172 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



The yucca plant furnished needles. A long 

 slender strip was split from a leaf, and the basal 

 portion chewed or beaten until the fibers were 

 separated, and all but a few broken off. Those 

 remaining w^re twisted around the cotton thread, 

 thus attaching it firmly to 4he needle. The sharp 

 thoi^y point of the leaf was strong and keen 

 enough to pierce ordinary cloth, but if skins or 

 tough fabrics were to be joined, doubtless a bone 

 awl was used to open a way for the needle 



and with yellow or cream color on the 

 outside. This red pottery is rare at 

 Aztec. Some specimens are evidently 

 local products, while others so closely 

 resemble the pottery typical of other 

 parts of the Southwest, that from tlie 

 evidence they furnish, it may be pos- 

 sible to determine that the people of 

 the Animas Valley carried on primi- 

 tive commerce with contemporaneous 

 villages hundreds of miles distant. 



Most of the pottery is found with 

 tbo (load. It was a peculiar custom of 

 the Pueblos to bury certain individu- 

 als, probably the more important per- 

 sons, beneath the floors of living 

 rooms, or in rooms set aside for mor- 

 tuary ])urposes. Only a few graves 

 were found last summer, but it is to 

 be expected that many, some of them 

 very rich, will l)o encountered before 

 the excavations are completed. 



Cooking was done in rough pots 

 whose soot-covered exteriors resemble 

 coiled baskets. They were made by the 

 coiling process of pottery manufacture, 

 and the resulting ridges were not 

 smoothed down upon the outside. The 

 cooking vessels never bear painted dec- 

 orations, but the other types usually are 

 highly ornamented. Upon the gray or 

 white groundwork, attained in most 

 cases by the application of a light-col- 

 ored slip over the darker paste of the 

 vessel, designs were traced in black 

 pigment, and fired in. Most of the pat- 

 terns are geometrical, with only now 

 and then an attempt at realistic repre- 

 sentation. 



The large cooking pots are found as 

 they were left, sometimes sitting in the 

 ashes of extinguished fires. It was a 

 common practice, when they were 

 cracked, or would no longer hold 

 liquids, to sink them into the floors, 

 where they were used as bins or storage 

 jars. Flat stones were put over them 



