Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley. William Henry Holmes
relics, at Pecan Point, Arkansas.
The borders of the district are necessarily not clearly defined. The characters of the art products blend more or less with those of neighboring sections. This is a usual phenomenon, and is probably due to a variety of causes. The mere contact of peoples leads to the exchange of ideas, and, consequently, to similarities in the products of industry. A change of habitat, with its consequent change of environment, is capable of modifying art to a great extent. Groups of relics and remains attributed by archæologists to distinct stocks of people, may, in cases, be the work of one and the same people executed under the influence of different environments and at widely separated periods of time.
Mixed conditions in the remains of a locality are often due to the presence of different peoples, synchronously or otherwise. This occurs in many places on the outskirts of this district, a good illustration being found in East Tennessee, where three or four distinct groups of ware are intermingled. As would naturally be expected, the distribution is governed somewhat by the great water-ways, and pottery of this province is found far up the Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas Rivers.
How Found.—All peoples have resorted, at some period of their history, to the practice of burying articles of use or value with the dead. It is to this custom that we owe the preservation of so many entire pieces of these fragile utensils. They are exhumed from burial mounds in great numbers, and to an equal extent, perhaps, from simple, unmarked graves which are constantly being brought to light by the plowshare. Fragmentary ware is found also in refuse heaps, on house and village sites, and scattered broadcast over the face of the land.
This pottery, at its best, was probably not greatly superior in hardness to our own soft earthenware, and the disintegrating agencies of the soil have often reduced it to a very fragile state. Some writer has expressed the belief that a considerable portion of the ware of this province was sun-baked merely. This view is hardly a safe one, however, as clay, unmixed with lime or other like indurating ingredient, no matter how long exposed to the rays of the sun, would, from ages of contact with the moist earth, certainly return to its original condition. I have seen but few pieces that, even after the bleaching of centuries, did not show traces of the dark mottlings that result from imperfect firing. There probably was a period of unbaked clay preceding the terra-cotta epoch, but we cannot expect to find definite traces of its existence except, perhaps, in cases where large masses, such as mounds or fortifications, were employed.
The relations of the various articles of pottery to the bodies with which they were associated seem to be quite varied. The position of each vessel was determined by its contents, by its symbolic use, or by the pleasure of the depositor. Uniformity cannot be expected in this more than in other features of burial. In other sections of the country the pieces of pottery are said to have been broken before final inhumation took place, but such was certainly not the practice in this province.
Age.—There can be no reasonable doubt that the manufacture of this ware began many centuries before the advent of the white race, but it is equally certain that the art was extensively practiced until quite recent times. The early explorers of Louisiana saw it in use, and the processes of manufacture are described by Dumont and others.
Possibly Du Pratz had in mind some of the identical vessels now upon our museum shelves when he said that "the women make pots of an extraordinary size, jars with a medium-sized opening, bowls, two-pint bottles with long necks, pots or jugs for containing bear's oil, which hold as much as forty pints, and finally plates and dishes in the French fashion."1
Footnote 1: Du Pratz: Histoire de la Louisiane, Vol. II, p. 179.
Vessels were certainly made in great numbers by the Natchez and other tribes within our period, and it is reasonable to suppose that they belonged to the great group under discussion. If not, it will be necessary to seek the cause of their total disappearance, since, as I have already said, the pottery of this district, as shown by the relics, is practically a unit.
The introduction of metal utensils was a death-blow to the native industry, although some of the southern tribes, the Cherokees, for example, seem to have practiced the art continuously, in a very limited way, down to the present time. There is but little evidence of the influence of the art of the whites upon the ceramic products of this province, although the forms are sometimes thought to be suggestive of European models. It is certain, however, that the art had reached its highest stage without the aid of civilized hands, and in the study of its many interesting features we can feel assured that we are dealing with purely aboriginal ideas.
The pottery of this province is remarkably homogeneous in character, and we are warranted in assigning it to a single period of culture, and, in concluding, that the peoples who developed and practiced the art belonged to a group of closely-allied tribes. We can also state without fear of precipitating a controversy that the people who made this pottery were "mound-builders." At the same time, they were not necessarily of the same people as the builders of the mounds of Wisconsin, Ohio, or Georgia or contemporaneous with them.
Use.—It is difficult to determine the functions of the various forms of vessels. We are safe in stating that in very primitive times nearly all were intended for use in the domestic arts, and that as time went on uses were differentiated—form, as a consequence, undergoing many changes. Early writers on the Southern States mention a number of ordinary uses, such as cooking, the carrying and boiling of water, the manufacture of sugar and salt, and the preservation of honey, oil, and paint.
Only a small percentage of the vessels, and these generally of the pot-shaped variety, show indications of use over fire. It is well known that with most peoples particular forms were devoted to especial ceremonial uses. The construction of vases exclusively for mortuary purposes was probably not generally practiced, although a few examples, notably those illustrated in Figs. 372 and 420, point decidedly in this direction.
The simple conditions of life with these people are indicated by the absence of certain forms. Lamps, whistles, toys, bricks, tiles, and other articles in common use with many barbaric nations, are not found in this province. Pipes, so neatly shaped by other mound-building peoples, are here of a very rude character, a point indicating decided distinctions between the tribes of this province and those of neighboring sections.
Construction.—The methods of manufacture have evidently been of a primitive character. The wheel or lathe has not been used. At the advent of the whites, the natives were observed to build their vessels by a process known as "coiling," and by modeling over gourds, and over blocks of wood and masses of indurated clay shaped for the purpose.
It is probable that in many cases the support was not a mold in the ordinary sense, but was simply a rounded object of small size held in one hand while the base of the vessel was formed over it by the other. Rounded pebbles, or the mushroom-shaped objects of clay sometimes found in the mounds, would have served the purpose perfectly. Trowels, paddles, stamps, polishing-stones, and other implements were used in finishing.
Baskets were also used as molds, and pliable fabrics, such as nets and coarse cloths, were employed in some sections. The methods of baking have apparently not been described in much detail by early writers, but the ware itself bears the marks of those simple processes known to our modern tribes. It is highly probable that the work was done by the women, and that each community had its skilled potters, who built and baked the ware in the open air, going through those simple mummeries that accompany the work among most primitive peoples.
Material.—The material employed was usually a moderately fine-grained clay, tempered, in a great majority of cases, with pulverized shells. The shells used were doubtless obtained from the neighboring rivers. In many of the vessels the particles are large, measuring as much as one-fourth or even one-half of an inch in width, but in the more elegant vases the shell has been reduced to a fine powder. Powdered potsherds were also used. The clay was, apparently, often impure or loamy. It was, probably, at times, obtained from recent alluvial deposits of the bayous—the sediment of overflows—as was the potter's clay of the Nile. There is no reason for believing that the finer processes of powdering and levigation were known. A slip or wash of very finely comminuted clay was sometimes applied to the surface of the vessel. The walls