THE METHOD OF MANUFACTURE OF SOAPSTONE POTS. 



By Paul Schumacher.* 



In my investigations among the remains of the aborigines of the Pa- 

 cific coast, south of San Francisco, I was always rewarded by finding 

 the olla,f one of the most beautiful utensils of genuine aboriginal work- 

 manship. The pot is usually of globular form, with a narrow opening on 

 the top; sometimes pear-shaped, and others of the Mexican form, with a 

 wide opening. Illustrations of the principal types are given in Bancroft's 

 "Native Races of the Pacific States," Vol. IV, page 693, from my own 

 drawings. The stone of which this utensil for culinary purposes, and some 

 other articles of our Indians were worked out, has been well known and in 

 use for like purposes since the classic times of Theophrastus and Pliny. 

 The Magnesian stone {^ixayvfjnz M6o?) and the kind quarried at Siplmus 

 and Comun, the lapis ollaris of a later period, of which in ancient times 

 vessels were hollowed out in the turning-lathe and carved, coincide in 

 nature and composition with the pot-stone of our Indians. The stone is 

 a steatite, usually of a greenish-gray color, sometimes showing hexagonal 

 prisms in stellated groups, with pearly lustre and greasy touch, especially 

 when reduced to powder. It changes in some portions of the same ledge 

 into a more flaky and micaceous character, while in neighboring deposits, 

 as at Santa Catalina Island, it exists crystallized in stellated groups of well- 

 developed hexagonal needles of glistening apple color, which are easily de- 

 tached from the weathered surface. The living rock is not as bright or 

 shining as are the fragments of pots that had been exposed to heat; it loses 

 its greasy character the more a utensil has thus been in use, and the color 



* Extracted in advance from the 11th Annual Report of the Peabody Museum. 

 t Olla, from the Latin olla, a pot; Mexican pronunciation di/a. 



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