Part 5

Happily, a work collateral to the one which I have here merely begun, will, I have reason to hope, be carried to a high degree of perfection in the forthcoming monographs on the exhaustless ceramic collections of the United States National Museum by Mr. William H. Holmes. This author and artist will approach his task from a standpoint differing from mine, reaching thereby, it may be, conclusions at variance with the foregoing; but by means of his wealth of material and illustration students will have opportunity of passing a judgment upon the merits of not only his work, but of my own.

In conclusion, let me very briefly refer to two distinctive American types of pottery, unconnected with the Southwestern, which, considered in conjunction with those of the latter region, seem to me to indicate that the ceramic art has had independent centers of origin in America. For the sake of convenience, I may name these types the rectangular (see Fig. 561) or Iroquois, and the bisymmetrical or kidney-shaped (see Fig. 562), of Nicaragua. The one is almost constant in the lake regions of the United States, the other equally constant in sections of Central America. In collections gathered from any tribe of our Algonquin or Iroquois Indians, one may observe vessels of the tough birch- or linden-bark, some of which are spherical or hemispherical. To produce this form of utensil from a single piece of bark, it is necessary to cut pieces out of the margin and fold it. Each fold, when stitched together in the shaping of the vessel, forms a corner at the upper part. (See Fig. 563.) These corners and the borders which they form are decorated with short lines and combinations of lines, composed of coarse embroideries with dyed porcupine quills. (See Fig. 564) May not the bark vessel have given rise to the rectangular type of pottery and its quill ornamentation to the incised straight-line decorations? (Compare Fig. 561.)

So, too, in the unsymmetrical urns of Central and Isthmean America, which are characterized by the location of the aperture at the upper part of one of the extremities and by streak-like decorations, we have a decided suggestion of the animal paunch or bladder and of the visible veins on its surface when distended.

If these conjectures be accepted as approximately correct, even in tendency, we may hope by a patient study of the ceramic remains of a people, no matter where situated, to discover what was the type of their pre-ceramic vessels, and thereby we might also learn whether, at the time of the origin of the potter's art or during its development, they had, like the Pueblos, been indigenous to the areas in which they were found, or whether they had, like some of the Central Americans, (to make a concrete example and judge it by this method) apparently immigrated in part from desert North America, in part from the wilderness of an equatorial region in South America.

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INDEX

Awatui pottery 493

Basketry anticipated pottery 483-485 Basketry cooking utensils 484-486 Basketry copied in pottery 449 Basketry declined, Manufacture of watertight 496 Boiling basket 485 Burning influence pottery, Materials and methods used in 495, 496

Cane tubes to carry water 482 Cliff-dwellings 478, 479-480 Coal used in pottery firing, Mineral 495-496 Coiled pottery, how made 500 Communal Pueblos 480, 481

Environments affecting habitations 473 Environments affecting pottery 482

Flat and terraced roofs 477 Form evolved in pottery from basketry 497 Fuel used in pottery firing 495

Gourd vessels to carry water 482, 483

Habitations affected by environment 473 Hogan, or hut, Navajo 473 Houses built near water, Pueblo 477

Lava inclosure earliest form of Navajo hut 475 Linguistic indications as to habitations 474 Linguistic indications as to primitive water vessels 482

Mindeleff, Victor, on development of rectangular architecture 475 Minerals influencing pottery 493 Mode of making pottery vessels 499-500 Moki pottery 493

Navajo hogan, or hut 473

Ojo Caliente pottery 491 Ollas 498, 500 Ornament, Ceramic 488 Ornamentation of coiled basketry 487

Pescado pottery 494 Pottery affected by environment 482 Pottery anticipated by basketry 483-485 Pottery declined in quality with introduction of domestic animals 496 Pottery developed from basketry 485 Pueblo primitive habitations 475 Pueblos, Communal 480, 481

Rectangular forms developed from circular in architecture 475 Roasting tray 484

Stories added in cliff-buildings 479

Tusayan, Province of 493

Water important to Pueblos, Transportation and preservation of 482 Wicker cover for gourd vessels 483

Zuñi priests' journey to the Atlantic 483 Zuñi skill on water jars 498, 500