484 



PUEBLO POTTERY AND ZUNI CULTURE-GROWTH. 



this, we might again turn to language, which designates the impervious 

 wicker water-receptacle of whatever outline as torn ma, an evident de- 

 rivation from the restricted use of the word torn me in connection with 

 gourd or cane vessels, since a basket of any other kind is called tsi ) le. 



It is readily coucei\ able that water-tight osiery, once known, however 

 difficult of manufacture, would displace the general use of gourd-vessels. 

 While the growth of the gourd was restricted to limited areas, the mate- 

 rials for basketry were everywhere at hand. Not only so, but basket- 

 vessels were far stronger and more durable, hence more readily trans- 

 ported full of water, to any distance. By virtue of their rough surfaces, 

 any leakage in such vessels was instantly stopped by a daubing of pitch 

 or mineral asphaltum, coated externally with sand or coarse clay to 

 harden it and overcome its adhesiveness. 



We may conclude, then, that so long as the Pueblo ancestry were 

 semi nomadic, basketry supplied the place of pottery, as it still does for 

 the less advanced tribes of the Southwest, except in cookery. Possibly 

 for a time basketry of this kind served in place of pottery even for 

 cookery, as with one of the above-mentioned tribes, the Ha vamped or 

 Cocouinos, of Cataract Canon, Arizona. These people, until recently, 



^ 



Fii;. 501. — Havasnpaf clay-lined roasting-tray. 



were cut off from the rest of the world by their almost impenetrable 

 canon, nearly half a mile in depth at the point where they inhabit it. 

 For example, when I visited them in 1881, they still hafted sharpened 

 bits of iron, like celts, in wood. They had not yet forgotten how to boil 

 food in water-tight basketry, by means of hot stones, and continued to 

 roast seeds, crickets, and bits of meat in wicker-trays, coated inside with 

 gritty clay. (See Fig. 501.) The method of preparing and using these 

 roasting-trays has an important bearing on several questions to which 

 reference will be made further on. A round basket-tray, either loosely 

 or closely woven, is evenly coated inside with clay, into which has been 

 kneaded a very large proportion of sand, to prevent contraction and 



