202 PIRE, COOKlNGj AND VESSELS. 



wHle the higher peoples of the worlds and a great proportion 

 of the lower ones^ have had, so long as we know anything of 

 them, vessels of pottery or metal which they put liquids into, 

 and set over the fire to boil. Between these two conditions, 

 however, there lies a process which has been superseded by 

 the higher method within modem times over a large fraction 

 of the earth^s surface, and which there is some reason to be- 

 lieve once extended much further. It is even likely that "the 

 art of Boiling, as commonly known to us, may have been de- 

 veloped through this intermediate process, which I propose to 

 call Stone-Boiling. 



There is a North American tribe who received from their 

 neighbours the Ojibwas, the name of Assinaboins, or " Stone- 

 Boilers," from their mode of boiling their meat, of which Cat- 

 lin gives a particular account. They dig a hole in the ground, 

 take a piece of the animal's raw hide, and press it down with 

 their hands close to the sides of the hole, which thus becomes 

 a sort of pot or basin. This they fill with water, and they 

 make a number of stones red-hot in a fire close by. The meat 

 is put into the water, and the stones dropped in till the meat 

 is boiled. Catlin describes the process as awkward and tedious, 

 and says that since the Assinaboins had learnt from the Man- 

 dans to make pottery, and had been supplied with vessels by 

 the traders^ they had entirely done away the custom, " except- 

 ing at public festivals ; where they seem, like all others of the 

 human family, to take pleasure in cherishing- and perpetuating 

 their ancient customs."^ Elsewhere among the Sioux or Da- 

 cotas, to whom the A.ssinaboins belong, the tradition has been 

 preserved that their fathers used to cook the game in its own 

 skin, which they set up on four sticks planted in the ground, 

 and put water, meat, and hot stones into it." The Sioux had the 

 art of stone-boiling in common with the mass of the northern 

 tribes. Father Charlevoix, writing above a century ago, speaks 

 of the Indians of the North as using wooden kettles and boil- 

 ing the water in them by throwing in red-hot stones, but even 

 then iron pots were superseding both these vessels and the 

 pottery of other tribes.^ To specify more particularly, the 

 ' Catlin, vol. i. p. 54. - Schoolcraft, part ii. p. 176. ' Charlevoix, vol. vi. ]). 47 



