352 



INDIAN POTTERY. 



and burned to a hardness suitable to their intended uses. Another method 

 practised by them is, to coat the inner surface of baskets made of rushes or wil- 

 lows with clay, to any required thickness, and when dry, to burn them as 

 above described. In this way they construct large, handsome, and tolerably 

 durable ware ; though latterly, 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 manufactiire of sugar, 

 they are suspended by grape-vines, 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 quite round the vessel so as to admit 

 of their being sustained by flattened pieces of wood slid underneath these pro- 

 jections and extending across their centres."* 



Lastly, I will quote here the remarks made by Catlin relating to the fabrica- 

 tion of earthenware among the Mandans. " Earthen dishes or bowls are a familiar 

 part of the culinary furniture of every Mandan lodge, and are manufactured by 

 the women of this tribe in great quantities, and modelled into a thousand 

 forms and tastes. They are made 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 ser- 

 viceable, however, that they hang them over the fire, as we do our iron pots, 

 and boil their meat in them witli perfect success. I have seen some few speci- 

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

 in the southern and middle States, placed in our eastern museums and looked 

 upon as a great wonder, when here this novelty 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, moulding them 

 into many fanciful forms, and passing them through the kilns where they are 

 hardened."! 



The largest vessels made by the Indians, it seems, were those used in pro- 

 curing salt by evaporation near salt springs. Du. Pratz mentions a locality in 

 Louisiana where the aborigines collected salt in earthen vessels made on the spot, 

 before they had been supplied with kettles of metal by the French, | The 

 •'Knight of Elvas" likewise describes the method of salt-making employed by 

 the natives. " The saline below St. Genevieve, Missouri," says Brackenridge, 

 " cleared out some time ago and deepened, was found to contain wagon loads of 

 earthenware, some fragments bespeaking vessels as large as a barrel, and prov- 

 ing that the salines had been worked before they were known to the whites. "§ 

 I had occasion to examine a fragment of a vessel of this kind sent to Dr.- 

 Davis in 1859 by Mr. George E. Sellers, who obtained it at the salt springs 

 near Saline river, in southern Illinois, a locality where salt was formerly made 

 by the Indians. Several acres, Mr. Sellers states, are covered with broken ves- 

 sels, and heaps of clay and shells indicate that they were made on the spot. 

 They presented the shape of semi-globular bowls with projecting rims, and 

 measured from thirty inches to four feet across the rim, the thickness varying 

 from one-half to three-quarters of an inch. This earthenware had evidently 

 been modelled in baskets. The fragment sent to Dr. Davis is a rim-piece three- 

 quarters of an inch thick, consisting of three distinct layers of yellowish clay, 

 mixed with very coarsely pounded shells. It is solid and heavy, and must have 

 been tolerably well baked. The impressions on the outside are very regular 



* Hunter's Manners and Customs of several Indian tribes located west of the Mississippi, 

 Philadelphia, 1823, p. 296, &c. 



t Catlings North American Indians, London, 1848, vol. i, p. 116. 



t Du Pratz, vol. i, p. 307. 



§ Brackenridge, Yiews of Louisiana, Pittsburg', 1814, p. 186. 



