EARTHENWARE OF THE NEW YORK ABORIGINES ^J 



The fineness of the work may depend much on the material, and 

 this varies greatly. That of the southwest is usually finer than in 

 New York, but in many cases here this was selected with care. Mr 

 S. L. Frey, writing in 1885 of an early Mohawk fort in Fulton 

 county, said, ' The pits from which the clay was taken are at the 

 foot of the hill on which the village stood; they are abundant all 

 along a little stream that trickles over the huge boulders and logs, 

 and through a tangle of ferns and wild growths of all kinds. . The 

 holes were sunk through the upper soil to a bed of stiff, tenacious 

 clay^ which overlies the Utica slate at that point.' We recall no 

 other place where such pits have been observed, but very fine clay 

 was used for many vessels and pipes^ some of which have a surface 

 which seems almost polished. The material itself was carefully 

 prepared. 



In both pipes and vessels may be found frequent means of iden- 

 tifying or connecting one place or age with another, and we give 

 a simple illustration. Figures of some New York pipes were sent 

 to Mr Francis Parkman in 1884, on account of his mere descrip- 

 tion of the Huron pipes of Canada. In reply he said, ' Two or three 

 of these have almost exact counterparts in the pipes of Hochelaga, 

 preserved in the museum of McGill college at Montreal. Some I 

 very carelessly mentioned as stemless, because they had a short 

 stem of their own, and did not need a long wooden one.' 



In this case the pipes simply confirmed history, the Hurons, the 

 Hochelagans and the New York Iroquois all belonging to the same 

 family. If a village had been isolated or unknown to history, the 

 evidence of the pipes would have been important. That of pottery 

 has proved even more valuable in New York^ clearly establishing 

 the connection and relative age of some sites. 



Much has been written on the making and ornamentation of 

 aboriginal American pottery in all parts of the land, but we are now 

 concerned only with our local ware. The ruder forms were prob- 

 ably molded by the hands alone^ aided by simple implements, and 

 some of the finer examples were made in the same way. Others 

 seem to have been formed on some kind of foundation^ in part at 

 least, and a prevalent idea has been that many were formed within 



