FIRE WORSHIP OF THE HOPI INDIANS. 



By J. Walter Fewkes, 

 Chief, Bureau of American Ethnology. 



[With 13 plates.] 



As the soul of American ethnology is the story of Indian culture, 

 its evolution is the most important problem before the ethnological 

 student of our aborigines. Preliminary to the study of this evolution 

 is the recognition that Indian culture history is practically the off- 

 spring of American environment and independent of foreign influ- 

 ence save in its beginning. The facts that determine the prehistoric 

 phases of cultural development are discoverable by archeological 

 researches dealing with ancient objective material and modern soci- 

 ological, linguistic, and other survivals. 



In early investigations the study of this material "was largely de- 

 scriptive and in efforts to interpret prehistoric specimens serious 

 mistakes occurred by comparing them with similar material from 

 the Old World or products of an environment that was not American. 

 Our early archeologists often sought to explain American prehis- 

 toric objects and their symbolism by comparison with similar objects 

 from other lands. It was a favorite method to emphasize the resem- 

 blances of Maya ruins and their artifacts to Egyptian antiquities 

 and ascribe their similarities to derivation. This method yielded in- 

 teresting results but not scientific certainties. Not so, however, the 

 study of manners and customs or prehistoric objects of culture still 

 used by living Indians. A knowledge of the material culture and 

 cultural life of modern pueblos is now necessary for one who aspires 

 to add much to our present information concerning the culture of the 

 cliff dwellers and ancient pueblos, and yet up to 18S5 this method of 

 work was little cultivated. The ethnology of the historic Indians 

 now furnishes a necessary preparation for an interpretation of pre- 

 historic remains found in cliff dwellings and ancient pueblos, for there 

 is much material in these ruins which is identical with that still in 

 use or which was in use a few decades ago among living descendants. 

 With some other areas north of Mexico we are not as fortunate as 

 with the pueblos. Take, for instance, the Mississippi Valley. In an 

 interpretation of archeological data as an index to the cultural his- 

 tory of the mound builders, we should know the manners and customs 

 of the historic Indians living in the mound builders' county before 



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