600 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



Similar fireboards have often been figured without slots on the 

 side of the pit. This slot is essential and is necessary to kindle the 

 fire successfully, as through it the spark falls on the tinder placed 

 under the board. The fire when kindled is sacred and must not be 

 polluted by secular use; no one may light a pipe or cigarette from 

 it; it is customary for the priests to deposit the ashes of the new 

 fire in a special place, and when that is done prayer meal is sprinkled 

 upon these. These ashes are carried in fragments of watermelon 

 rind. The fuel used in the fireplace to feed the sacred flame is also 

 prescribed. The sacred fire is borne from one sacred room to another 

 or to the four shrines, north, west, south, and east, by means of a 

 torch 15 made of cedar bark. 



Every man on the East Mesa belongs to one of four fraternities 

 that take part in the ceremonial kindling of the fire. Two of these 

 serve as chorus, while the other two rotate the drills. The same so- 

 cieties celebrate the sun serpent drama at the winter solstice at 

 Walpi, which, of course, is significant and incidentally shows the 

 southern origin of the rite. 



The Fire God is the chief supernatural being personated at this 

 time. It was my good fortune to study this personation in the winter 

 ceremony, and a description of him and his acts at that festival is 

 important in a revelation of his characteristics. 



The advent of the Fire God to which I refer occurred at night 

 and on the evening when this being appeared all fires in the pueblo 

 were extinguished, doors of the houses were closed and everyone, espe- 

 cially children, retired to the rear rooms and not a person was seen 

 on the street. Word was passed around the day before that all 

 should keep indoors, as it was bad to look upon this personage as he 

 passed through the pueblo. The priests gathered in the kivas to 

 await his arrival. In the kiva two helmet masks made of a huge 

 undecorated gourds painted black lay on the floor awaiting the ad- 

 vent of the men who were to wear them. The surface of these 

 masks was undecorated but covered with glistening micaceous 

 hematite. 



The Fire God was represented (pi. 8, fig. 7, an) when the fire was 

 kindled in the new fire ceremony in November. At that time he was 

 unmasked and personated by a man concealed behind a blanket held 

 by two assistants. When the new flame had been transferred to the 

 fireplace the blanket that concealed him was dropped and he stepped 

 forward and dropped his offering of pine needles into the sacred 

 flame, an act followed by all the associated priests. 



15 Similar torches have been repeatedly found in cliff dwellings. From a square room 

 on the plaza above Kiva B in Square Tower House, Mesa Verde National Park, I dug out 

 about a half dozen of these torches. 



