372 SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 
аһогісіпев in such parts of the sites as were dug through by us, and hence each 
vessel found is counted as one, no matter how fragmentary it may have been at the 
time of its discovery. 
Various causes contributed to the mutilated condition of numerous vessels, 
Many were more or less broken by aboriginal disturbance,—grave cutting through 
grave,—while others, soaked with water and consequently softened, gave way 
under the pressure of the soil, in the course of years, and were crushed to frag- 
ments. Numbers of vessels also, reached in process of cultivating the ground in 
recent times, were hopelessly ruined by breakage—not alone shattered by the plow, 
but having parts irretrievably carried away. 
There is still another factor contributing to lessen the proportion of entire 
vessels discovered. Although the ceremonial breaking of earthenware vessels did 
not obtain in the region under description, the thrifty aborigines were prone to 
utilize imperfect vessels for interment with the dead, and hence the discoverer often 
comes upon bottles without necks or with only parts of necks; bottles which, hav- 
ing had basal supports, have them in part only or are without them; other vessels 
from which important parts are missing, including bowls once decorated with 
modeled heads and tails but which have them no more. i 
Another fact to emphasize, especially in connection with the Middle Mississippi 
Valley region, is the large proportion of inferior earthenware placed with the dead 
in some of the sites—vessels of inferior texture and of ordinary form—often asym- 
metrical—without decoration of any kind, with the exception perhaps of beaded or 
notched margins, or possibly a few rude lines of incised decoration. We do not 
believe it possible for those familiar with the pottery of this region only through 
visits to museums, or by inspection of illustrations of selected specimens, to have 
any conception of the small proportion of really interesting vessels found in some 
aboriginal sites in the region in question. It has been our fortune there, more than 
once to unearth fifty successive vessels without coming upon one presenting any 
feature of especial interest, either in the way of elegance of form or of decoration, 
or of oddity of design. 
The large proportion of vessels of inferior ware and of commonplace form, care- 
lessly modeled and scarcely decorated, or without decoration, found among the 
mortuary tributes of pottery made by the aborigines of the Middle Mississippi 
region, arises, we think, from the great quantity of pottery in use in that region in 
aboriginal times. The time required for the making of this superabundance of 
vessels perhaps bred carelessness of manufacture in respect to much of the ware, 
and set the potters working in a perfunctory way, as 18 exemplified by the great 
repetition in the form of the vessels and in their decoration. 
The pottery obtained by us in a broken condition, that seemed desirable to 
place on exhibition in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, where all 
our collections may be seen, has been cemented together, with slight restoration in 
some cases, always made in a way to be distinguished from the original. 
