508 PUEBLO POTTERY AND ZUN1 CULTURE-GROWTH. 



relief style of ornamentation found, with rare exceptions in the South- 

 west, only on corrugated ware, and on the class which in modern times 

 has replaced it there, vessels used in cookery. Although never univer- 

 sal, this style deserves passing attention as the outgrowth of an effort 

 to attain the effect of contrast produced by dyed or painted splints on 

 wicker work before the use of paint was known in connection with pot- 

 tery. The same kind of investigation indicates that the Pueblos largely 

 owed their textile industries and designs, as well as their potter's art, 

 to the necessity which gave rise to the making of water-tight basketry. 

 The terms connected with the rudimentary processes of weaving and 

 embroidery, and the principal patterns of both (on, for example, blank- 

 ets, kirtles, sacred girdles, and women's belts), are mostly susceptible, 

 of interpretation, like the terms in pottery, as having a meaning con- 

 nected with the processes of basket plaiting and painting. This ren- 

 ders the conventional character of Pueblo textile ornaments easy of 

 comprehension, as well as the very early, if not the earliest, origin of 

 loom-weaving among our Indians in the desert regions of America. 



Henceforward, then, we have only to consider decoration by paint- 

 ing. The probability is that this began as soon as the smooth sur- 

 face in pottery was generally made; evidence of which seemingly 

 exists; as eating bowls are, even to the present day, decorated principally 

 on the interior; not, as may be supposed, because the exterior is more 

 hidden from view, but because, as we have seen on a former page, 

 bowls wore made plain inside before the corrugated type formed on 

 basket bottoms had been displaced by the smoothed type ; and were 

 naturally first decorated there with paint. It must be constantly borne 

 in mind that a style of decoration once coupled with a kind of ware, or 

 even a portion of a vessel, retained its association permanently. 



It must have been early observed that clay of one kind, applied even 

 thinly to the exterior of a vessel of another kind, produced, when 

 burned, a different color. With the discovery that clays of different 

 kinds burned in a variety of colors, to some extent irrespective of the 

 methods and the materials used iu firing, there must likewise have been 

 hinted, we may safely conclude, the efficacy of clay washes as paint, 

 and of paint as a decorative agent. 



Among the ceramic remains from the oldest pueblo sites of the South - 

 west, pottery occurs, mostly in four varieties : the corrugated or spiral ; 

 the plain, yet rough gray ; white decorated with geometric figures iu 

 black ; and red, either plain or decorated with geometric devices in 

 black and white. The gray or dingy brown, rough variety, resulted 

 when a corrugated or coiled jar had been simply smoothed with the 

 fingers and scraper before it was fired. A step in advance, easily and 

 soon taken, was the additional smoothing of the vessel by slightly wet- 

 ting and rubbing its outer surface. Even this was productive only of 

 a moderately smooth surface, since, as learned by the Indian potters 

 long before, in their experience with the clay-plastered parching-tray, 



