134 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



There were no permanent dwellings circular in form, and mud huts 

 or hogans were not used. It is quite apparent that from the earliest 

 times they were an agricultural people, and neither archeology nor the 

 testimony of early explorers or travelers indicates any wide differ- 

 ence in their village life from that of the Indians of Virginia and 

 the Carolinas, for example. They relied very largely upon vegetable 

 foods for their sustenance and .the cultivation of the ground was 

 regulated by certain customs. It appears that the Iroquois were 

 far more like these Indians of the middle south in their village life 

 than the Indians of the north, the Mictnae or the Malecite. 



Of considerable importance in the study of comparative archeol- 

 ogy, and we believe in the study of the origin of the Iroquois, is 

 testimony of implements of pottery and smoking pipes. Iroquois 

 pottery is perhaps the most durable and striking material found on 

 their village sites or in their graves, and in both decoration and 

 form is distinctive from most forms of pottery used by Algonkins. 

 Before discussing this subject further it may be well to state there 

 are two general forms of Iroquois pottery, that is to say, there are 

 two archeologic districts which yield pottery, which may be com- 

 pared. The first and westernmost is the Huron-Erie area and em- 

 braces the Iroquoian sites on the Niagara peninsula in Ontario and 

 the adjacent land to the west of it and north of Lake Erie, including 

 also the territory in New York along the southern border of 

 Lake Erie to the hilly land south of it. The second area is the 

 Mohawk-Onondaga, and takes in the region of the St Lawrence 

 basin, the east shore of Lake Ontario, the south shore of the Oswego 

 river, southward along the Seneca river, southward through the 

 Susquehanna valley and eastward through the Mohawk valley. In 

 the first district the outline of the pot does not show the high 

 collar projecting so far from the neck as is common in the second dis- 

 trict. In many cases the collar is a very narrow band and ornamented 

 by parallel lines or by simple oblique lines or none at all. In 

 another variety the lines are formed in chevron patterns but in larger 

 plats. In this form the collar does not project very much from the 

 body of the pot and the decoration is carried down well on to the 

 neck (see figure 34). There are instances where the triangular pat- 

 terns and short Imes follow a line of oblique lines drawn around the 

 body of the pot below the rise of the neck. Such patterns are found 

 on the vessels from Ontario and figured by Doctor Boyle, and by 

 myself from Ripley, Chautauqua county. In the second district the 

 wide overhanging collar becomes almost a fixed characteristic. Here 

 it reaches the highest form of its special development and arche- 

 ologists usually describe one of these pots for their ideal Iroquoian 



