Page:Firemaking Apparatus in the U.S. National Museum.djvu/63

 FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS. surface for very obvious reasous. This gives tlie shape seen in Fort Simpson and Long Barrows specimen. Mr. Murdocli says that the Es- kimo think that pyrites comes down from above in meteors. They call it " firestone." A native related that in old times they did not use flint, but two pieces of pyrites, and got '4)ig fire.^^ The flint (fig. 40, 4) is an oblong piece of chert, square at the base and rountled at the forward end. It is more elaborately made than the flakes so numerous in Europe, one of which was found with the piece of pyrites in the English Barrows. The Mackenzie River scraper is more like the curved ancient one (fig. 44&). In most cases the flints used are not mounted in a handle; this specimen, however, is fixed in a handle made of two pieces of wood held together by a thong of seal- skin (fig. 40, 4a). The bag (fig. 45, 2) is made of reindeer skin. The little bag that hangs from the larger has a double use; it is a receptacle for reserve tinder, but its chief use is for a toggle ; being passed under the belt it prevents the loss of the outfit, which is said to be carried by the women. An oblong pad, stuffed with deer hair, is sewed to the mouth of the fire-bag to i)rotect the hand from sparks and blows of the flint. To get a spark, the Eskimo places (tig. 47) the piece of pyrites on the pud held in the left hand over the curved forefinger, the large end down and the thumb set in the cup shaped cavity in the top. The flap of the tinder pocket is turned back and held on the forefinger under the protecting pad. The flint is ^i held in the right hand and by a scrap- ing motion little pieces of pyrites at a dull red heat fall down into the tinder. The pellet that glows is transferred to the pipe or fire, and the flap of the tinder pocket is turned down, serving to keep the tinder dry and to extinguish it if necessary.* There comes in here appropriately a note of B. R. Ross on the burial customs of the Kutchin Indians of the eastern Athapascan stock. He says : They bury with the dead a flint fastened to a stick, a stone to strike it on (pyrites) to make fire, and a piece of the fungus that grows on the birch tree for tinder and some touch-wood also.t There is no mention of this process of fire-making by the older writers Fis 47. Method of TTsino the Stkike-a-light. ( Cat. So. 12840.'>, U. S. N. M. Dr.iwiiig by V. H. Burger. " Extracted from ati article by the author in Proceediugs U. S. National Museum, XI, 1888, 181-4. t Smithsopjau Rerort. 186G. p, Si^G,