10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. // 



black "' (Kidder) design on white ware might give place to mosaic 

 white decorations on black background, or simply white figures on 

 black, where the design is in white, the black base serving to show its 

 form. 



The use of black bands, either straight or curved, with rows of 

 dots as an ornamental motif is an instructive feature in the pottery, 

 although duplicated in other ceramic areas .^ Commonly these rows of 

 dots are symbols of corn, but here the design is probably an orna- 

 mental rather than a symbolic one. Attention may be called to the 

 effective arrangement of the bands with spots into four units with 

 double rows of rectangular nucleated spots shown in plate 5, a. 

 The white spots on a black ground reappear in plate 5, d. In 

 plate 5, c, there is a dual arrangement, a departure from the uni- 

 formity of the four units in the quadrate design, and in plate 4, d, 

 one is different from the other three. 



LADLE WITH HANDLE MADE INTO A CRADLE WITH INCLOSED FIGURINE 



The most exceptional piece of pottery from the Young's Canyon 

 cemetery is a black and white ware ladle, the sides and end of the 

 handle of which are pinched up and modified into a cradle containing 

 a small clay figurine," shown from above and the side in plate 6. 



Another example of a ladle with a cradle on the handle was formerly 

 owned by Mr. Frank Wattron, of Holbrook, Arizona, who purchased 

 it from a Mexican pot hunter. The ruin in which this object was 

 found is unknown. The specimen was sold, with the Wattron col- 

 lection, to an agent of the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago. While 

 it was still in possession of Mr. Wattron, in 1897, the author made 

 two drawings of it, which are here reproduced (pi. 7). 



Clay figurines of like shape, separated from cradles, have been found 

 by the author in localities higher up on the Little Colorado, showing 

 that although these ladles are rare, they were not unknown in pre- 

 historic households of this portion of Arizona. The little images on 

 their handles can hardly be called fetishes, but were more in the nature 

 of dolls. Attention may be invited to a well-known habit of modern 

 Indian mothers : Several Hopi ladles are known in which the handle 



^ This form of decoration occurs in the Chaco Canyon, Casa Grande, and 

 other ruins. 



^ It was formerly not unusual to find, in collections of Hopi pottery, ladles, 

 the handles of which were moulded into rude effigies representing the clowns 

 who accompany the Katcina, or even Katcinas themselves. These have 

 apparently gone out of use, and belong to the Hopi ceramic epoch, antedating 

 the author's excavations at Sikyatki (1895). 



