58 ABORIGINAL POTTERY OF EASTERN UNITED STATES Ieth.ann.20 



Hunter, who is one of the best early authorities on the Osag-es and 

 other Indians of the Missouri and the upper Mississippi regions, makes 

 the following statement: 



In manufacturing their pottery for cooking and domestic purposes, they collect 

 tough clay, beat it into powder, temper it with water, and then spread it over blocks 

 of wood, which have been formed into shapes to suit their convenience or fancy. 

 When sufHciently dried, they are removed from the molds, placed in proper situa- 

 tions, and burned to a hardness suitable to their intended uses. 



Another method practiced by them is to ('oat the inner surface of baskets made of 

 rushes or willows with clay, to any required thickness, and, when dry, to burn 

 them as above descriljed. 



In this way they construct large, handsome, and toleralily durable ware; though 

 latt«rly, with such tribes as have much intercourse with the whites, it is not much 

 used, because of the substitution of cast-iron ware in its stead. 



When these vessels are large, as is the case for the manufacture of sugar, they are 

 suspended by grapevines, which, wherever exposed to the fire, are constantly kept 

 covered with moist clay. 



Sometimes, however, the rims are made strong, and project a little inwardly ijuite 

 around the vessels, so as to admit of their being sustained by flattened pieces of wood, 

 slid underneath these projections, and extending across their centers." 



The.se pai'agraphs appear to ai)ply to the Osage Indian^ and proba- 

 bly to their neighbors. 



jVIr Catlin's account of the manufacture of pottery l)y the Mandans 

 of the upper Missouri is a valuable addition to our knowledge. Al- 

 though often quoted it should not tie omitted from this paper. 



I spoke also of the earthen dishes or bowls in which these viands were served out; 

 the)' are a famiUar part of the culinary furniture of every ilandan lodge, and are 

 manufactured by the women of this tribe in great quantities, and modeled into a 

 thousanil forms ami tastes. They are made Ijy the hands of the women, from a tough 

 black clay, and baked in kilns which are made for the purpose, and are nearly equal 

 in hardness to our own manufacture of pottery, though they have not yet got the 

 art of glazing, which would be to them a most valuable secret. They make them so 

 strong and serviceable, however, that they hang them over the fire as we do our iron 

 pots, and Ijoil their meat in them with perfect success. I have seen some few speci- 

 mens of such manufacture, which have been dug up in Indian mounds and tomljs in 

 the Southern and iliddle states, placed in our Eastern museums, and looked upon as 

 a great wonder, when here this novelt}' is at once done away with, and the whole 

 mystery; where women can be seen handling and using them by hundreds, and they 

 can be seen every day in the summer also, molding them into many fanciful forms 

 and passing them through the kiln where the)' are hardened. '' 



That the art was very generally practiced even by the less sedentary 

 tribes of the great Missouri basin is attested by the following extract 

 from a veiy interesting l)ook by Mr George Bird Grinnell: 



Years ago, on the sites of abandoned Pawnee villages, on the Loup Fork and on 

 the Platte, fragments of pottery used to be found among the debris of the fallen 

 lodges. The manufacture of this pottery was no doubt abandoned long ago, and has 

 probaljly not been practiced to any considerable extent since they met the whites. 



a Hunter, John D . Memoirs of a enptivity among the Indians, London. 1S23, pp. 28S-89. 

 iJCatlin, Cieorge, Letter-s and notes on the North American Indians, London, 1S14, vol. I, p. 116. 



