I 



142 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



PERPETUAL FIRE 



There was thought to be much virtue in the perpetuation of fire. 

 Many cults, ancient and modern, kept up fire altars with jealous care 

 lest the precious guardian of the well-being of the people should 

 go out and cause various dreaded calamities. In this custom has 

 been seen the idea of the association of the continuity of life 

 with the continuit}^ of fire. In ancient philosophy this effort at 

 rationalization often appears. It is a normal generalization to 

 associate warmth with life. On the other hand, it is allowable to 

 see in the perpetuation of fire a survival from the period before the 

 art of making fire artificially was known, when the preservation of 

 fire was essential. This is the opinion of Mr. Frazer and other stu- 

 dents. So often is the custom of perpetual fire met with in studies of 

 all ages and tribes that whatever its origin or idealization it must be 

 regarded as a central phenomenon in man's association with fire. 

 Wliile the cult of perpetual fire is dedicated to a certain being or to 

 many of the spiritual world, the family fire partakes of some of its 

 characteristics. In folk customs the long-maintained fire has been 

 perpetuated up to the present. 



"In the middle of the hut of the first chief [Thonga, South Africa] 

 a perpetual fire burns, and it must never be allowed to go out. It 

 must be fed with special wood provided by a certain clan. It is ta- 

 boo to take embers from this fire. Should it go out it must be cere- 

 monially made by rubbing two sticks by the magician. The hut 

 and chief's wife, keeper of the sacred fire, are taboo." ' 



The Osage Indian sacred fire is in the house of the chief and is 

 placed midway between the two doors. Fire taken therefrom by the 

 people to start their house fires was thought of as holy and as having 

 power to give life and health to those who used it. It was called 

 the gentle or peaceful fireplace, in contrast with seven fireplaces of 

 each of the three divisions which were dedicated to war and associ- 

 ated with violence and death.^ This fire is not in the class of per- 

 petual fires, but the term sacred fire is figurative. 



The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona do not maintain 

 the perpetual fire, and there is no reliable evidence that they ever 

 did. Writers have attributed the custom to them on account of 

 supposed similarities of the Pueblos with the Mexicans, and at an 

 era when the romantic aura of Montezuma clothed everything 

 Pueblo. By a mistranslation of the Spanish word estufa applied to the 

 meeting place of the clan fraternities it became among other things, 

 which it is not, a bathhouse. The fireplace of the estufa or Hopi 

 kiva is as often cold as not, fire being laid on it when ceremonies are 



' Extracted from The Life of a South African Tribe, vol. 1, 1913, p. 364. 



• Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche. The Osage Tribe, 36th Ann. Rept., Bur. Amer. Ethnol.. 

 1921, p. 69. 



