118 MANUFACTURE OF SOAPSTONE POTS. 



is changed to a bright metallic lead color. Some years ago I showed a 

 potsherd, the color of which had thus been changed by fire, to a mineral- 

 ogist, who pronounced it Magnesian mica. 



The first information I gained of the locality of quarries of pot-stone, 

 or where pots were made, was from a venerable Spanish lady while exhum- 

 ing- in Nipomo rancho, San Luis Obispo County, iu the spring of 1874. 

 She recollected a narrative of her mother, according to which the Indians 

 had brought ollas in canoe-loads from the islands in Santa Barbara channel 

 to the mainland, which they exchanged for such necessities as the island- 

 ers were in want of* Two years later, in Santa Barbara County, I re- 

 ceived similar information from an old Mexican, then my guide. While 

 making researches among the islands, at the joint expense of the Smithsonian 

 Institution and the Peabody Museum, I gained the assurance, during my 

 short stay on Santa Catalina, that the stone exists in certain places on that 

 island, but did not then succeed in finding the quarries. But during m} 7 last 

 expedition to that locality, made at the expense of the Peabody Museum, I 

 made the discovery, finding pits, quarries, and tools, together with unfinished 

 articles. I noticed that the softer stone -usually obtained in the pits, which 

 is of a more micaceous character, was used for pots, while the close-grained 

 rock of darker color, serpentine, was mainly used for the weights of digging- 

 sticks, cups, pipes, ornaments, etc. 



While in camp at Little Springs, my attention was first arrested by a 

 small mound of silvery hue, which same hue also extended over the 

 adjoining ground. The mound is in front of a large outcropping rock of 

 pot-stone, which I found to be an impressive witness of the tedious labors 

 of the aborigines, it being entirely covered with marks where pot-forms had 

 been worked out or left in various stages; some even were only begun and 

 abandoned, while others were nearly worked out in rough outlines, but 

 still united with the living rock. At the foot of the bluff is a burrow in 

 which, and among the debris forming the mound, many potsherds, a broken 

 pot of which the outside had already been well worked and even the hol- 

 low started, and a pot-form as broken from the mother rock, were brought 



* This statement is corroborated by Dr. Yarrow, who was informed of the same circumstances by 

 tire Seiiora Welch at the Dos Pneblos ranch, the principal articles of barter given in exchange for th"3 

 ollas being grass-seeds, furs, skins, acorns, and roots of different kinds. — F. W. P. 



