70 Antiquity of the Indians of North America. [February, 
lithic stone implements wherever found, either on the surface, in 
the soil, or buried in graves. This association is a reliable guide 
to the age of accompanying relics, especially when met with in 
graves, for superior ware would be chosen to contain the food 
buried with the body. I have invariably found in the graves 
which from indications irrespective of their contents gave evi- 
dence of considerable antiquity, that the contained relics agreed 
with the external evidences ; and: especially is this true of the 
pottery. It is very coarse and free from all attempts at orna- 
mentation when associated with coarse, unskillfully chipped 
weapons ; and elaborate, highly decorated, — by figures of varied 
patterns, not colored, — and fine in its composition when found 
in graves containing carefully wrought, artistic jasper spears and 
arrow-points, and highly polished, symmetrical celts and axes. 
The same obtains with pottery that has been long lost, and 
deeply buried by the accumulating soil of periodically submerged 
lands, when compared with that found nearer and upon the sur- 
ace. 
The rude pottery, and evidently the older, is simply clayey 
earth with no admixture of foreign matter other than what has 
been accidentally incorporated, such as small pebbles and frag- 
ments of wood. It is easily broken, free from ornament, and, I 
judge, sun-burnt only.! Always thick, and usually uneven, ves- 
sels of such rude make could have been of but limited use, and, 
judging from the fragments, were always small round or oval 
bowls, never contracted at the opening as the majority of cups, 
vases, and urns of later times are. The finer and later pottery 
is made of carefully selected clay, is mixed with finely pulverized 
mussel shells, is comparatively thin, of uniform thickness, and 
often very elaborately decorated with curved lines, dots, zig-zags, 
and parallel lines, singly or combined. Some fragments that I 
have gathered give grounds for believing that by varying the 
proportions of the ingredients of the mixture the maker could de- 
termine the color, as some of these fragments are of a bright brick- 
red color, others of a delicate pearl tint, and a third variety of a 
deep, dark purple. A careful comparison of a large series of 
specimens gathered from a single neighborhood, made in connec- 
! From circumstances to which I cannot more than allude now, I am led to 
believe that the first pottery was baked by being plastered over one half of a large 
oval stone previously heated. The heat from the stone and exposure to the sun re- 
sulted in an unequal burhing, the inside of the vessel being harder than the exterior 
surface. ne 
