POTTERY AND ARTICLES OK CLAY. jg? 



vered in the mounds pertain to their builders, and which are of a later date. Hence 

 results the importance of knowmg the history of those relics which may fall under 

 notice, and the circumstances attending their discovery, in order to feel authorized 

 in drawing conclusions from them. Their true position satisfactorily ascertained, 

 we proceed with confidence to comparisons and deductions, which otherwise, 

 however ingenious and accurate they might appear, would necessarily be invested 

 with painful uncertainty. From want of proper care in this respect, there is no 

 doubt that articles of European origin, which, by a very natural train of events, 

 found their way to the mounds, have been made the basis of speculations concern- 

 ing the arts of the mound-builders. To this cause we may refer the existence of 

 the popular errors, that the ancient people were acquainted with the uses of iron, 

 and understood the arts of plating, gilding, etc. 



Hence, too, the value of systematic investigations, conducted on the spot, 

 if we would aim to throw any certain light upon this branch of inquiry, or do 

 more than excite an ignorant wonder or gratify an idle curiosity. 



The general character of this class of remains has already been indicated. 

 They are such only as, from the nature of their material, have been able to resist 

 the general course of decay : — articles of pottery, bone, ivory, shell, stone, and 

 metal. We can, of course, expect to find no traces of instruments or utensils of 

 wood, and but few and doubtfgl ones at best, of the materials which went to 

 compose articles of dress. Such remains as are found, so far as their purposes 

 are apparent, are classified ; the remainder are so arranged as best to facilitate 

 description. 



POTTERY AND ARTICLES OF CLAY. 



The art of the potter is hoary in its antiquity. It seems to have been the first 

 domestic art practised by man, and the worker in clay may be esteemed the pri- 

 mitive artisan. Go where we will, from the hut of the roving Indian to the palace 

 of the civilized prince, we everywhere find the products of his craft, rude and 

 unpolished from the hand of the savage, or rivalling the marble from the manu- 

 factories of Wedgwood and Copeland. 



The site of every Indian town throughout the West is marked by the fragments 

 of pottery scattered around it; and the cemeteries of the various tribes abound 

 with rude vessels of clay, piously deposited with the dead. Previous to the 

 advent of Europeans, the art of the potter was much more important and 

 its practice more general, than it afterwards became upon the introduction of 

 metallic vessels. The mode of preparing and moulding the material is minutely 

 described by the early observers, and seems to have been common to all the tribes, 

 and not to have varied materially from that day to this. The work devolved 

 almost exclusively upon the women, who kneaded the clay and formed the vessels. 



