592 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



Accompanying fire worship, or more accurately speaking the 

 worship of the magic power of life as exemplified in fire, is its cura- 

 tive power, claimed by those who maintain that since they are able 

 to create fire they can likewise control it. Certain fire priests, as 

 the Yaya, practice healing and claim they are able to cure diseases 

 due to fire by this control. As fire and heat are both manifestations 

 of life, certain skin diseases where the body shows more than normal 

 heat belong to the category of those diseases that the Yaya claim to 

 cure. Their method is simple. They offset the magic power of fire 

 on the human body by the application of their power by means of 

 charcoal or ashes applied to the part affected. These remedies being 

 prophylactic are in some instances curative, but to their minds the cure 

 is effected by sympathetic magic rather than by scientific medicine ; 

 the true explanation of the cure being, of course, the influence of the 

 mind of the patient over his body. 



The incredible stories told by these Yaya priests, in which they 

 recount their mastery of fire, find a fertile soil for exaggeration in 

 the imagination of the hearers. The demonstrations of the priests 

 who make the fire are such that the wonderful stories that they 

 can control fire are readily believed, and these stories lose none 

 of their wonder in transmission from one age to another. 



The weird nature of the dances that were formerly celebrated about 

 the fire, after it was kindled in the open, may be judged from the ac- 

 companying figure (pi. 1) of the Navaho fire dance, reproduced from 

 Doctor Washington Matthews' Mountain Chant. The Hopi and 

 Tewa both say that in former days, in the performance of similar 

 dances in the open, they even excelled the Navaho fire dance, which I 

 can without difficulty believe. 



Fire worship is intimately associated with sun worship, and the 

 association of solar and fire worship is very natural in the un- 

 tutored mind of primitive man, since the sun is the great source 

 of fire and light, as well as the father of all life. Its relation to 

 the generation of life leads to an examination of the elemental 

 power of the earth. The earth is regarded as the mother of all, 

 expressed in the term "Mother Earth." In their conception, the 

 earth power existed in most ancient time, so ancient, in fact, that 

 its creation figures little in Hopi legends. Myths of the origin 

 of the earth deal with a personation of the Earth or Germ God, 

 known under various names, as Muyinwu and Alosaka. These 

 beings repeatedly occur in mythology and afford data worth ex- 

 amination. 



The Hopi have two new fire ceremonies, one in November, the 

 other at or near the summer solstice. The most elaborate, or No- 

 vember new fire ceremony, has an abbreviated and an extended 



