AND BLACK RIVERS, ARKANSAS. 261 
Owing to the widespread attention that the pottery of the St. Francis has 
received already, we shall omit in the main from our description of the ware the 
commoner forms of the pottery of this region, and shall have but little to say of 
the undecorated bottles, pots, and bowls of commonplace form; the bowls and pots 
with loop-handles or ears, and with trivial decoration, such as knobs, notches, fillets, 
or rude incised or punctate markings; bowls having rudely modeled heads project- 
ing from one side and conventional tails on the opposite side; many bowls having 
forms of the fish in profile; bottles with dual necks uniting near the opening or 
with annular or tripod supports; or bottles having coarse representations of the 
human head at the opening; vessels bearing in relief representations of the frog; 
shell forms, fresh-water and marine; various forms of the gourd, including ladles; 
vessels of ordinary shape with uniform coatings of red pigment. 
The great majority of vessels found by us along St. Francis river were in frag- 
ments, as indeed we have found the case to be everywhere else. These fragments 
were carefully gathered and, if found worthy of restoration, were labeled and sent 
to the Academy of Natural Sciences, where they were cemented together in their 
original shapes,' occasionally with slight restoration. This restoration is never 
attempted unless it is entirely warranted by the form of the remainder of the ves- 
sel, as, for example, the addition of a handle similar to another on the vessel, or 
the insertion of a portion of the rim or of the body. The restoration, moreover, is 
made with a material that can be distinguished at once from that of which the 
vessel is made. 
The student of the earthenware of the St. Francis who is not already familiar 
with that part of Professor Holmes’ “ Aboriginal Pottery of Eastern United 
States,” 2 which treats of the ware of the Middle Mississippi valley, is recommended 
to accord it careful attention, inasmuch as nearly all the forms and decorations of 
pottery found along the St. Francis, as well as in adjacent territory, are carefully 
described and figured in it. Also, “An Analysis of the Decorations upon Pottery 
from the Mississippi Valley ” 3 will prove interesting to read in connection with the 
decoration of vessels figured in this report. 
As a general rule the mortuary deposit of pottery along the St. Francis was 
placed near the head of the skeleton, though there were a number of exceptions to 
this rule where vessels were found near various parts of the body. In cases of 
deposits of a considerable number of vessels, the pottery sometimes began at the 
head and extended downward. In the case of an infant which had eleven vessels 
with it, the pottery deposit extended almost the full length of the skeleton, if not 
its entire length. However, in the great majority of cases vessels of earthenware 
lay at the heads, and “pot-hunters” along the river, having dug down to vessels 
near skulls, which they had discovered with the aid of sounding-rods, seldom dug 
out the entire skeletons, realizing that the chance of finding other vessels with 
them did not warrant their doing so. 
1 The effigy vessel from the Bonner Place, on St. Francis river, was found in ninety-five pieces. 
2 Op. eit. - 
3 Charles C. Willoughby. Journal of American Folk-lore, Vol. X, 1897. 
