken from his pouch when George Catlin visited 

 him in 1832.«* 



The Otoes (Siouan stock) made use of the flint and steel shown in 

 Figure 47. The flint is a chipped piece of gray chert, probably an 

 ancient implement picked up from the surface. 



The steel is a very neatly made oval, resembling those of the Alban- 

 ian strike-a-lights,^^ or the Koordish pattern. (Fig. 52.) Here arises 

 one of the perplexities of modern intercourse; perhaps both of these 

 steels were derived from the same commercial center. 



" See figure in D. Bruce Peebles's address on Illumination, in Trans. Roy. Scottish Society of Arts 

 Edinburgh, vol. 12, pt. 1, p. 96. 

 " Voyage of the Vega, vol. 2, p. 122. 



•♦The George CatHn Indian Gallery. Smithsonian Report for 1885, vol. 2, p. 456 

 ••See figure in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., Great Britain, vol. 16, 1886, p. 67. 



