1879. | Pottery Among Savage Races. 79 
or oblong vessels of the extremely thin, paper-like bark of the 
birch (Betula papyracea Ait.) and cook in them directly over the 
fire, just as water may be boiled ina paper cup. The Kutchin 
tribes of the MacKenzie river have no pottery, but they make 
kettles of tamarack roots, woven together very tightly and neatly, 
and ornamented with dyed porcupine quills, in which vessels they 
boil water with hot stones (Jones Smith’s Report, pp. 66, 321). 
The Indians of Santa Catalina, in California “brought fresh | 
water to the Spaniards in flaskets made of rushes” (Burney, 2d 
Voy. of Sebastian Vizcaino, So. Sea Described, p. 248). Similar 
vessels are still in use in the same region, and Major Powell 
brought home from the Colorado, water baskets lined inside with 
pitch. The Maués of the Amazonas use water-tight baskets, and 
so also do the Kaffirs. Wooden kettles for stone boiling are 
found among many tribes, both in America and elsewhere, and 
the inhabitants of Amboyna and Ternate cook in bamboos 
(Chardin, iv, pp. 171, 172; Receuil des voyages, &c., ili, 322.) 
The possession of a material like birch bark may render pot- 
tery to a certain extent unnecessary, and thus retard its invention 
and adoption. The whole subject of cooking in wooden vessels 
and of stone boiling has been admirably discussed by Tylor. 
` That the inhabitants of the coral islands of the Pacific should be 
_ without pottery is not wonderful. It is said, also, that there is 
no potters’ clay in the Sandwich Islands. 
Man is not the only animal that makes vessels of clay, but he 
is the only one that bakes them in the fire to make them durable. 
Other animals make nests of clay for their young, but primitive 
man makes earthenware vessels in which to hide away his dead. 
Man’s most primitive vessel was his hand ; but leaves, shells, bark, 
tough skins or shells of fruits, sections of bamboos, &c., were 
soon used, as by means of these he could not only dip up water, 
but also transport it from place to place. The same vessels must 
also have served for the preservation and transportation of articles 
of food, etc. The art of pottery has, doubtless, originated inde- 
pendently in many different nations, and many circumstances 
may have led to the employment of clay for the manufacture of 
vessels. At Unalashka, Capt. Cook (Voy. ii, 510) saw “ vessels of 
a flat stone, with sides of clay not unlike a standing pye.” Lyons 
says (Private Journal, p. 320) that the Esquimaux women have 
an ingenious method of making lamps and cooking-pots of 
