FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE 67 



to clear lands, and the consequent "human beast of burden" trans- 

 portation problem.^' Doctor Cook observes that there is little or no 

 original forest in this region, and open grass lands not reforested pre- 

 vail as in the prairies (p. 8), giving support to the fire origin of the 

 prairies. 



There are many curious adaptations of fire in husbandry. In 

 Bhutan the bearded wheat which is grown there is tied up in small 

 sheaves. In some places, as in Kepta, they separate the wheat from 

 the straw by burning it, and in Tassisudon they thresh it out with 

 flails.^- 



More primitive still is the removing of husks from seeds by shaking 

 them in a basket with a hot stone, practiced by the Piute Indians. 



TECHNOLOGY 



The great subject of aboriginal fire technology can only be treated 

 in a suggestive way by citing a few notes and observations covering 

 the main features. Fire enters into the major and minor arts in some 

 parts of a process, quite useful but often escaping observation. An 

 example is given in weaving, where to render the thread uniform it 

 is singed. Baskets are sometimes finished in the same way. 



WOOD 



The technology of woodworking by fire has innumerable instances 

 among all peoples. Gross work, such as felling trees, was accom- 

 plished by starting a fire at the base of a tree and by alternate burn- 

 ing and scraping away the charcoal until at last it was felled. In 

 some tropical forests there is no dead timber, it being consumed by 

 termites, and it becomes necessary to use five wood. The Southern 

 Indians bruised and frayed the wood with stone axes, thus rendering 

 the burning easier.®^ They laid on clay to guide the fire. 



Cutting trees into logs was easily done by fire. The writer remem- 

 bers that in West Virginia, in clearing when it was desired to cut logs 

 in two, the settlers laid them across and built a fire at the junction. 

 This was called "niggering off" logs. The necessity of large masses 

 of wood would only arise in primitive society, usually for canoes, 

 wooden vessels, log images, etc. Wherever "dugouts" were made 

 they were hollowed out by fire. 



The writer remembers very well when a boy seeing a long canoe 

 hollowed out by fire at Morgantown, W. Va. The process took some 

 time, but was cheaper than it could have been done with the poor 

 tools available. The canoe was made out of a long tulip log. It was 

 very cranky on the water, as many a boy found to his sorrow. It 



•1 O. F. Cook. Milpa Agriculture, Smithsonian Report, 1919, p. 307. 



»' George Boyle. Narrative of the Mission of George Boyle to Tibet, 1776, p. 64. 



M J. R. Swanton. Bull. 43, Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1911, pp. 66-67. 



