Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1905 — Making Fire Indian Fashion. [ARTICLE]

Making Fire Indian Fashion.

“How do the Indians make a fire without matches?” asked a boy whe loved to “play Indian.” Most of tw have heard the answer to this —“the Indians used a flint and steel, as oijr own fathers and mothers did not hundred years ago, and before they had flint and steel they used rubbingsticks.” “We have all read abdlrt bringing fire out of two sticks by rubbing them together, but.” says Ernest Thompson Seton in Country Life In America, “I find that most persons look upon this as a sort of fairy tale, or, if they believe it to be true, they think it so difficult as to be worth ns second thought. AU woodcrafters, I find, are surprised and greatly interested to learn that not only is it possible —it is easy to make a friction fire, if you know how. I have taught many boys and men to do it, and some have grown so expert that they make it nearly as quickly as with the oldfashioned sulphur match. When I fi»at learned from Mr. Walter Hough, win learned from the Indians, it took mo from five to ten minutes to get a blazing fire—not half an hour, as some books have it . But later I got down to a minute, then to thirty seconds, from the time of taking up the rubbingsticks to having a fine blaze; the time in getting the first spark being abort six seconds.”