This was called atsi’la galunkw it’yu "the honored or sacred fire." Sometimes when the fire in a house went out, the woman came to the Firekeeper, who made a new fire by rubbing an ihya’ga stalk against the under side of a hard dry fungus that grows along locust trees. Just before the Green corn dance, in the old times, every fire in the settlement was extinguished and all the people came and got new fire from the townhouse. After the dance he covered the hole over again with ashes, but the fire was always smoldering below. Then he put on wood, and by the time the dancers were ready there was a large fire blazing in the townhouse. He left the ends of the stalks sticking out and piled lichens and punk around, after which he prayed, and as he prayed, the fire climbed up along the talks until it caught the punk. When there was to be a dance or a council, he pushed long stalks of atsil sun ti (fleabane), "the fire maker" down through the opening in the cedar log to the fire at the bottom. One man, called the Firekeeper, stayed always in the townhouse to feed and tend the fire. The earth was piled up around it, and the whole mound was finished off smoothly, and then the townhouse was built upon it. This cedar log was cut long enough to reach nearly to the surface inside the townhouse when everything was done. "The mound was then built up with earth, which the women brought in baskets, and as they piled it above the stones, the bodies of their great men, and the sacred things, they left an open place at the fire in the center and let down a hollow cedar trunk, with the bark on, which fitted around the fire and protected it from the earth.
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