540 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



pride in their skill ; to be a quick fire-maker is to achieve fame in the 

 tribe. The.y are fond of exhibiting their art to white travelers in the 

 hope of gain. 



Another form of hearth (fig. 8.) is made of yucca flower stalk, like 

 those of the Apache and ISTavajos. The drill is of tule reed, set with a 

 very hard wood head. It is suggested that the reason for splicing 

 the drill is that the hard wood of the kind used for the head (grease- 

 wood) can not be procured in pieces long enough to make the whole 

 drill. This set is apparently one used as a fixture in the Ute domestic 

 economy, the squaws having to light the fire. The duty is mainly 

 relegated to the females in several other Indian tribes, and among the 

 Eskimo. Mr. Catliu says that the Sioux objected to letting the squaws 

 have their portraits painted, saying that their women had never taken 

 scalps, nor done anything better than make fires and dress skins.* 

 The hearth and drill last figured are respectively 20 and 23 inches 

 long, while in the hunting set (fig. 8) the length is 7 and 18 inches. 



The Wind River Shoshones are also represented (fig. 9). The hearth 

 is of hard wood, rudely hacked out, and rounded. Upon the slanting 

 edge are eight holes, or shallow depressions, prepared for the drill, 

 with notches cut in to meet them from the sides. The drill is a willow 

 branch, 25 inches long, with a hard wood head mortised in, and served 

 with buckskin. It is most probable that sand was used with this set, 

 because, if the parts are not models, it would be necessary to use it on 

 sticks of equal hardness like these. I am inclined to believe that they 

 are models, from their appearance, and from the difficulty of setting up a 

 pyrogenic friction upon them even with sand. They were collected 

 some fifteen years ago by Maj. J. W. Powell. 



The Mokis are the most diiferentiated members of the Shoshonian 

 stock. Mrs. T. E. Stevenson collected the two excellent fire-making 

 sets in the Museum from the Moki Pueblos. The hearth is a branch 

 of the very best quality of soft wood. In one hearth an end has 

 been broken off, but there still remain eighteen tire-holes, showing that 

 it was in use for a long time and highly prized (fig. 10). The drill is a 

 roughly dressed branch of hard wood. It is comparatively easy to make 

 fire on this apparatus. In the set numbered 126,694 these conditions are 

 reversed; the hearth is tolerably hard wood and the drill soft wood. 

 . The Moki fire-tools are used now principally in the estufas to light 

 the sacred flie and the new fire as do the Zuiiis, and the Aztecs of 

 Mexico did hundreds of years ago. They use tinder of fungus or dried 

 grass rubbed between the hands. 



By their language the Zuiii people belong to a distinct stock of In- 

 dians. Their fire-sticks are of the agave stalk, a soft, pithy wood with 

 harder longitudinal fibers, rendering it a good medium for the pur- 

 pose of making fire. 



'SmithsoDian Report. 1885. Pt. ii, p. 723. 



