One of the most marked of fire-making methods in its distribution is
that pursued by the Pacific Islanders, confined almost entirely to the
Polynesian cultural area. It has spread to other islands, however, being
met with among the Negritos of New Britain:
They rub a sharpened piece of hard stick against the inside of a piece
of dried split bamboo. This has a natural dust that soon ignites. They
use soft wood when no bamboo can be procured, but it takes longer to
ignite. The flame is fed with grass.[45]
There is a close connection between the Malay sawing method and this, as
there is a decided Malay preponderance in the make-up of the population
of the Islands.
The fire-sticks shown (fig. 43) were procured by Mr. Harold M. Sewall,
at Samoa, and deposited in the museum by him.
The wood is a light corky variety, probably of the _Hibiscus tiliacus_,
which is used for this purpose at Tahiti, or perhaps it is of the paper
mulberry. The rubber may be of some hard wood, although fire may be made
by means of a rubber of the same kind of wood as that of the hearth,
though no doubt it requires a longer time to make fire if this is done.
In the Sandwich Islands, Mr. Franklin Hale Austin, secretary of the
King, states that the rubber is of _koh_ or _ohia_, that is, hard wood
and the hearth of _hon_, or soft wood, and the friction is always in
soft woods; this is true, I believe, everywhere this method is
practiced, in spite of the fact that a soft rubber on hard wood will
answer as well.
Lieut. William I. Moore, U. S. Navy, gave the writer a complete
description of the manipulation of the Samoan fire-getting apparatus.
[Illustration: Fig. 43. Fire-making Sticks (_a_ Showing Groove).
(Cat. No. 130675, U. S. N. M. Samoa. Deposited by Harold M.
Sewall.)]
The blunt pointed stick is taken between the clasped hands, somewhat as
one takes a pen, and projected forward from the body along the groove at
the greatest frictional angle consistent with the forward motion which
has been found to be from 40 to 45 degrees. Kneeling on the stick the
man forces the rubber forward, slowly at first, with a range of perhaps
6 inches, till the wood begins to be ground off and made to go into a
little heap at the end of the groove; then he gradually accelerates the
speed and moves with a shorter range until, when he pushes the stick
with great velocity, the brown dust ignites. This is allowed to glow and
if it is required to be transferred to dry leaves or chips of wood it is
done by means of a tinder made of frayed or worn tapa cloth.
The groove (fig. 43_a_) is the most characteristic feature of this
apparatus, there being apparently no definite form of implements for
this purpose. Fire is made on any billet of dry wood that is available.
It is not necessary to cut a slot, or even a groove, the hard wood
rubber will form one, so that there is no more need of apparatus than
among the Navajos, where two bits of yucca stalk collected near by form
the fire tools.
That making fire by this way is difficult to those inexperienced in it
is not strange. Mr. Darwin found it quite so, but at last succeeded. The
Samoan gets fire in forty seconds, and so great is the friction and the
wood so well adapted that Mr. Austin, before quoted, says it sometimes
actually bursts into flame.
The Australians in some parts use a method very much like the one
described. They rub a knife of wood along a groove made in another stick
previously filled with tinder.[46]