43O NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



and the eastern Algonkian. This coincidence is significant and points 

 out an interrelation of cultural factors. One might conclude that 

 the Algonkian people were an offshoot of the mound builders, for 

 Algonkins not only used polished slates, but used grooved axes, 

 corded pottery and occasionally monitor pipes. At the same time 

 there is a marked difference between a pure Algonkian site and a 

 pure mound-builder site, and there was likewise a corresponding 

 difference between the habits of the two peoples. The known Algon- 

 kins were less sedentary and culturally poorer. 



It may be suggested that this close similarity of artifacts, despite a 

 difference of degree of culture in other things, may even yet indicate 

 that some unknown Algonkian tribe or tribes were mound builders, 

 and that from a cultural center these hypothetical Algonkins radiated 

 a cultural influence upon their less developed kinsmen. To this sug- 

 gestion we may reply that, granting that some Ohio Algonkian tribe 

 did build mounds and had the mound culture, there is yet good 

 evidence that divisions of other stocks were also mound builders and 

 users of the polished slates. It may be that certain Iroquoian tribes 

 and certain branches of the Muskhogean people were also mound 

 builders, which, then, would make the polished slates the mark of a 

 cultural status and not a distinguishing tribal evidence. 



Pottery. This term is used to include all articles made of baked 

 clay or terra cotta. In a narrower sense the term is used to describe 

 jars, pots or vessels of this material. Some have called soapstone 

 " pottery," but in this work such a term is not applied. 



In the production of pottery, the New York Indians dug the clay 

 from natural sources, carried it to their workshops or places of 

 manufacture and then proceeded to prepare it for molding. From 

 facts supplied by ethnologists, supplemented by archeological evi- 

 dence, the clay seems to have been pounded, mauled and kneaded on 

 stone slabs. The tempering material was then mixed into the mass. 

 Tempering material consisted of coarse sharp sand, pulverized mica 

 schist, burnt granite, cracked shells, and other similar substances. 

 Cracked chert has been found in pottery. When these substances 

 had been thoroughly intermixed the clay was rolled into ropes and 

 coiled into the shape desired. The clay was kept moist and the ropes 

 were united by paddling the outside and scraping the inside with a 

 stone spatula. Some pots were built up at the bottom within a 

 gourd bowl. Others seem to have been hung in grass basket-bags or 

 nets during the drying process, and show the impressions of the 

 cords, as for example the pot in plate 107. Many of the smaller 

 Iroquois pots of the later period seem to have been molded over 

 gourds or calabashes and baked with the dried calabash inside, this 



