192 ON THE POTTERY OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS. 
scent for the purpose of procuring salt by evaporating the brine. 
he Indians, according to Cotton Mather and other authorities, 
never employed salt in curing their meats, but resorted to the 
process of drying and smoking; yet here occur in abundance, * 
fragments of pottery, showing that a prehistoric people visited 
this spring for the purpose of “ boiling salt.” From the slight 
curvature of the fragments, it is evident that the vessels were of 
jarge capacity. The material is coarse; the general thickness of 
the walls is about half an inch in diameter, but becomes thicker 
about the rim. The external markings consist of vertical lines 
of depression, half an inch apart, with lines sometimes horizontal, 
and at others oblique, so that I am inclined to believe that in 
moulding these large vessels, they constructed a wicker-work of 
rushes to sustain the clay until it had become dried.* 
It is rare to meet with vessels which are decorated with colors, 
Fig. 25, a. Fig. 25, b. 
a, b, Specimens of Pottery from Aztalan, Wisconsin. 
yet such relics are found at Merom, Indiana (Fig. 24, a), in this 
respect resembling the pottery collected by Prof. Cox, west of the 
Rio Grande in New Mexico (Fig. 24, b). In both instances the 
fragments are marked by broad stripes of black around the rim, 
while the body is ornamented with circular spots ; with this differ- 
ence, however, that in the one instance, the effect is produced by 
a dark background, while in the other the process is reversed 
Professor Cox informs me that the Indians of New Mexico colored 
their pottery black, by using the gum of the mezquite, which has 
much the appearance and properties of gum arabic, and then bak- 
ing it, by which the mordant became set. Much of the pottery 
from the Colorado Chequito is colored, the prevailing tints being 
white, black and red.+ 
* ot Jla} } in ty Th 
t pap by oi Snare pE mbeart 
this s pottery is spoken of, and ABD wis 
nares “ Pacific Railroad otal Vol iii. ” Whipple's Report on the tdia et 
