Around it
social life begins. For his home and his hearth the savage has but one
word, and what of tender emotion his breast can feel, is linked to the
circle that gathers around his fire. The council fire, the camp fire,
and the war fire, are so many epochs in his history. By its aid many
arts become possible, and it is a civilizer in more ways than one. In
the figurative language of the red race, it is constantly used as "an
emblem of peace, happiness, and abundance."[140-1] To extingish[TN-5] an
enemy's fire is to slay him; to light a visitor's fire is to bid him
welcome. Fire worship was closely related to that of the sun, and so
much has been said of sun worship among the aborigines of America that
it is well at once to assign it its true position.
A generation ago it was a fashion very much approved to explain all
symbols and myths by the action of this orb on nature. This short and
easy method with mythology has, in Carlylian phrase, had its bottom
pulled from under it in these later times.
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