In 1904 I secured an arrow-straightener of pottery, no. 4367, shown in Handbook, plate 49,f. It carries a longitudinal ridge, a sort of notched comb; presumably to receive, after being heated, the joints of arrows of cane or reed. However, cane arrows, though known to the Mohave, were only occasionally used. The usual ones of arrow weed, without foreshaft or attached head, were simply warmed and bent by hand.
TECHNOLOGICAL NOTES
I saw pottery made about 1902-1904, and have little to add to the record.
Clay is tempered with sandstone crushed on the metate, and built up by coiling. The start of a vessel may be spiral, but its body consists of concentric rings. The paste is rolled out into a slim sausage, the length of which is roughly estimated on the vessel. It is then laid on the last [preceding] coil, and any excess pinched off. It is beaten, with a light and rapid patting with a wooden paddle, against a smooth cobble held inside, and its edge finished flat by scraping between the thumbnail and index finger. Then the next coil is added. The maker sits with the growing vessel on the thighs of her stretched legs, or with one leg flat in front of her and the other doubled under. The paint is yellow ocher, which is put on with a little stick and burns dull red. The patterns are carelessly done, and often shaky. (Handbook, pp. 737-738.)
In 1904, I added the following in notebook 60-33:
A "dish" [bowl] is modeled with the rim incurved [or vertical]. Finally, the rim is turned outward with the fingers, a few inches at a time; [to make the slight neck which] after firing is bound with screw-mesquite [a'íse] fiber. A small oval platter seen made was built up circularly with rolls of clay, then additional pieces were added on two sides and paddled even.
I noted that no slip was being used by Mohave potters, nor does examination reveal any.
In 1904, notebook 60-34, I noted: "If dishes crack, they are mended by hair binding, or now a wire, being passed between two perforations." I did not note how the holes were bored, nor whether the hair was human or horse.
No. 4326 is a small piece of rock such as was crushed and metate-ground for temper. It is not sandstone, as I stated in 1923, but granite, according to my colleague Professor Charles Meyer, whose courtesy is acknowledged and whose information is summarized in Appendix III.
No. 4295 consists of several small slabs of yellow oxide of iron, for grinding up as design paint, which on firing makes the red ocher color which is both darker and more saturatedly red than the light reddish-buff ground color of Mohave pottery. Its composition is also given in Appendix III on the basis of Professor Meyer's examination. Both it and no. 4354 were obtained at matekwaθ-kutšyep, "yellow paint wide open," a spot in a wash cutting across the peneplain from Avimota, Mt. Manchester, in Nevada opposite Fort Mohave.
Several samples of material that might help further elucidate the technology of Mohave pottery have unfortunately been misplaced in the Museum since at least several years. Quite possibly they have been put together into one tray, which was then mislaid. They include:
1759, sample of pottery clay.
4326, sample of pottery temper, presumably after grinding.
4295, 4354, sample of yellow ocher for painting designs.
4277, piece of broken pot.
13871, two sherds.
1719, pottery pipe.