Fire making
Drills
In former times fire was obtained in the method common to so many savages, from the heat developed by the friction of the end of a stick worked like a drill against a piece of soft wood. This instrument was still in use at least as late as 1837,399 but appears to have been wholly abandoned at Point Barrow at the time of the Plover’s visit, though still in use at Kotzebue Sound.400
A native of Nuwŭk one day brought down for sale what he said was an exact model of the ancient fire drill, nióotĭñ. This is No. 89822 [1080], Fig. 282. The drill is a stick of pine 12 inches long, shaped like the shaft of a common perforating drill, brought to a blunt but rounded point. This is worked by a string, without bow or handles, consisting of a strip of the skin of the bearded seal, 40 inches long, and has for a mouthpiece the astragalus bone of a reindeer, the natural hollow on one side serving as a socket for the butt of the drill.401 The point of the drill is made to work against the split surface of a stick of spruce 18 inches long, along the middle of which is cut a gash, to give the drill a start. Three equidistant circular pits, charred and blackened, were bored out by the tip of the drill, which developed heat enough to set fire to the sawdust produced. Tinder was probably used to catch and hold the fire.
Most authors who have treated of the Eskimo have described an instrument of this sort in use either in former times or at the present day.402
Among most Eskimo, however, a bow is used to work the drill. The only exceptions to this rule appears to have been the ancient Greenlanders and the people of Hudson Bay (see the passages from Hakluyt, Crantz, and Ellis, just quoted.) Chamisso, however,403 speaks of seeing the Aleutians at Unalaska produce fire by means of a stick worked by a string making two turns about the stick and held and drawn with both hands, with the upper end of the stick turning in a piece of wood held in the mouth. When a piece of fir was turned against another piece of the same wood fire was often produced in a few seconds. This passage appears to have escaped the usually keen observation of Mr. W. H. Dall, who, speaking of the ancient Aleutians, says: “The ‘fiddle-bow drill’ was an instrument largely used in their carving and working bone and ivory; but for obtaining fire but two pieces of quarz were struck together,” etc.404
I had no opportunity of seeing this drill manipulated, but I have convinced myself by experiment that the stick or “light-stock,” to use Nordenskiöld’s expression, must be held down by one foot, the workman kneeling on the other knee.
Flint and Steel
Fire is usually obtained nowadays by striking a spark in the ordinary method from a bit of flint with a steel, usually a bit of some white man’s tool. Both are carried, as in Dr. Simpson’s time, in a little bag slung around the neck, along with some tinder made of the down of willow catkins mixed with charcoal or perhaps gunpowder. The flints usually carried for lighting the pipe, the only ones I have seen, are very small, and only a tiny fragment of tinder is lighted which is placed on the tobacco. Lucifer matches (kĭlĭăksagan) were eagerly begged, but they did not appear to care enough for them to purchase them. Our friend Nĭkawáalu, from whom we obtained much information about the ancient customs of these people, told us that long ago, “when there was no iron and no flint”—“savik píñmût, ánma píñmût”405—they used to get “great fire” by striking together two pieces of iron pyrites. Dr. Simpson speaks406 of two lumps of iron pyrites being used for striking fire, but he does not make it clear whether he saw this at Point Barrow or only at Kotzebue Sound. Iron pyrites appears to have been used quite generally among the Eskimo. Bessels saw it used with quartz at Smith Sound, with willow catkins for tinder407 and Lyon mentions the use of two pieces of the same material, with the same kind of tinder, at Iglulik.408 Willow catkins are also used for tinder at the Coppermine River.409
No. 89825 [1133 and 1722] are some of the catkins used for making the tinder, which were gathered in considerable quantities at the rivers. They are called kĭmmiuru, which perhaps means “little dogs,” as we say “catkins” or “pussy willows.”
Kindlings
From the same place they also brought home willow twigs, 9 inches long, and tied with sinews into bunches or fagots of about a dozen or a dozen and a half each, which they said were used for kindling fires. (No. 89824 [1725].)
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