30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 94 



a reddish color, and the paste of which it was made was of a finer 

 texture. A small amount of fine sand contained in the paste may have 

 been added as a tempering material, although it could have occurred 

 naturally in the clay. The walls of the vessels had been carefully 

 made, and no indications of the coils remain. 



The conical bottom of a large coiled vessel is shown in the lower 

 right corner of the plate, and is also sketched in figure 8. The frag- 

 ment is more than | inch thick in the middle, and in color and tex- 

 ture it resembles the cord-marked ware previously mentioned. It is 

 broken at the line of contact of the coils ; the end of one is clearly 

 shown and reveals how they had been added, spirally, to form the wall 

 of the vessel. This suggests an Algonquian type. The conical base 

 was devised to hold the vessel in place when in use. 



One of the drawings made by John White in 1585 bears the legend : 

 " Their seetheynge of their meate in earthen pottes ", and although 



Fig. 8. — Conical base of a large vessel. Coiled ware, with the end of a coil 

 exposed on the right. The edges of the fragment are smoothed and worn away. 

 Natural size. U.S.N.M. no. 2)72)79^- 



this is intended to represent a group of Algonquian Indians living in 

 northeastern North Carolina a generation before the settlement of 

 Jamestown, the description would have applied equally well to people 

 who occupied villages in the Rapidan-Rappahannock area early in the 

 seventeenth century. It reads in part as follows : 



Their woemen know how to make earthen vessells with special Cnnninge and 



that so large and fine After they have set them uppon an heape of erthe 



to stay them from fallinge, they putt wood under which being kyndled one of them 

 taketh great care that the fyre burne equallye Rounde abowt. They or their 

 woemen fill the vessel with water, and then putt they in fruite, flesh, and fish, 

 and lett all boyle together.^* 



This had been the custom through generations. 



The site at Rogers Ford is one of much interest, and the material, 

 although not plentiful, indicates a connection between it and the village 

 that stood so short a distance southward, on the left bank of the 

 Rapidan at Skinkers Ford. Both may have been occupied long before 

 the coming of the Manahoac. 



^' Hariot's Narrative. Quaritch reprint, 1893. 



