MALLERY. | PICTOGRAPHS ON FABRICS. 215 
SECTION 3. 
ARTIFICIAL OBJECTS. 
Artificial objects may be classified, so far as is important for the 
present work, into, I, fictile fabrics and, II, textile fabrics. 
FICTILE FABRICS, 
A large number of articles of pottery bearing pictographs are fig- 
ured in the illustrated collections by Mr. James Stevenson in the 
Second Annual Report, and by Mr. Stevenson and Mr. William H. 
Holmes in the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Pipes 
on which totemic designs and property marks appear are also common. 
The art of pottery was at first limited to vessel-making. In the 
earlier stages of culture, vases were confined to simple use as receptacles, 
but as culture ripened they were advanced to ceremonial and religious 
offices and received devices and representations in color and in relief 
connected with the cult to which they were devoted. Among some tribes 
large burial vases were fashioned to contain or cover the dead. An in- 
finite variety of objects, such as pipes, whistles, rattles, toys, beads, 
trowels, calendars, masks, and figurines, were made of pottery. Clays 
of varying degrees of purity were used, and sometimes these were tem- 
pered with powdered quartz, shell, or like materials. The vessels 
were frequently built by coiling. The surface was smoothed by the hands 
or the modeling implement or was polished with a stone or other 
smoothing tool. Much attention was given to surface embellishment. 
The finger nails and various pointed tools were used to scarify and in- 
dent, and elaborate figures and designs were incised. Stamps with 
systematically worked designs were sometimes applied to the soft clay. 
Cords and woven fabrics were also employed to give diversity to the 
surface. With the more advanced tribes, though these simple processes 
were still resorted to, engraving, modeling in relief and in the round, 
and painting in colors were employed. 
TEXTILE FABRICS. 
Textile fabrics include those products of ‘art in which the elements 
of their construction are filamental and mainly combined by using their 
flexibility. The processes employed are called wattling, interlacing, 
plaiting, netting, weaving, sewing, and embroidery. The materials 
generally used by primitive people were pliable vegetal growths, such 
as twigs, leaves, roots, canes, rushes, and grasses, and the hair, quills, 
feathers, and tendons of animals. 
Unlike works in stone and clay, textile articles are seldom long pre- 
served. Still, from historic accounts and a study of the many beauti- 
ful articles produced by existing Indian tribes, a fair knowledge of the 
range and general character of native fabrics may be obtained. In 
many cases buried articles of that character have been preserved by 
the impregnation of the engirding earths with preservative salts, and 
