398 



REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



«R> 



Fig. 54. 

 Iuoquois Pump Duii.l fou Making Pike. 



(Cat. No. 150403, U. S. N. M. Onondagua Indians, Canada. Collected 

 by J. N. B. Hewitt.) 



This pump-drill is said to have been used in making new fire in the 

 white-dog feast of 1888 by the Onondagua Iroquois of Canada. Elm 



wood is employed. Some- 

 times a sapling with a straight 

 tap root was selected and 

 dressed dowu, leaving the 

 large portion at the junction 

 of the root and stem for a 

 fly-wheel. 



Although one person can 

 manipulate this apparatus, 

 others usually assist. 



Essential points in wooden 

 fire-making apparatus. — There 

 are several points about the 

 lower member of the wooden 

 fire drill that are worthy of 

 consideration. It will be ob- 

 served in Fig. 54 that the 

 spindle is cutting on one edge 

 of the hearth and the dust 

 has run out through a slot down the side into a little heap. 



This canal collects the particles worn off by the spindle and also 

 keeps the air away for a short time. This feature, or something anal- 

 ogous, is found, one may say, in every fire-making device that depends 

 ou the friction of wood. The dust must be m such mass and confined 

 in one place, so that the heat may be fostered until it ignites the 

 powder. 



In Eskimo apparatus fire is usually made in the middle of a block of 

 wood (1) in cavities along a groove that collects the wood meal; (2) 

 in holes that overlap by connecting holes ; or (3) in cavities that have 

 cauals leading to a step. These devices are to prevent the dust falling 

 off into the snow. 



It appears that some hearths do not possess this feature. The Torres 

 Straits Islanders and the natives of Queensland do not make the slot 

 in the drill-hole.* The Aino drill-hearth, the fire-making set from East 

 Greenland, and one set from Alaska figured in the Smithsonian Report 

 (1888, pt. ir, pp. 551, 558, and plate lxxviii, respectively) show no 

 grooves or canals. The Amos require 2 to 2£ hours to make fire on 

 their apparatus, and the spark at last is caught by sucking a current 

 of air through the porous spindle. This poiuts markedly the difficulty 

 of making fire without the groove. The drawing of the Eastern 

 Greenland outfit is rather obscure in the plate from which the illus- 

 tration was taken. The artist, as is often the case in ethnological 

 drawings, probably omitted some details. If the Eskimo, according to 



* Prof. A. C. Haddoii, Jour. Anthrop. lust., Great Britain aud Ireland, xix, May 4, 

 1890, p. 451. 



