504 



PUEBLO POTTERY AND ZUNI CULTURE-GROWTH. 



wicker ring (Fig 540, e) sufficiently to cause the rounding upward of 

 the cavity (Fig. 540, b) first made by the convex-bottom of the basket- 

 mold, as well as form the encircling indentation (Fig. 540, c). Thus by 

 accident, probably, only possibly by intention, w r as evolved the most 

 useful and distinctive feature of the modern water-jar or olla, the con- 

 care bottom. This, once produced, would be held to be peculiarly con- 



Fig. 539.— Section of incipient vessel in basket- 



nml. I 



Fig. 540. — Section of vessel supported for 

 drying. 



venient, dispensing with the use of a troublesome auxiliary. Its repro- 

 duction would present grave difficulties unless the bottom of the first 

 vessel, thickly coated with sand to prevent cracking, was employed as a 

 mold, instead of the absorbent convex-centered basket-bowl. 



I infer this because, to-day, a Zuni woman is quite at a loss how to 

 hollow the bottom of a water -jar if she does not possess a form or mold 

 made from the base of some previously broken jar of the same type. 

 She therefore, carefully preserves these precious bottoms of her broken 

 ollas, even cementing together fractured ones, wheD not too badly 

 shivered, with a mixture of pitch or miueral asphaltum and sand. I 



;w 



Fig. 541.— Ease-mold (bottom of water-jar). 



have seen as many as a dozen or more of these molds (see Fig. 541) 

 in a single store room. 



As the practice of molding all new vessels of this class in the bot- 

 toms of older ones was general — I might say invariable — any peculiar- 

 ities of form in the originals must have been communicated to those 

 ensuing ; from the latter to others, and so on, though in less and less 



