FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTUBE 133 



made a short speech, which Mr. Atkins supposed to tell what the 

 Great Spirit had told them to do." There followed singing and rat- 

 thng of a tortoise-shell rattle.^' 



The hunter of the Cherokee Indians offers to the fire a piece of meat 

 cut from the tongue of the deer. He rubs his breast also with ashes 

 from his camp fire before lying down to sleep, in order that fire may 

 bring dreams and omens of success. ^- 



Garces observed among the Shoshones of Tulare County, Califor- 

 nia, a particular fire offering: 



"A little while after the service began the wife of the chief arose, 

 took a basket of seed (chico) and scattered it over the Santo Cristo 

 I wore on my breast; the same did other women, and they even 

 threw some of this seed (semilla) on the fire in order that there 

 should be a bright light." ^^ 



Hodge says in a note that "the present Pueblos before eating fre- 

 quently throw a small quantity of food into the fire." 



" In former days the Kansa used to remove the hearts of slain foes 

 And put them in the fire as a sacrifice to the four winds." ^' 



The offering of victims to fire by the ancient Mexicans is well 

 known. 



A fu'e sacrifice in the Shortlands, Solomon Islands, is described by 

 Brown: 



" In building a large house for Gorai, 'devil men,' the natives took 

 pieces of the cooked cuscus and other food and threw them with 

 prayer into a fire. This fire was required to die out of itself. The 

 ceremony is called sisifela."^' 



To rouse or revive fertility, producing crops and food, "the expert 

 would convey the Kapu (the immaterial, imaginary emblem of the 

 material emblematical post) to the ahi taitai, a specially generated 

 iapu fire. At this fire certain ritual was recited over the Eapu in 

 order to make it restore the fertility or productiveness of the land, 

 forest." «« 



SACRIFICE 



This form of fire worship often presents strange phases represent- 

 ing varieties of belief sometimes difficult to classify. A number of 

 these sacrifices are expiatory. At a certain season of the year the 

 Koreans secured images of straw rudely shaped to represent human 

 figures, male and female. Small coins were placed in them and they 

 were thrown away at a prescribed place, torn to pieces by searchers 



" Diary of Quintus F. Atkins. Western Reserve Society, Tract 50, 1891, p. 112 

 M Jame^ Mooney. 7th Ann. Rcpt., Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1891, pp. 370, 372, 392. 

 M Elliott Coues. On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer, 1894, p. 276. 

 M J. Owen Dorsey. 11th Ann. Rept., Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1894, p. 380. 

 » George Brown. Mel-.mesians and Polynesians, 1910 , pp. 203-204. 



•' Elsdon Best. Spiritual and Mental Concepts of the Moari. Dominion Museum Monograph No. 2, 

 WelHngton, New Zealand, 1922, p. 19. 



