POTTERY AFFECTED BT ENVIRONMENT. 



There is uo other section of the United States where the potter's art 

 was so extensively practiced, or where it reached such a degree of per- 

 fection, as within the limits of these ancient Pueblo regions. To this 

 statement not even the prolific valleys of the Mississippi and its tribu- 

 taries form an exception. 



On examining a large and varied collection of this pottery, one would 

 naturally regard it either as the product of four distinct peoples or as 

 belonging to four different eras, with an inclination to the chronologic 

 division. 



When we see the reasonable probability that the architecture, the 

 primeval arts and industries, and the culture of the Pueblos are mainly 

 indigenous to the desert and semi-desert regions of North Americn, 

 we are in the way towards an understanding of the origin and remark- 

 able degree of development in the ceramic art. 



In these regions water not only occurs in small quantities, but is ob- 

 tainable only at points separated by great distances, hence to the Pueblos 

 the first necessity of life is the transportation and preservation of water. 

 The skins and paunches of animals could be used in the effort to meet 

 this want with but small success, as the heat and aridity of the atmos- 

 phere would in a. short time render water thus kept unfit for use, and 

 the membranes once empty would be liable to destruction by drying. 

 So far as language indicates the character of the earliest water vessels 

 which to any extent met the requirements of the Zuni ancestry, they 

 were tubes of wood or sections of canes. The latter, in ritualistic recita- 

 tion, are said to have been the receptacles that the creation-priests tilled 

 with the sacred water from the oceau of the cave-wombs of earth, 

 whence men and creatures were born, and the name for one of these 

 cane water vessels is shd torn me, from shd e, cane or canes, and torn me, 

 a wooden tube. Yet, although in the extreme western borders of the 

 deserts, which were probably the first penetrated by the Pueblos', the 

 cane grows to great size and in abundance along the two rivers of that 

 country, its use, if ever extensive, must have speedily giveu way to 

 the use of gourds, which grew luxuriantly at these places and were of 

 better shapes and of larger capacity. The name of the gourd as a vessel 

 is shop torn me, from shd e, canes, po pon nai e, bladder-shaped, and 

 torn me, a wooden tube; a seeming derivation (with the exception of 

 the interpolated souud significant of form) from shti torn me. The gourd 

 itself is called mo thld a, "hard fruit." The inference is that when used 

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