Page:Firemaking Apparatus in the U.S. National Museum.djvu/21

Rh and, despite the assurances and belief of the Iroquois, is not very ancient, but was perhaps suggested by the white man. Indeed, Pere Lafitau, that keen and careful observer, in his "Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains," written in 1724, on page 242, gives a description of Indian fire-making that includes the Iroquois. He says:

Then follows a description of fire-making, taken probably from the Iroquois, that is as good an account of the Indian apparatus and the way of working it as exists in the literature of the subject.

The drill was sufficient for its time for the reason that there was at that period rarely necessity for generating fire; the art of fire preservation was at its height.

The Cherokees, the most southerly of the Iroquois, Mr. James Mooney states, kept fire buried in the mounds upon which the council houses were built, so that if the house was destroyed by enemies the fire would remain there for a year or so. The Cherokees use the simple rotation apparatus, and, as far as Mr. Mooney can ascertain, never used the pump-drill. They have a tradition that fire originally came out of an old hollow sycamore tree (Platanus occidentalis).

Capt. John Smith tells how the Indians of Virginia made tire. He says:

Writing in the first quarter of the next century, Beverley says:

Loskiel says of the Delawares:

The Cherokees used for a drill the stalk of a composite plant (senecio), and twirled it on a piece of wood. The art has long been out of common use, but they employed the wooden drill to make fire for the Green Corn Dance into the present century, though flint and steel was then in vogue. Sometimes they passed the bow over drill. The tinder was of a fungus or dried moss. Mr. James Mooney collected this information from some of the older men of the tribe in North Carolina, who have retained the ancient customs and traditions, which the part of the tribe removed to the West has entirely lost.

The Creeks (Muskogean stock) had a regularly authorized fire-maker, who early in the morning made fire for the Green Corn Dance. The