The myths of creation never represent the sun as anterior to the world, but as manufactured by the "old people" (Navajos), as kindled and set going by the first of men (Algonkins), or as freed from some cave by a kindly deity (Haitians). It is always spoken of as a fire; only in Peru and Mexico had the precession of the equinoxes been observed, and without danger of error we can merge the consideration of its worship almost altogether in that of this element.[143-1]
The institutions of a perpetual fire, of obtaining new fire, and of burning the dead, prevailed extensively in the New World. In the present discussion the origin of such practices, rather than the ceremonies with which they were attended, have an interest. The savage knew that fire was necessary to his life. Were it lost, he justly foreboded dire calamities and the ruin of his race. Therefore at stated times with due solemnity he produced it anew by friction or the flint, or else was careful to keep one fire constantly alive. These not unwise precautions soon fell to mere superstitions. If the Aztec priest at the stated time failed to obtain a spark from his pieces of wood, if the sacred fire by chance became extinguished, the end of the world or the destruction of mankind was apprehended. "You know it was a saying among our ancestors," said an Iroquois chief in 1753, "that when the fire at Onondaga goes out, we shall no longer be a people."[144-1] So deeply rooted was this notion, that the Catholic missionaries in New Mexico were fain to wink at it, and perform the sacrifice of the mass in the same building where the flames were perpetually burning, that were not to be allowed to die until Montezuma and the fabled glories of ancient Anahuac with its heathenism should return.[144-2] Thus fire became the type of life. "Know that the life in your body and the fire on your hearth are one and the same thing, and that both proceed from one source," said a Shawnee prophet.[144-3] Such an expression was wholly in the spirit of his race. The greatest feast of the Delawares was that to their "grandfather, the fire."[144-4] "Their fire burns forever," was the Algonkin figure of speech to express the immortality of their gods.[144-5] "The ancient God, the Father and Mother of all Gods," says an Aztec prayer, "is the God of the Fire which is in the centre of the court with four walls, and which is covered with gleaming feathers like unto wings;"[144-6] dark sayings of the priests, referring to the glittering lightning fire borne from the four sides of the earth.