326 NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS 



several stone implements, and a considerable quantity of pottery. The 

 specimens of rude native fictile ware considerably interested me, 

 on account of the close resemblance tbey frequently bore, not only 

 in material, but in ornamentation, to the ancient pottery of the 

 British barrow . 



The potters' art appears to have been practised to a great extent, 

 and with considerable skill, by the ancient races of this continent ; 

 nor was it unknown to the Red Indians at the period when their 

 arts and customs were first brought under the notice of Europeans. 

 Adair says of the Choctaws and Natchez, that " they made a 

 prodigious number of vessels of pottery, of such variety of forms as 

 would be tedious to describe, and impossible to name ;" and DeSoto 

 describes the fine earthware of the latter tribe, in the seventeenth 

 century, as of considerable variety of composition and much elegance 

 of shape, so as to appear to him little inferior to that of Portugal. 

 The specimens found by me in County Norfolk, and elsewhere in 

 Canada, are heavy and coarse, both in material and workmanship, and 

 neither these nor the objects now to be described, admit of any com- 

 parison, in relation to artistic design or workmanship, with those 

 relics of the Mound Builders' arts, or the more recent productions of 

 Indian skill which suggest a resemblance to them. 



Accompanying the rude fictile ware, spoken of, were also discovered 

 several pipe-heads, made of burnt clay, and in some examples orna- 

 mented, like the pottery, with rude chevron patterns, and lines of 

 dot-work, impressed on the material while soft. But what particular- 

 ly struck me in these, and also in others of the same type, including 

 several specimens found under the root of a large tree, at the Mohawk 

 reserve on the Grand B-iver, and presented to me by the Indian Chief 

 and Missionary, the late Peter Jones, (Kahkewaquonaby,) was 

 the extreme smallness of the bowls, internally, and the obvious com- 

 pleteness of most of such examples as were perfect, without any 

 separate stem or mouth piece ; while if others received any addition, 

 it must have been a small quill, or straw. They at once recalled 

 to my mind the diminutive Scottish " Elfin Pipes," and on 

 comparing them with some of these in my possesion, I find that in 

 the smallest of the Indian pipes the capacity of the bowl is even less 

 than the least of those which, from their miniature proportions have 

 been long popularly assigned to the use of the Scottish Elves. Both 

 the pipes and the accompanying pottery, totally differ, as Mr. Kane 

 assures me, from any of the manufactures which have come under his 

 notice among the tribes of the North West, with whom, indeed, the 

 potter's art appears to be wholly unknown. 



