FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTUBE 39 



found among the Yurok Indians of California, who poured uncooked 

 acorn meal into small sand pits dug in the river bank, around which 

 a fire was made until the meal was cooked, then the outside sand was 

 brushed off and the bread was ready to be eaten.'- 



The Cora and Huichol Indians of Mexico use the heated earth oven 

 without rocks. "When a deer is killed and can not be consumed 

 fresh, the carcass is placed in a large hole in the ground, which has 

 first been thoroughly heated, and then covered with grass and 

 branches; the meat thus becomes slowly and thoroughly baked." ®^ 



In 1903, in mounds north of ChiUicothe, Ohio, W. C. Mills disco v- 

 ored traces of a great clambake, in which it is estimated 10,000 mus- 

 sels and game were baked in a pit 4 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep. 

 This was a heated wall pit in which no hot stones were used, and is 

 thus of the Pueblo type. The latter are community ovens consist- 

 ing of a bottle-shaped cavity excavated in the ground and provided 

 with a draught hole. In these great quantities of green corn ears 

 w^ere cooked. The method was to heat the pit, the di'aught hole 

 assisting combustion. When the pit was heated the fire was drawn 

 and corn piled in and the pit closed for 12 hours. The opening of a 

 pit was the occasion of much festivity. Small family ovens with a 

 draught hole, and others consisting of merely a coarse cooking jar set 

 in the ground covered with a stone, are used by the Hopi for cooking 

 mush. The Zuni also have several forms of ingenious pit ovens ^* 

 (pi. 22, figs. 6, 7). 



In the above ground oven we approach the modern developement 

 of this important domestic adjunct in which true baking is effected. 

 The form seen around the Mexican villages and eastern pueblos of 

 the southwestern United wStates are conical or dome shape, the walls 

 of clay several inches in thickness. It has a door at the ground level 

 and a draught hole near the apex. In use it is strongly heated with 

 wood fuel, and when the fire has burned out the ashes are swept 

 away, the bread placed in the oven and the aperture closed. This 

 form of oven is an introduction into Spanish America tlirough Spain, 

 though it resembles in some respects the Mexican temescalli or suda- 

 tory. It is much more satisfactory than the pit oven and the Pueblos 

 who have adopted it regard it as of native origin. The Zuni have a 

 religous functionary called the Demon Inspector of Ovens, who on a 

 stated day yearly with broom in hand, inspects the ovens of the 

 pueblo and inflicts a penalty on those householders whose ovens are 

 dirty. The modern Syrian oven is of this type, but is usually built 

 against the house. The ancient oven of Biblical times was a curious 

 inversion. It was a hollow cylinder of clay with lid. The bread was 



»' Stephen Powers. Cont. Amer. Ethnol., vol. 3, 1877, p. 49-50. 



»-' Ales Hrdlicka. Physiological and Medical Observations, Bull. 34. Bur. Amer. Ethn., 1908, p. 26. 

 »* Frank H. Gushing. Zuni Breadstuff, vol. 8, 1920, Indian Notes and Monographs, Museum of the 

 American Indian, Heye Foundation, v. 304. 



