Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/592

but a slight examination showed me that these figures had been impressed and not carved; or, in other words, that a basket of rushes or willows had first been constructed, inside of which the clay was moulded and allowed to dry before burning."

Then, in a foot-note, he continues:

"Since this chapter was written, I have seen a paper of Mr. Charles Rau, of New York, on the aboriginal pottery of this country, in which he refers to this locality, and arrives at the same conclusion as myself. . . . I had occasion to examine a fragment of a vessel sent to Dr. Davis in 1859, by Mr. George E. Sellers, who obtained it at the salt-springs, near the Saline River. . . . Several acres, Mr. Sellers states, are covered with broken vessels, and heaps of clay and shells, which indicate that they were made on the spot. They present the shape of semi-globular bowls with projecting rims, and measure from thirty inches to four feet across the rim; the thickness varies from a half to three quarters of an inch.

"The earthenware has evidently been moulded in baskets. It is solid and heavy, and must have been tolerably well baked. The impressions on the outside are very regular, and are really ornamental, proving that these aboriginal potters were also skillful basket-makers.

"Mr. Rau quotes from Hunter, as to the aboriginal mode of making pottery, 'Another method practised is to coat the inner surface of baskets, made of rushes or willows, with clay, to the required thickness, and, when dried, to burn them as above described.'"

 

My object in writing this article is to refute a theory that would attribute to the rude, prehistoric people of the Stone age a skill in manipulation that cannot now be approached by the skilled artisan of the present age; that is, keeping in form and lining with heavy clay fragile baskets of the large size of these old salt-kettles.

About the time I sent the specimens to Dr. Davis referred to by Mr. Rau, I also sent some to the Hon. Thomas Ewbank, and in my letter accompanying I stated that I had discovered what at first I took to be an entire kettle bottom-up; but, on removing the earth that covered it, it appeared to be a solid mass of sun-dried clay. From its position among heaps of clay and shells, its hard, compact, discolored—I might say almost polished—surface, I became satisfied it was a mould on which the clay kettles had been formed, precisely as in loam moulding at the present day.

Mr. Ewbank, in reply, said he thought I was mistaken; that what I took for a mould was most probably a concreted sediment that had filled a kettle and been turned out; that there was no evidence of the aborigines of either North or South America having ever used the lathe, or formed their ware by striking; not even among the Peruvians, whom he considered far in advance as to forms and quality of pottery-ware. They had moulded bottles or jugs on gourds, and open vessels in baskets, which had been burned out or off in baking; he thought the specimens I sent him bore evident marks of reed baskets, etc.