FIRE WORSHIP FEWKES. 609 



nected with fire. Whether fire was conserved in this pit is as yet in 

 doubt, but the existence of a fire temple among the cliff dwellers im- 

 plies an even more highly complicated fire ritual than among the 

 Hopi, their more or less modified survivors. It might be added that 

 several fire drills have been found in the debris of cliff dwellers' 

 rooms and that one of the fire hearths was found in a cave near Fire 

 Temple last summer. These implements are identical with those still 

 used in the kindling of the new fire at Walpi. The discovery of this 

 fire temple (pi. 13) opens a new page in cliff dweller culture, but wc 

 must await new explorations of our cliff house areas for varieties in 

 architecture or other forms of new fire temples before we can deter- 

 mine the nature and extension of the new fire cult. 



Mr. Frazer makes the following suggestions regarding the origin 

 of the Aztec fire ceremonial that are pertinent. He rightly styles it 

 " one of the most striking ceremonies the world has ever witnessed. 

 That the fire worship of Mexico, for all its gorgeous and awful 

 pageantry, sprang from the fire on the domestic hearth may be in- 

 ferred from the Mexican custom, like the old Italian, Greek, Sla- 

 vonic, and modern Hindu custom, of throwing food and drink into 

 the fire before a meal. The same primitive offering to the fire was 

 common among the savage redskins who never developed an elaborate 

 religious ritual like that of barbarous Mexico." It was a custom 

 among the Hopi up to 20 years ago, and maybe to-day, to make an 

 offering of food and meal to the hearth before certain secular and 

 religious feasts. One of the instances in which this custom has sur- 

 vived is in the feasts following the great ceremonies. 



There are several of the great Hopi festivals in which we find 

 traces of the fire cultus, but a consideration of these would extend 

 this article to undue proportions. It is, however, instructive to call 

 to mind that in the biennial snake dance at Walpi prayer-sticks are 

 made and deposited in the shrine of the Fire God. These offerings 

 to this supernatural show the ancient influence of this cult, for the 

 snake dance is one of the most archaic rites of the Hopi. As there is 

 in this startling festival an absence of worship of elemental powers, 

 as the sky and earth, it may be that the reverence here given to the 

 Fire God is simply another form of the widely diffused worship of 

 the power of fertilization and growth of life, or life itself, which 

 permeates the whole ritual. Fire worship is believed to be the oldest 

 cult of the Hopi Indians, possibly antedating sun and earth worship, 

 dating back to the dawn of culture, to an epoch long anterior to the 

 time when their ancestors came to the deserts of northern Arizona. 



The fire cult and that of the sun among the pueblos are survivals 

 of two forms of element worship that we can trace back into the past 

 and through archeology know something of their prehistoric charac- 

 42803°— 22 39 



