The fact of their being strictly forbidden, when kindling a fire, to lift their eyes from it until the wood has been well ignited and smoke proceeds from it would suggest the idea that there is either a superstition attached to this operation or that fire is also an object of veneration with them. But this concentration of the gaze may be simply a precaution (become a habit) not to retard the act of combustion by distraction of thought.
The only thing in connection with this custom I have succeeded in ascertaining is that the Sakais have no particular cult for the Sacred Fire like the priests of Baal the Brahmins in India and the Vestals of Rome but appreciate it as a means of cooking their food, preparing their poisons, of warming them during the night and of keeping wild beasts far from their huts. And I was convinced of this the first time I gave them matches and taught them their use.
Their wonder was mixed with satisfaction but had there been any pronounced religious sentiment they would have rejected the modern innovation and continued the old method of making fire.
I have here given a rough idea of the superstitions and beliefs of the Sakais as best I have been able to understand them from close observation and words inadvertently let fall now and then. They may be briefly summed up thus: a supreme terror of Evil spirits; a vague principle of the soul's transmigration (a strange degeneration from the primitive conception of the Pythagorean theory).
The people of the jungle are still under the thick shade of cerebral inertia. They have not yet seen the swift, bright light of a first doubt flash across the darkness of their brain giving to it a shock of unsuspected vibrations. As yet no glorious Prometheus has arisen amongst those primitive creatures far whom the discouraging counsel of the Italian poet might seem to have been in part written:
Meglio oprando obliar, senza indagarlo,
Quest'enorme mister dell' universo![18]
The Sakais have no real religion; they only have fear for everything they do not understand or cannot. And yet in the practice of morality they are much more forward than other uncivilized and even civilized peoples.
Footnotes:
[16] Pronounced tay nak and chintok.—Translator's Note.