ANCIENT POTTERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. I3I 



to incisioti, in which a sharp point is used, and excision or excavation, 

 which is more easily accomplished with the end of a hollow reed 

 or bone. Impressed or stamped ornament is of rare occurrence. 

 The practice of impressing cords and fabrics was common among 

 many of the northern tribes, and nets have been used in the manu- 

 facture of vases at many points within this province, but possibly in 

 some cases by exotic peoples. The use of stamps, especially pre- 

 pared, was in vogue in most of the Gulf states, and to a limited 

 extent in northern localities. 



Designs in Color. — The colors used in painting are white, red, 

 brown, and black, and have generally consisted of thick, opaque, 

 clayey paste, white or colored with ochres. Occasionally the colors 

 used seem to have been mere stains. All have been laid on with 

 coarse brushes of hair, feathers, or vegetable fiber. The figures 

 are generally simple and are applied in broad, bold lines, indicative 

 of a strong talent for decoration. The forms are, to a great extent, 

 curvilinear, and embrace meanders, scrolls, circles, and combina- 

 tions and groupings of curved lines in great variety. Of rectilinear 

 forms, crosses, lozenges, and checkers are best known. 



The decided prevalence of curved forms is worthy of remark. 

 With all their fertility of invention the inhabitants of this valley 

 seem never to have achieved the classic rectangular fret or anything 

 more nearly approaching it than the linked scroll or the angular 

 guilloche, while other peoples, such as the Pueblos of the southwest, 

 and the ancient nations of Mexico and Peru found in it a chief 

 resource. The reasons for this, as well as for other peculiarities of 

 the decorative art of the mound-builders as embodied in pottery, 

 must be sought for in the antecedent and coexistent arts of these 

 tribes. 



Origin of Decoration. — Elements of ceramic decoration are 

 derived from both nature and art, and in the primitive stages of 

 culture their originals must be looked for more especially in those 

 articles directly associated with the potter's art. They are acquired 

 from natural objects by contact with the plastic material or by 

 actual copying. They come from accidental suggestions attending 

 manufacture, such as the marks of fingers, implements, and moulds. 

 Decorative motives of these classes are at first, 'although not neces- 

 sarily always, non-ideographic. Even those features derived from 

 nature, and imitating natural objects closely, have no significance 

 attached to them, and combinations of, and derivatives from them» 



