460 



FIKST CHRISTIAN PAKTY FISHHOOKS 



[b. a. e. 



or mouth rest containing a stone, bone, 

 or wood sociiet for the upper end of the 

 drill, and a cord with two handles or 

 string on a bow for revolving the drill. 

 By these inventions uniform and rapid 

 motion and great pressure were effected, 

 rendering it possible to make tire with in- 

 ferior wood. The four- part drill consisted 

 of two kinds: (a) The cord drill, which 

 requires the cooperation of two persons 

 in its working, and {h) the bow drill, 

 which enables one person to make tire or 

 to drill bone and ivory. The distribution 

 of these varieties, which are confined to 

 the Eskimo and their neighbors, follows 

 no regular order; they may be used to- 

 gether in the same tribe, or one or the 

 other may be used alone, although the 

 presumption is that the cord drill is the 

 older. The hearth alone embodies two 

 interesting modifications which reflect 

 the environment. In one the canal leads 

 down to a step or projection from the side 

 of the hearth, and in the other the drill- 

 incr is done on a longitudinal slot in the 

 mi Idle of the hearth, the object in both 

 cf s?s being to prevent the fire from fall- 

 ing into the snow. These features also 

 seem to have an indiscriminate distribu- 

 tion in the area mentioned. 



The pump drill has been employed for 

 tire-making only among the Onondaga of 

 Canada, who used it in making sacred 

 fire for the White-dog feast; but the 

 pumji drill is of little practical use in fire- 

 making. From the Onondaga also there 

 is an example of the fire plow like that 

 of the Polynesians, in which a stick is 

 held at an angle between the hands and 

 rubbed back and forth along a plane sur- 

 face, cutting a groove in which the wood 

 meal produced by friction igitnes. The 

 appearance of these diverse methods in 

 one tribe, in an area where the simple 

 drill was common, leads to the assump- 

 tion that they are of recent introduction. 

 There is no other evidence that the fire 

 plow ever existed in the western hemi- 

 sphere. 



The wood selected for the fire drill 

 varied in different localities, the proper 

 kinds and qualities being a matter of ac- 

 quired knowledge. Thus the weathered 

 roots of the Cottonwood were used by the 

 Pueblos; the stems of the yucca by the 

 Apache; the root of the willow by the 

 Hupa and Klamath; cedar by the N. W. 

 coast tribes; elm, maple, and buttonwood 

 by the eastern Indians. In some instances 

 sand was place! in the fire cavity to in- 

 crease friction; often two men twirled the 

 drill alternately for the purpose of saving 

 labor or when the wood was intractable. 



A similar discrimination is observed in 

 the selection of tinder. The Eskim© 

 prized willow catkins; the Indians of the 

 N. W. coast used fraved cedar bark; other 



tribes used fungi, softened bark, grass, or 

 other ignitible material. Touchwood or 

 punk for preserving fire was obtained 

 from decayed trees, or some form of slow 

 match was prepared from bark. From 

 the striking of a spark to the well-started 

 campfire considerable skill and fore- 

 thought were required. The glowing 

 coal from the fire drill was usually made 

 to fall into a small heaj) of easily ignitible 

 material, where it was encouraged by fan- 

 ing or blowing until actual flame was pro- 

 duced; or the spark with the small kind- 

 ling was gathered in a bunch of grass or 

 a strip of bark and swung in the air. 



Fire-making formed an important fea- 

 ture of a number of ceremonies. New 

 fire was made in the Green-corn ceremony 

 of the Creeks (see i??«^i-)) the White-dog 

 feast of the Iroquois, the New-fire and 

 Yaya ceremonies of the Hopi, and among 

 many other tribes in widely separated 

 localities. There are also many legends 

 and myths grouped about the primitive 

 method of obtaining fire at will. The 

 Cherokee and other southern tribes be- 

 lieved that a perpetual fire burned be- 

 neath some of the mounds in their coun- 

 try, and the Natchez built their mounds 

 with a view, it is said, of maintaining a 

 jjerpetual fire. On the introduction of 

 flint-and-steel and matches the art of fire- 

 making by the old methods speedily fell 

 into disuse among most tribes and was 

 perpetuated only for procuring the new 

 fire demanded by religious rites. See 

 Drills and DrilUng, Illumination. 



Consult Dixon in Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. 

 Hist., XVII, pt. 3, 1905; Hough in Rep. 

 Nat. Mus., 1888 and 1890. (w. h.) 



First Christian Party. A division of the 

 Oneida at the period of the removal tO 

 Green bay. Wis., and afterward. — Wash- 

 ington treaty (1828^ in U. S. Ind. Treat., 

 621, 1873. 



Fish-eating Creek. A Seminole settle- 

 ment with 32 inhabitants in 1880, situated 

 5 m. from the mouth of a creek that 

 empties into L. Okeechobee, Manatee co., 

 Fla.— MacCauley in 5th Rep. B. A. E., 

 478, 1887. 



Fish-e-more. See Enpishemo. 



Fishhooks. Starting from the simple 

 device of attaching the bait to the end of 

 a line, the progressive order of fishhooks 

 used by the Indians seems to lie as fol- 

 lows: (o)Thegorge hook, aspikeof bone 

 or wood, sharpened at both ends and 

 fastened at its middle to a Una, a device 

 used also for catching birds; (b) a spike 

 set obliquely in the end of a pliant shaft; 

 fc) the plain hook; {d) the barbed hook; 

 (e) the barbed hook combined with sinker 

 and lure. This series does not exactly 

 represent stages in invention; the evolu- 

 tion may have been effected by the habits 

 of the different species of fish and their 



