How the Chumash Made Fire
It is not clear whether Doug Smith misunderstood or Ranger Dennis Hamm is misinformed, but the bow-driven fire drill demonstrated on a mountain hike (Sept. 30) is not a Chumash tool. As a matter of fact, the venerable bow type fire drill was unknown to the native Californians.
California fire makers used a hearth in which a dowel-like shaft or drill was mated, then rotated or spun between the palus, while maintaining constant downward pressure: a neat trick. The trick, by the way, is so neat that I know of only one living fire driller. He performs summers at Yosemite, and making fire is but one of the demonstrations in his first-rate native repitoire.
A bow fire drill exhibited for some years as a Chumash artifact at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History was removed from the display when the then curator of anthropology, Dr. D. T. Hudson, discovered a mixup in acquisition records and placed it in storage with other Pueblo or Southwest Indian artifacts.
California Boy Scouts drill fire with bows. The natives did not!
RICHARD CUNNINGHAM
North Hollywood
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