TRINIDAD AN"D SOUTH AMERICAIT EARTHENWARE 137 



enga, the Campa, the Piro, and the Mashco, the pottery made by 

 these tribes is inferior to that made by the Conebo, who belong to 

 the Panoan stock. Several of the Arawak tribes obtain their best 

 pottery from the Conebo in exchange, while others, as the Mashko, 

 make good pottery. " The Conebo women are the best potters in the 

 whole Amazon Valley, but they are followed very closely by their 

 Sipibo neighbors. The pottery made by these two tribes is supplied 

 by exchange to many other tribes throughout the Ucayali River and 

 its tributaries. The Conebo make more pottery, and hence their name 

 is attached to all the pottery of the two tribes." 



The materials are all obtained locally. The white clay is collected 

 from the river banks at low water, and the pottery, on this account, 

 is made during the dry season. The ash or bark of the ohe tree 

 {Licania utilis), or of some other tree giving a very fine white ash, 

 is mixed with clay in an old pot where it can be kept clean. When 

 the clay, mixed with water, has reached the desired consistency, a 

 small lump is rolled between the hands or on a board into a long 

 fillet, the size depending upon the thickness of the pot. This is then 

 placed around the edge of the pot under construction, squeezed into 

 place by the fingers, and smoothed by holding a stone on the inside, 

 and rubbing with a shell on the outside. Thus the worker goes 

 around and around the pot, until it is completed. No wheel is known ; 

 the pot sits in the sand or on a board. The necks of the smaller pots 

 are made separately and luted on. 



The small drinking bowls are made exceedingly thin and in 

 perfect form. The rim is trimmed with the teeth, moistened with 

 the tongue, and finished with the thumb nail. When the pot is 

 finished it is allowed to stand in the shade until it has hardened, then 

 it is smoothed and polished. If it is a cooking pot, it is fired at once ; 

 if it is to be painted, a thin slip of very fine white clay is first 

 applied, and when dry the decoration is laid on with a strip of 

 bamboo. Yellow clay is used for yellow slip and red stone for red 

 slip. The large rough pots are placed in a slow open fire and thor- 

 oughly burned. The large puberty pots are burned by placing them 

 upside down on a tripod of three smaller pots and covering them 

 with a great heap of dry, thorny bamboo, then a fire is built under- 

 neath and fed with the same material. By this method very little 

 smoke is produced and the intensity of the heat can be controlled. 

 The fine drinking bowls are treated very differently. A large pot 

 with a hole in the bottom is placed on three stones, or more often 

 three piles of inverted pots and the bowls to be fired are inverted 

 inside the large pot. The first one is placed over the hole and 

 ashes poured around and over it, and others are inverted over this 

 until the pot is full or all are used. A slow fire is kept burning 

 under the large pot until all are well baked, then they are taken 



