354 REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



IN RELATION TO THE POTTER'S ART 



Potten" and basketry were in America, especially among the savage 

 tribes, both the work of women. Before answering the question how 

 far one art was useful to the other, attention must be called to the fact 

 that in eastern United States both prevailed almost universall}'. In 

 the Arctic, excepting the rude pottery of Alaska on Bering Sea, and 

 on the Pacific from Mount St. Elias to Santa Barbara Islands, the 

 tribes made only basketry. Those of the interior basin and all south- 

 ward were expert in both. 



It was formerly believed that in the eastern division of the United 

 States, especially, pottery was made to a large extent in basketry. 

 Eminent students held this opinion and there seemed to be abundant 

 evidence of its truth. Gushing figures a basket with clay inside to 

 protect the former in the cooking of seeds and grains." 



Holmes now believes that the extent to which good baskets were 

 used for modeling pottery in this province has been greatly overesti- 

 mated. There are innumerable examples of basketry and other textile 

 markings on earthenware, and he divides them into five classes. 



1. Impressions from the surface of rigid textile forms. 



2. Impressions from cloth and nets. 



3. From woven textures used over the hand or modeling implement. 

 •I. From cords wrapped about modeling paddles or rocking tools. 



5. Impressions of bits of cords or other textile units, singly or in 

 groups, applied for ornament only and so arranged as to produce 

 textile-like patterns. 



In modeling a clay vessel a basket might be used as a support and 

 pivot. It might assist in shaping the bodies of vessels, assuming to a 

 limited extent the limits of a mold. Also, the mat upon which a 

 plastic form rests will leave impressions that firing will render indel- 

 ible. The tribes of the Pima linguistic family produce jars and baskets 

 of the same shape; but if a row of Zufii or the Hopi pottery be compared 

 with a row of their basketry they would not suggest that either one 

 was the predecessor and occasion of the other. Laying aside the 

 inquiry whether the basket was the progenitor of the pot, inasmuch as 

 the same hands often produced both, the former unwittingly rendered 

 itself immortal by its many little helpful attentions to the latter in its 

 formative stage. The pot was afterwards fired and worn out and 

 broken into fragments that were buried out of sight. In these last 

 years the archeologist exhumes the shards, washes them carefully, and 

 makes casts of their surfaces in plaster or artist's clay. A glance 

 shows that, though the surfaces of the shards are much worn awa}" by 

 time, the lines in the little cavities are as sharp as when the clay and 



« William H. Holmes: American Anthropologist (N. S.), Ill, pp. 397-^03; also 

 F. H. Gushing, Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1886, pp. 483-493. 



