FTEE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE 23 



ceiise, where a few holes pierce the sides of the primitive pottery 

 ceiisers. It was customary to put in the vessels coals and throw 

 upon them the i^^ense. In many cases the gums used have a tend- 

 ency to smother the coals, and this exigency was met by air holes 

 to keep the coals alive. The rudest censers in America, employed 

 by the Lacandone Indians of Mexico, figured by Dr. Alfred M, Toz- 

 zer, had no provision for draught ." 



A slight draught was induced in many of the simple fire basins, 

 especially those with projections on the rim, when a vessel was set 

 on the projecting supports. There would be a sHght current of 

 heated gases and returning air through the openings caused by 

 the holding of the vessel away from the wall of the stove by the 

 projections. This draught evidently would not be sufficient to 

 cause the installation of vessel and stove to be of more than limited 

 utihty, and side draught holes and under draught would follow. 



In a censer from Carmen, on the coast of Honduras, of the goblet 

 type, with mask on the edge of the rim, there is a small hole in the 

 center of the bottom and two holes on opposed sides of the bowl. 

 These orifices are small and they would appear to be of limited value 

 in furnishing draught, but that is evidently the design. The small 

 pottery fire pots of the Tule Indians of the San Bias coast, Panama^ 

 have a number of draught holes in the bottom. These are figured in 

 the chapter on stoves. 



The circular underground rooms called kivas, used by the ancient 

 Pueblo tribes for ceremonial piu-poses, required some method of ventila- 

 tion. ^® The fire built in the fireplace on the floor of the kiva and the 

 presence of numbers of celebrants would vitiate the air to a dangerous 

 degree at times. As pointed out, the tipi or lodge has a smoke hole 

 at the apex and a door in the side, thus functioning as a stove. The 

 circular kiva of the ancient peoples of the northern part of the Pueblo 

 region had a flue running under the floor from near the fireplace to 

 the wall, where it connected with an upright flue on the exterior 

 (Bonito and other Chaco Canyon ruins); or the outside flue opened 

 into the kiva at the floor level (San Juan region) . Another feature 

 of this installation is a deflector or screen of stone, wattle, or adobe 

 in front of the fire, whose function appears to be the diversion of the 

 draught. In the history of ventilation this feature of the ancient 

 circular kivas may be considered a great advance. Such kivas have 

 been uncovered in prehistoric sites and they show the use of draught 

 ventilation in America at an indefinite time before 1540. Modern 

 kivas have no such device, and for this reason it must be concluded 

 that the knowledge of the ventilating flue passed out with the people 



** Alfred M. Tozzer. A Comparative Study of the Maya and Lacandones, Arch. Inst. Amer., New York, 

 1907. 



'^J. Walter Fewkes. Ventilators in Ceremonial Rooms, Amer. Anthrop.,new ser., July— Septembe^- 

 1908,pp. 387— 3<>«. 



