bitshnell: textiles from ozark caves 323 



former Osage area, at once suggests a well-known statement by 

 Hunter^ when referring to the art of making pottery vessels: 

 "Another method practiced by them is to coat the inner sm'face 

 of baskets made of rushes or willows with clay to any required 

 thickness, and when dry, to burn them. ... In this way they 

 construct large, handsome, and tolerably durable ware, though 

 latterly, with such tribes as have much intercourse with the 

 whites, it is not much used, because of the subsitution of cast- 

 iron ware in its stead." This referred primarily to the Osage. 



Fig. 6. One-fourth natural size 



Very large pottery vessels have been discovered on different 

 sites in the eastern part of Missouri near the Mississippi, impor- 

 tant sites being located near Kimmswick, in Jefferson County, 

 and at the mouth of the Saline, in Ste. Genevieve County. Two 

 distinct forms of ware are met with, one bearing the imprint of 

 textiles on the outer surface, the second being smooth on both 

 the outer and inner surfaces. Of these the former is the older. ^ 



Among the fragments of pottery recovered from these ancient 

 sites are many bearing the imprint of textiles sunilar to certain 

 pieces from the McDonald County cave. Although at no time 

 since the discovery of the Mississippi valley have the Osage occu- 

 pied villages in the eastern part of their territory, which ex- 

 tended to the Mississippi, nevertheless they undoubtedly did so 

 at an earlier day. Consequently the Osage were probably the 

 makers of the large cloth-marked vessels which represent the 

 earlier of the two periods of occupancy, while the smooth ware 

 may be attributed to some Algonquian tribe of a later time. 



^Hunter, John D., Manners and customs of several Indian tribes located 

 west of the Mississippi, Philadelphia, 1823, p. 297. 



^Bushnell, D. I., Jr., Archeological Investigations in Ste. Genevieve County, 

 Missouri. Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. 46: 662. 1914. 



