THE Amerinds were practically all in the so-called Stone Age of culture; that is, they were unacquainted with the common use of metals. Some tribes worked silver, gold, and copper, to a limited extent and in an ornamental way, and a high authority asserts that the Eskimo have known iron for nine hundred years. Those Eskimo who came in contact with the Northmen on the North-east coasts very likely saw specimens of manufactured iron, and possessed some, nearly a thousand years ago, but it was a bare acquaintance, and this and the limited working of the other metals do not affect the general statement that the Amerinds were practically a Stone-Age people. Even the Maya, with all their varied skill and knowledge superior to any other Amerinds, still used stone tools for carving in stone. They had no way of sufficiently hardening the metals they could secure and their stone tools were far more serviceable. So the tools, weapons, and implements throughout the continent were chiefly wood, bone, and stone, with a few exceptions in Mexico, Central America, and the Mississippi valley. In the last region there was some working of copper obtained from the rich deposits of native metal in northern Michigan,[218] but the main thing they could do with it was to beat and grind it into shape with stones. Arrow-heads, spear-heads, chisels, and knife-blades of copper have been found in the Mississippi and Atlantic regions, but there is no certainty that all of them were made by the Amerinds.[219] The Spaniards and other Europeans were speedily engaged in a considerable traffic with the Amerinds in which copper was an important medium of exchange. Large quantities were therefore early brought into the country from Europe, and we do not always know in what form. It is certain that the traders would try to give it the most attractive shape, and if arrow-heads were found to be good, it would not take long to manufacture them. This is not to say that the Amerind could not have made the implements or copper articles thus far found, but only to question whether he did make all of them.

The chief weapon of all Amerinds was the bow and arrow.[220] The bow was made in a number of ways and of various kinds of wood, and of horn, reinforced as a rule by a backing of sinew. The arrow-shaft was most frequently of service-berry wood when it could be had, and also of reed with a tip of some solid wood. The heads were of chipped stone, or bone, or latterly of bottle-glass, or often, for small-bird shooting, without any head whatever. A few heads were of copper, and in modern times hoop iron is used. Amongst all the Amerind bows that I have ever seen, one made from the horns of a mountain sheep, with a portion of the skull as the central part, was the finest and most graceful. It was exactly the shape of the typical bow wielded by the little god Cupid, and I have always regretted that I did not purchase it at the time, for I have never seen one since. I saw it in southern Utah in 1875.[221]

I have sometimes thought that the bow and arrow were a development from the primitive fire-drill, through the bow-drill and spear. Some day by accident or design perhaps the drill stick sprung from the tightened string, the idea of substituting the spear for the drill stick was suggested, and the greatest invention in its effect on humanity man has yet seen was born.

There are three or four forms of fire-drill, but the palm-drill—that is, the kind that was rotated between the palms of the hands—was the earliest, most widespread, and most compact and portable of all. It consisted of a shaft of wood, or reed with a piece of some harder wood attached to it; or, where the hard wood was not long enough, it was spliced on to another piece of wood. The illustration above shows a drill and hearth I obtained from the Pai Utes of Arizona in 1875. These Amerinds were using such drills for fire-making at that lime. The other portion of the apparatus, the hearth, is made of cedar, or any soft and suitable wood. It has cavities cut into it to receive the rounded, blunt end of the shaft, and on the sides of these cavities a little notch is cut to allow the air to get at the superheated wood dust and to permit the dust to be quickly thrust into the tinder which is placed beside and beneath the hearth. This hearth, which is an inch or so in width and about a quarter of an inch thick, is held securely down by the foot or knee, and the drill stick rapidly revolved back and forth in an upright position, with the lower end in one of the cavities. The revolving motion is secured by the palms of the hands, which are allowed to slide down the shaft to gain downward pressure, each time being brought quickly back to the top for a repetition of the motion, so that it is practically continuous. A pinch of sand is sometimes added to increase the friction and create dust more speedily. The superheated dust, or spark, is skilfully flung into the tinder of moss or rubbed-up bark and a few puffs of breath bring a flame. All the materials are kept very dry, and an expert will secure a fire in a few seconds under favourable conditions.[222] This was the common form of fire-drill throughout the continent. The “new-fire” of the Aztecs,[223] produced at the termination of their fifty-two-year cycle, when all fires were permitted to die out, was obtained with a fire-drill similar to the one described. Even when a tribe had better means of obtaining fire, it would preserve the primitive method in its religious ceremonies. Before the invention of the fire-drill it was of the greatest importance to guard and preserve the fire that had perhaps been procured from a great distance or from some forest conflagration which had passed away. Hence it assumed a sacred character, and those who were entrusted with its preservation were high priests. Eternal fires, or undying fires, were the result at first of the necessity of preserving fire, and later, when the friction-drill was discovered, those who possessed the knowledge of it were correspondingly endowed with power over the remainder.

After the palm-drill comes the string-drill, wherein the drill is operated by means of a cord twisted about it, the ends being pulled back and forth, and the top of the stick being held firm by insertion in a socket, the latter being grasped in one hand or, when there was only one operator, taken in the mouth. The old Eskimo drill is of this description, produced probably because the surroundings compelled swifter and harder revolutions of the stick to obtain the desired results. A further development is the bow-drill, used by the Eskimo and others, where instead of pulling the ends of the string a bent piece of wood, or bow, is attached to them, the movement of which back and forth rotates the stick. This is used with a mouthpiece for a socket. Another form, but one seldom used for fire-getting, is the pump-drill, where the stick connected with the ends of the cord runs across the drill stock, and sometimes has the stock passing through it, the string being so adjusted around the stock that an up-and-down motion of the crossbar imparts a rotary, reciprocating movement to the stock. This is the form used by the Pueblos for stone drilling, etc.[224] The fire-drill entered into the religious ceremonies of most tribes, and, conventionalised in the so-called cross of the Palenque tablet, which is a development, according to Bandelier, of the fire-drill through ornamentation, it puzzled the Europeans, causing them for a time to imagine that Christianity had preceded Columbus to the New World.

To return to the bow again, the length of it varies in different localities. In a densely wooded country, a long bow would often be in the way, and this and other reasons would make it shorter. The average length is about forty inches. The string is made of sinew, well twisted and, at the ends, braided. Arrows are of different kinds in the same tribe: some blunt or with wood points sharpened for bird shooting, or for other small animals; arrows adapted for deer; for large fowl; and others still for heavy game like bison or bear. The head of the game arrow was set in the plane of the string—that is, the notch was quite or nearly in line with the head, and, when adjusted to the bowstring, stood at a slight angle, the bow always being held diagonally across the shooter’s body. The head would thus strike between an animal’s ribs. War arrows, on the other hand, had their notches so placed that the head of the arrow went from the bow in a horizontal position, because the ribs of a man lie that way.[225] It will be seen that the head was not at right angles to the notch, for in that case it would not have been projected horizontally. The adjustment of the notch to produce the desired position would always be regulated by the habit of holding the bow. Since the rifle came into use, little attention probably has been given to this point. The arrow-shaft is round, about a quarter inch in diameter, and from twenty to thirty inches long, though some are longer.[226] Long ones are usually made of reed with a hardwood tip, upon which the head is mounted; this, as noted above, now being of hoop iron. Stone heads formerly were the chief method of tipping the shaft. In 1875 I purchased a number of these from an old arrow-maker of the Pai Ute tribe. The other end of the shaft is feathered. This is done by attaching split feathers to it with the web cut narrow, for the purpose of giving it guidance. This feathering is a distinguishing feature, and an expert can place the maker of an arrow by the style of feathering. Feathers of birds of prey are almost invariably employed. The number is sometimes two, but generally three. They are attached by strands of moist sinew wound around the ends and when the sinew is dry it becomes a smooth firm band. Three zigzag grooves are scratched down the shaft, some say not, as popularly believed, for the purpose of aiding the flow of blood, but because this is the lightning symbol, and is intended to endow the arrow with speed and certainty. But Dorsey says the Omahas told him their object was to increase flow of blood from the wound. Poisoned arrows were made by dipping the points into rotting liver or rattlesnake venom, etc. These were used for war. The arrow-shaft when first made is by no means always straight, but the Amerind invented a piece of horn or stone with perforations through which the heated shaft is drawn till it is straight. See illustration at head of this chapter. Quivers are all very similar in plan also, usually comprising a case for the bow, one for the arrows, and in some tribes a pouch containing arrow-making tools. The Eskimo make their quivers of sealskin, other tribes use cat, deer, panther, otter, etc. The spear doubtless preceded the bow and arrow. It is little used by the interior tribes, but in the form of the harpoon, as well as the regular spear form, is common among the Eskimo and other coast Amerinds.[227]

In armour, the Amerind was inventive, as in everything else, and he devised some excellent means for defence for the body[228]; and borrowed one form, according to Hough, from Asia. His shields were made of wood, basketry, cotton, and rawhide, and were usually circular. The commonest material was rawhide, which was often contracted and hardened by fire, and then covered with buckskin. It was variously ornamented, and the decoration was the outcome of many a religious ceremony conducted according to long-established rules. It was “invariably held on the left arm, usually by a simple thong of buckskin attached to the interior.” Many shields have two covers, each held on by a gathering string. In New Mexico and Mexico some tribes used one that could be shut up like a fan, and the Navajos had one that was made of cedar rods tied together with cords.

The body armour was made of rows of overlapping plates, lashed together, of slats, of rods, of skins, and of cotton padded. The plate armour is the one that was borrowed from Asia; a migration apparently across Bering Strait. The cotton-padded armour was confined to the Amerinds of Mexico and Central America, but the other varieties were distributed over the whole area. In the plate armour, “small, flat, oblong plates of ivory or bone pierced near the edges with from four to six or more holes,” were lashed in series with rawhide thongs. The coat, made in this way of a number of rows, was tied at the back with thongs, or had a toggle fastening. Some of these plates in iron and in copper have been dug up at Cape Prince of Wales and on St. Lawrence Island. This armour is very similar to that of the Japanese, and if it was wholly an imported idea, it was probably a comparatively recent one. The Tlinkits used the slat armour and also a rod armour, the former being made of very hard wood fastened with cords of sinew. A Tlinkit greave has also been found among the collections in the National Museum, so that it is probable that the North-west coast Amerinds protected arms and legs as well as body. The Iroquois are also reported to have used armour of rods both on their limbs and their vital parts. The rod armour was formed by sewing or lacing together with native twine a series of straight slender rods sufficient to pass around the body and tie in front, with places for the arms, and straps over the shoulders. The skin armour was simply a sort of heavy, sleeveless shirt made of thick hide, doubled and reinforced and otherwise rendered as nearly as possible proof against arrow or spear. In Mexico, where the padded cotton armour was chiefly worn, a breastplate of the same material was put on under it. The common Aztec soldiers wore armour of “reeds, grass, and hides, or ’nequen cloth, coated with India-rubber.”[229] Veytia says the “private soldiers painted the upper part of the body to represent armour, but from the waist to the thighs they wore short drawers, and over them fastened around the waist a kind of kilt that reached to the knee, and availed them somewhat for defence. Across the body was a sash made of feathers that passed from the right shoulder to the left side of the waist.”[230] Many Amerinds also wore in conjunction with the various kinds of armour, a helmet, ranging from the feathered war-bonnet to a heavy mask-helmet of wood. The Tarascos of Mexico, according to Brinton, specially excelled in defensive armour, which “consisted of helmet, body pieces, and greaves for the legs and arms, all of wood covered neatly with copper or gold plates, so well done that the pieces looked as if they were of solid metal.”[231] The Mayas wore cotton armour similar to that of the Mexicans, and bore a shield also. Breastplates of copper have been found in the Atlantic region, and many of the Amerinds there used body armour of wood, skins, and bark.

Another kind of defensive armour, though its qualities were purely imaginary, is the so-called “ghost-shirt” (see illustration, page 157) made of cloth or skin, and resembling the ordinary war-shirt of the Dakota. This shirt came into notice during the “Ghost Dance”[232] excitement that began about 1890 and lasted for six or eight years. It was worn by all men, women, and children who accepted the “Ghost” doctrine, either as an outside or under garment, and it was implicitly believed that no bullet or other weapon could penetrate its sacred material.[233] As already remarked in another chapter, the Amerinds in modern times, of at least the United States region, usually went into battle naked. The only defensive armour was, as Mooney records, “his protecting medicine,” which consisted of “a feather, a tiny bag of some sacred powder, the claw of an animal, the head of a bird, or some other small object, which could be readily twisted into his hair or hidden between the covers of his shield.... Its virtue depended entirely on the ceremony of the consecration, and not on size or texture. The war-paint had the same magic power of protection.... The so-called ‘war-shirt’ was worn chiefly in ceremonial dress parades and only rarely on the warpath.”[234] Just when the armour which protected by its intrinsic strength was abandoned for the protection of the “medicine” is not, so far as I am aware, at present known. At one time, it seems quite certain, the material protection of armour was almost universal over the whole of North America, while in our latter day no one ever saw an Amerind fight with armour on. The idea of going into battle nude was that the warrior’s movements were unincumbered, while his “medicine” afforded him ample protection. A Navajo who posed for me for a picture in Arizona described the Navajo manner of going to battle, but never mentioned armour, or any kind of protection. He said they always went naked, with even their hair untied from its customary knot and falling loose on the shoulders.

Stone arrow- and spear-heads are found in all parts of the continent, but they are almost always chipped, seldom ground. Maguire, who has made a special study of this subject, declares chipping to be one of the most difficult of arts. “On examination,” he says, “it is found that every rock has been worked in the best and most economical method which its texture admits.” The usual way of making arrow-heads was to place the bit of stone previously flaked from a nodule or fragment and brought near the shape by percussion, on the palm of the left hand, which is protected by a glove or a piece of buckskin, and hold it there by the fingers of that hand while the right brings a down pressure to bear on the edges by the point of a slender piece of horn or bone. The chips spring off and the operation is continued till the desired shape is attained. I tried this method once on a flake of chalcedony I had picked up, and had no difficulty in bringing it to an arrow-head shape. Maguire has made a great many successfully. Chisels, axes, and mauls were made the same way or were ground into shape, a groove being made in the axes across the sides to receive a split stick that was bound on for a handle. It is almost unnecessary to say, perhaps, that there never could have been a time when all tribes were equally proficient in the art of stone working, some being skilful when others could make nothing.[235]

In this country we know so well the origin of the stone implements found in the fields that we smile when we read of people in Europe treating them as charms and talismans. “When kept in a house they protect it from lightning; the water in which a celt has been boiled is a remedy against rheumatism; and sick cattle are cured by drinking water in which a celt has been placed.” The Amerinds frequently treat them as medicine.[236]

Some tools were produced in the rough at various sites, or workshops, located at the quarries. Those in Ohio described by Moorehead are probably the most extensive in North America, except the obsidian mines of Hidalgo, Mexico. “The magnitude of the deposit is such,” he says, “that it has given to the locality the distinctive name of Flint Ridge.” It occupies an area about eight miles long by three wide. Here thousands of cubic yards of earth had been removed to reach the flint beneath. “Acre after acre has been so thoroughly excavated that scarcely a single foot of earth and stone retains its original position. Hundreds of wagon loads of spalls cover the ground.” One of the pits formed in this extremely hard stone is almost a hundred feet in diameter and more than eighteen feet deep. The method employed was to build a fire on the rock and then throw cold water on the spot till the edge was broken through and they could knock flakes off of the under side with stone hammers. These were put roughly into shape at some nearby spot and then perhaps taken far away to be finished. This flint formed better tools than that found on the surface.[237] Many of the blades were often piled together for some unknown reason. In sinking a well in a corner of a mound in Illinois, eighteen large flint spades were found a few feet below the surface, closely packed together, and Moorehead found in Ohio the largest “cache” ever brought to light. This formed a mound in the Hopewell group, six feet high and sixty feet in diameter at the base, and contained over seven thousand flint discs about the size of a man’s hand.[238]

Some spear-points found are more than a foot long and three inches wide, and they vary from this down to what may be termed large arrow-heads. Some writers claim that only the very small smallest heads were from arrows, but this would vary according to the tribe and the game hunted, just as we have various bores to our rifles. The stone arrow-heads of the Pai Utes twenty-five years ago were small, but the smallest were often attached to the longest arrows. The method of securing the head to the shaft was generally similar everywhere. A notch being cut in the end of the stick, a small quantity of pitch, asphaltum, fish, or animal glue, or cement, was placed in it, warmed, and the stone head squeezed into position, where it was held by wrappings of wet sinew thread which, drying, gave it a firm grip, and yet when moistened by blood would allow the head to come off in a wound. The sinew was variously applied, according to the shape of the head. The triangular head was held on by passing the sinew over the outer edges, while in that with a tang, which went well down into the shaft, the sinew was wound round and round the shaft and over the tang at the same time. All iron heads were made and mounted in the latter way. In the leaf-shaped head with deep notches, the wrapping was thoroughly protected by the depth of the notches through which it passed. The hafting of knives was much like that of arrows and spears, the ordinary stone knife looking much like a spear-head, and probably some implements that are classed as spear-heads were knives instead. Many were double-edged, while others were single. Some of the diminutive stone implements resembling arrow-heads were drill-heads or awls, and also heads for the children’s play-arrows.[239] There is also a great range in the size of the stone axes and hammers, from mere toys to those so large as to be unwieldy. Grooved stone axes are found all over the continent, except in the mounds of Ohio. Like other stone implements, they have often been used successively by various tribes. Those used to-day by the Mokis and Zuñis are some they have found, and they use them as pounders and pestles. Many of the axes and hammers were weapons of war.

The Amerinds were so skilful in the use of stone tools that it is related that in the early days of the West they would skin and dress a deer with a stone almost as quickly as a white man could do it with a hunting-knife. For this purpose they would pick up a thin stone and with a few sharp blows from another stone bring it to a cutting edge. Skins were dressed by scrapers of bone or stone to remove superfluous flesh. Pins were used for stretching them on the ground.

Among the Eskimo the harpoon reached a high state of perfection, and many of their weapons are beautifully made. Bone, wood, and ivory were utilised for the shaft, and a specially unique one was made from the single horn of the narwhal. Spears or lances were also used for land animals before they had firearms. They are now pretty well supplied with the latest Winchester rifles. The harpoon to-day has a blade of thin iron or steel set into an ivory or bone piece which has a hole through it that retains in place a sealskin thong to which a line is attached. The bottom of the ivory piece has a socket in it that fits on to the lance shaft. When the harpoon strikes an animal’s body the head of it then hangs there on the end of the line, coming loose from the shaft. There are various forms of the harpoon for different animals, and they are also of different sizes according to the weight and strength of the owner. Formerly the blades were of slate, jade, or flint. Floats of sealskin inflated are used to mark the place of a capture, so that carcass and harpoon can be easily recovered. The Eskimo had a wolf-killer that was ingenious. A stout piece of whalebone, about a foot long and half an inch broad, was sharpened at the ends and then frozen in a piece of blubber in a Z shape. The wolf swallowing it, its own heat released the whalebone, which penetrated the sides of the stomach and killed the animal. Each tribe had a varied assortment of implements according to locality and occupation, and it would not be possible even to mention them all in a single chapter, so I shall give only the most important. The bird spear of the Eskimo is a singular weapon. The shaft is laid on a short board fifteen to eighteen inches long, which has a groove to receive the shaft, a handle, and a hole for the first finger. A spike in the shaft prevents slipping, and when the board is hurled forward by a strong wrist motion, the fingers let go the shaft, which, leaving the board, flies forward to the mark with considerable force. These spears are also used by the Aleuts. The Eskimo also use for bird killing six or seven ivory balls, each attached to a string about thirty inches long, the ends of the strings being supplied with tufts of feathers. The balls spread apart in flying through the air and cover a wide space. For war all tribes had clubs and tomahawks. The Mexicans used some with blades of obsidian set in both edges.

In the line of throwing weapons is the pūtchkohu of the Mokis, a first cousin to the Australian boomerang. It is effective at thirty or forty yards, but does not return. It is a flat piece of curved oak, sawed out of a bend of a limb, about twenty inches long, one quarter to one half inch thick, and two inches wide, with a small handle at one end. It is thrown with the concave side forward.

Nets were used for fishing and for hunting. The Pai Utes made a good net of cord, from milkweed or sagebrush bark, about as thick as telegraph wire. It was about fifty feet long and three feet broad, and was propped up on the ground on a number of slender rods, one net being joined to another’s end until a large semi-circle was formed into which rabbits from a large area were frightened by noises. Caught in the meshes, they were soon despatched by their pursuers. Many Amerinds used nets for fishing, and the Eskimo make a fine, strong one of sealskin, with which they catch the seal itself as it rushes after prey in the waters near some beach where the net is stretched. I obtained one that is fifty feet long and about six feet wide, with meshes seven inches square.

For agricultural operations the Amerinds had various tools, which, though primitive, answered the requirements. Of the plough, or anything approaching it, they had no knowledge, the hoe being their chief implement. This was made of flint, the shoulder-blade of a deer or other animal, a turtle shell or some similar object. Spades were also made, often of wood, and in the Mississippi region of flint, but these are seldom found in the Atlantic division. In the Moki country corn is still planted with a dibble, a stick sharpened at one end and having on one side a projection to receive the foot, which pressed it into the soil. Having cultivated a crop of maize, the grain had to be reduced to meal before it would serve for winter use, and for this purpose mortars of wood and stone were used, and also the metates, or mealing stones. Other substances besides corn were also ground in the mortars, as seeds of grass, dried fish, nuts, grasshoppers, paint, etc. Sometimes natural depressions in rocks were utilised, but oftener small bowlders were worked into the desired shape and stone pestles were wrought out to accompany them. The cavity was of various depths. Those tribes growing little corn made mortars neither large nor deep, and some, like the Pai Utes, growing no corn at all, ground their grass seeds on a flat stone, while those relying chiefly on corn for food, like the Pueblos and the Mexicans, in the early days made large oblong mortars, of hard basalt cut out to a depth of six or eight inches, with sides not more than an inch and a half or two inches thick. While these were really mortars, the grain was not pounded in them, but crushed and rubbed into meal by means of another stone, flat and oblong, about four and a half inches wide and some ten inches long and an inch or two thick. When the Pueblos and Mexicans settled in permanent houses they departed from the old way of hollowing out these stones, and used instead a flat slab, set up at an angle of about thirty-five degrees in a frame of slabs of stone, or of wood, about six or eight inches deep. Several of these slabs were fixed in a row, usually three, and were each made to produce different degrees of fineness by the girls behind till at the last stone, or metate,[240] as they are usually called, the meal was of the required condition. See page 194. The Eastern Amerinds usually pounded their corn with stone pestles in wooden mortars. Some Western tribes used the same method. Diminutive mortars were used for preparing face paints, while others were children’s toys. The so-called cupped-stones have sometimes been supposed to be paint mortars, but, as pointed out in a previous chapter (p. 66), they may have been mostly used for roughing and shaping the ends of fire-drills.

The Navajos carve moulds for their silver casting in sandstone, and it seems likely that some of the so-called stone tablets, inscribed with figures that are not clearly defined, may have been nothing more than moulds, in those regions, at least, where it is known that copper or other metals were worked.[241]

The spindle and loom, which belong among the implements and tools enumerated here, have already been described in connection with weaving and they will now be passed by. The tools used in metal working will be mentioned in a following chapter.

Household utensils were made of various materials, of which earthenware, as noted in the chapter on Pottery, was one of the chief. There were also trays, boxes, buckets, and cups of wood. Others were of whalebone, sealskin, soapstone, and ivory. Spoons were made from the horns of the mountain sheep, from those of goats, and from bison horns. Some of these spoons, made of horn by the North-west coast Amerinds, are elaborately carved and polished. Clam, oyster, conch, and turtle shells also served for ladles and spoons. Drinking cups, dippers, water-bottles, and other vessels were made of gourds. Metallic cups or pots have not been found antedating the arrival of the Spaniards. Soapstone vessels, as well as earthenware, were made and used in the Atlantic region; soapstone by the Eskimo. Quarries exist where the material was obtained, especially in the Chesapeake-Potomac tidewater region. Special pick-like stone tools were made for cutting out these pots and masses. The Eskimo, who once ranged down as far as the mouth of the Hudson and possibly farther, may have originally opened up some of these quarries.

In the line of utensils, the Eskimo lamp, is, perhaps, one of the most important and unique.[242] No other Amerinds had anything of the kind. It was a necessity with the Eskimo, while tribes living in wooded regions would have no use for it. They could obtain light from camp-fires, especially with the addition of pitch pine. But the Eskimo lamp is primarily a heating apparatus. What need then for Amerinds, who had wood, to bother with a lamp, for which oil must be prepared? Besides this consideration was the one of cleanliness, for the lamp is very dirty, and even Amerinds have standards. “Far more remarkable than being the unique possessors of the lamp in the Western Hemisphere,” says Hough, “the Eskimo present the spectacle of a people depending for their very existence upon this household belonging. Indeed, it is a startling conclusion that the lamp has determined the occupancy of an otherwise uninhabitable region by the Eskimo, or, in other words, the distribution of a race.”[243] When fuel can be obtained, which is the case often in summer, fires are used instead of the lamp. This fuel is peat, grass, driftwood, or shrubs. The lamp is generally of soapstone, though some have been made of clay, earthenware, bone, or wood. The usual shape is something like a clam shell, though they are sometimes oval or pear-shaped, or round. They are modified in form according to the use required of them, the traveller’s lamp being much smaller necessarily than the ordinary lamp of the iglu. The lamps vary in length from two or three inches to about two feet, and in width from one half inch to nine or ten inches, while the height is from less than an inch to four or five. The smallest specimens are toy lamps of the children, and the next in size the traveller’s lamp. Small lamps are often balanced but the large ones are not, but are supported by a wooden block or by pegs of wood or bone stuck into the snow. The shallow hollow of the lamp is filled with seal oil, which is obtained in winter by freezing the blubber, when the oil can easily be extracted by beating; in summer often by chewing it out. The wick is of moss and is arranged along the wide side of the lamp. It has to be trimmed frequently, but when kept in good order gives a bright illumination which Schwatka declared to be “certainly equal to the light from three or four kerosene lamps.” The oil is kept in sealskins, which are made into bottles by sewing, and the comfort and cheerfulness of the iglu during the long night depend on the stock of oil which the family has been able to secure. The farther north, the larger the lamp, because the darkness is longer and the cold greater. Vice versa, southward it finally disappears.