Indian Pottery
CHAPTER XI
INDIAN POTTERY
In no other country can primitive pottery be so conveniently studied as in ours. Within our borders, he who digs may read the history of clay-working from the earliest days. Those who are denied this study at first hand will find in museums plenty of material—quaint bowls and jars, some of them smoke-stained and cracked, but all wonderfully well preserved when one thinks of their age. From the rudest pots, made by inferior tribes, we can trace the progress of the craft gradually advancing until, in the pottery found in or near Mexico, we see what may be considered the masterpieces of American ceramic art.
In the United States, the pottery of the Pueblo tribes ranks first, and, close to that, the charming wares of the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.
There are many tribes which are still practising the craft, some following the old methods, while others, influenced by the white man, are making ware of little interest to the student of primitive pottery. The Indians of the Pueblo country are using almost the same processes as those of ancient days.
