FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS. 549 



on ethnology, as to the general use of the bow-drill among the Indians. 

 In mentioning that the Sioux use the bow-drill, Schoolcraft is quoted as 

 authority. As a matter of fact the reference is to a " made-up" figure 

 of a bow-drill set, marked " Dacota." On the same plate there is a 

 representation of an Iroquois pump-drill that is obviously wrong. The 

 lower part of the plate is taken up by a picture of an Indian woman 

 (presumably Californian) pounding acorns in a mortar. To complete 

 the absurdity the whole plate is entitled '^ Methods of obtaining fire 

 by percussion," and is placed in the text of a questiomiaire on the Cali- 

 fornian Indians, opposite a description of the Californian way of mak- 

 ing fire by twirling two sticks.* 



Mr. Schoolcraft is not to blame for this state of affairs ; in those days 

 illustrations were not ethnological, they were " padding" gotten up by 

 the artist. Nowhere in his great work does Mr. Schoolcraft describe 

 either the Dacota or Iroquois drill. Among the northern Indians in 

 central and northern Canada, however, the bow is used. 



Sir Daniel Wilson, in his work on Prehistoric Man, notes that the 

 Red Indians of Canada use the drill bow. In August, 1888, at the meet- 

 ing of the American association, at Toronto, he gave an account of the 

 facility with which these Indians make fire. He said that at Nipissing, 

 on the north shore of Lake Superior, while he was traveling in a pour- 

 ing rain, and not having the means wherewith to light a fire, an Indian 

 volunteered to light one. He searched around for a pine knot and for 

 tinder, rubbed up the soft inner bark of the birch between the hands, 

 got a stick from a shelterpd place, made a socket in the knot and another 

 piece of wood for a rest for the drill, tied athong to a piece of a branch 

 for a bow. He put the tinder in the hole and rested his breast on the 

 drill and revolved it with the bow and quickly made fire. 



It is perhaps true that some of the Dacotas did use the bow at times, 

 but it is not correct to j)lace it as the customary tool of the whole stock. 

 On the contrary, there is evidence that they used the simple means. 

 Dr. J. Owen Dorsey writes : 



I was told in 1879 by the late Joseph La Fleche, that the Omahas, prior to the ad- 

 vent of the white men, made fire by using pieces of the " du-i-dn-ii-hi," a grass (?) 

 that grows in the Sand Hill region of Nebraska, near the sources of the Elkhorn 

 River. One piece was placed horizontally on the ground, and a slight notch was cut 

 at one end, wherein a few grains of sand were put. The other stick was held be- 

 tween the jialms of the hands, with one end in the notch of the horizontal stick, and 

 then rolled first in one direction then in the other till fire was produced. A fresh 

 notch was made in the first stick whenever the old one became useless, and so on un- 

 til it became necessary to procure a new stick. 



In the Green Corn Dance of the Minitaries, another Siouan tribe, the 

 " corn is boiled on the fire, which is then put out by removing it with 

 the ashes and burying them. New fire is made by desperate and pain- 

 ful exertion, by three men seated on the ground facing each other and 

 violently drilling the end of a stick into a hard block of wood by roll- 



* Schoolcraft.— Indian Tribes. 18r)l-60. in, PI. 28. 



