KIDDER— CASAS GRANDES POTTERY 



vases (pi. in, figs. I, 5, etc.). They usually occur in pairs interlocking, 

 in series along a line, or in double series with a current design filling 

 the interspaces between them (pi. v, fig. 9). A triangle with an 

 appendage of one sort or another drawn from its apex and in line 

 with its longer side is a unit used almost universally in Southwestern 

 decoration. This particular form, however, seems to be restricted to 

 the polychrome ware of the lower Gila, * to the later Little Colorado 

 wares, 2 and to the red Pajaritan pottery of the upper Rio Grande. 3 



Life forms are considered here because they seem always to be 

 associated with designs of the rectilinear style. 



Plumed Serpents.* — Painted representations of these mythical 

 monsters are not common. There are: one (pi. 11, fig. 4) in the Pea- 

 body Museum; four in the American Museum, and three in the 

 Museum of the American Indian. The Peabody specimen has been 

 described and figured with the effigy vases; on it the serpents cover 

 the whole surface of the vessel and are executed in relief. The other 

 examples are painted flat. In most cases there are two serpents, one 

 on each side, the heads and tails nearly meeting. Each serpent is bent 

 in the middle so that the two together form (or the single serpent if 

 there be but one) a zigzag about the middle of the vase (cf. figs. 7 and 

 8, and Lumholtz, p. 94 and pi. 11). The rest of the decorated surface 

 is occupied by the familiar elements of rectilinear design. 



The figures themselves form narrow bands occupied by geometric 

 decoration, the most constant feature of which is one kind or another 

 of dotted checkerboarding. The figures here given, together with 

 those of Lumholtz just referred to, and those in Spinden's Maya Art 

 (p. 241), illustrate all the serpents now in accessible collections. 

 Though they differ in details their similarities are obvious and need 

 not be listed here. The common association of the bird with the 

 serpent on these vessels (cf. Lumholtz, pi. 11) is interesting. 



Birds are all produced by negative drawing and are of fairly life- 

 like appearance. As they usually occur on the same vessels as do the 

 serpents there seems to have been some connection between the two 

 in the minds of the artists. Plate vn shows a representative series of 

 them, figure 3 being from a pot in the Deseret Museum, Salt Lake 

 City. They are always fitted into rectangular or triangular panels. 

 While the species cannot be identified, it seems clear the representa- 

 tions are of some small crested bird like the California quail rather 



1 Fewkes in Twenty-eighth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. EthnoL, figs. 46, 47. 



2 See plates in Fewkes, Twenty-second Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. 



3 Kidder in Memoins Amer. Anthr. Asso., vol. II, no. 6. 



4 For the first notice of this form on Casas Grandes pottery, see Saville in The Archmologist, 11, 

 pp. 291-293. See also Spinden, Maya Art, p. 241. 



[265] 



