SOUTHERN CALIFORNIANS. 15 



been opened in California ; whereas if the route of migration was as above 

 suggested probable, and at a period before the art of pottery-making was 

 known, such tribes coming in contact with those of the Colorado already 

 advanced in the art would soon learn to manufacture vessels of clay. The 

 same objection also holds against a late migration from the Asiatic side of 

 the Pacific, for since the ceramic art was early developed and carried to great 

 perfection on the opposite coast of Asia, a people migrating to America 

 would naturally have brought the art with them. 



Prof. E. S. Morse has recently made important examinations of the 

 shellheaps of Japan, and the collection of pottery, implements of bone, 

 etc, which he obtained, show this ancient shellheap people to be of the 

 same period of development in the arts as those of South America and of 

 some portions of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. This 

 early pottery from Japan is of similar pattern with that from the shell- 

 heaps of the Amazon, and from the St. John's River in Florida; with 

 the former it perhaps more nearly corresponds, though all the specimens 

 I have seen are simply ornamented by pinching, punch-marks, cord-marks, 

 basket-marks, or incised in simple patterns. 



In the pottery from the shellheaps of the Amazon, as shown by the 

 collection in the Peabody Museum, received from the late Prof. C. F. Hartt, 

 various simple forms of ornamentation similar to those of the Japanese 

 pottery exist, and, in addition, more elaborate incised work, while a still 

 higher type of ornamentation is seen in the sculptured feet, handles, and 

 knobs of the vases of various shapes.* 



In the Florida pottery all the simpler forms of ornamentation also 

 occur, and with them that of stamping by movable and more or less com- 

 plex stamps. This stamped pottery is more common in the shellheaps on 

 the coast of Florida than in those on the fresh waters. The animal and 

 other sculptured forms similar to those of the ornaments on the Amazonian 

 pottery are, I think, not to be found in the Florida shellheaps, though the 

 later burial mounds there have yielded some sculptured work. 



Professor Wyman has shown, in his "Memoir on the shellheaps of 



* A still higher class of pottery is found on the Island of Paccoval, of which a large collection was 

 sent to the Peabody Museum by Professor Hartt, but this was not from a shellheap, like that I have 

 mentioned, which was from Taperinha. 



