86 Pottery Among Savage Races. [ February, 
Chambers’ Encyc.; Williams and Calvert, Fiji, &c., 53; Jenkins’ 
U.S. Expl. Ex., 347; Birch, Anct. Pottery, i, 48, 49; Brogniart, 
ut supra, i, 502). Von Martius alludes in general terms to the 
mode of building up an earthen vessel by coiling (Ethno. Amer- 
ikas, 712); and the same method appears to have been alluded to by 
Humboldt (Pers. Nar., ii, 309) when he says that the natives of 
the Maypures on the Orinoco “ purify the clay by repeated wash- 
ings, form it into cylinders, and mould the largest vessels with 
the hand.” 
We meet with the same method again in Childe, where it has 
been described by Dr. Fonck (Die Indier des Südlichen Chile, 
&c.), who speaks of the vessel as being built up exactly as at 
Ereré, a flat piece being first made for the bottom, on the per- 
iphery of which the wall is formed by coiling up a sausage-like 
cylinder. He adds that the ware is dried in the smoke before 
burning (Zeitsch. fur Eth., 1870, iv., 290). 
Gili describes the process of toilihe as Suh among the 
Indians of Orinoco, and adds that the surface of the vessel is 
worked down with a pebble and the fingers, which are. from time 
to time, dipped into water, the ware being. burned in pits with a 
fire made of bark. 
Prof. Charles Rau, the first ethnologist to give due importance 
to the method of coiling, has, in his admirable essay on Indian 
Pottery (Smithson. Rep., 1866, 351), translated the description 
given by Dumont of the manufactury of earthenware by the 
Indians of Louisiana, in which an account of the building up of 
a vessel by this method is given (Mem. Historiques sur la Loui- 
siane). Prof. Rau is of the opinion that the building up of pot- ` 
tery by coiling was practiced over a large area in North America. 
Certainly in South America it was widely known. 
Prof. Eggleston, of Columbia College, New York, informs me _ 
that in Germany, the large crucibles used in melting are, when 
broken, built up again with ropes of clay. In this case we have 
either a survival of an old pre-historic art, or its re-discovery in 
modern times. 
I will now give such information as I have been able to gather 
concerning the manufactory of pottery by the aboriginal inhabi- , 
tants of America, for the double purpose of giving a clearer idea : 
of the various processes used, and also of showing that the manu- | : 
facture is everywhere EOE in the hands of women. rf 
