Then Ang knew that Odin had given a new gift. "This time the Red One has spoken to you; what has he said?"
Oma carefully drew the little clay pots from the fire, and after they had cooled she examined them. Two of them were cracked, but one was firm and solid as if it had been cut from stone. She held it up before Ang in triumph. "This is what we have been waiting for since the beginning of time. The Red One has worked magic on the clay, and its old enemy, the water, cannot eat through it."
The next day Oma made baskets lined with clay, and then, putting them on flat stones, pushed them into the heat of the fire. Some of them crumbled, but others baked hard and firm. As the heat burned off the inclosing basket, the pattern was left molded on the clay.
After many experiments Oma learned just what clay to use and how to bake it. And she made pots of all sizes and arranged them on ledges of her cave and filled them with nuts and seeds. Then she learned how to use the clay pots for cooking. In the old days she had placed scraps of meat and bone and roots in a pitch-lined basket and then added water and hot stones from the fire. Of course the pitch softened and gave an unpleasant taste to the stew, and often the hot water softened it so much that the basket became like a sieve. But now Oma could mix her stews and brews and boil them until they were soft and delicious, and the clay dish was just as good as before.
And Suta and other women came to look; and they wondered and tasted, and smacked their lips, and asked how it was done, then went home to do likewise. And the fame of Ang and Oma grew in the north land, and men said, "They are loved by the Great One".
But if Oma made the first pottery and the most useful, Suta, wife of Wang, made the most beautiful. After she had learned to bake the clay so that neither fire nor water would harm it, she amused herself by making dishes of queer shapes. Then she discovered it was not necessary to make the basket molds, and that if she made marks on the clay they would be baked in. She began by making a little row of nail prints about the rim—((((((((((. Then she made rough pictures of animals and men with a sharpened stick. And the fame of Suta went out also through the north land, and they came from far away to see the wonderful things which she had done. Others tried, but no one could make such beautiful dishes as Suta.
Before the great fire feast an idea came to Suta like a dream in the night, she knew not from where. She would make a great bowl for Odin and she would mold on it pictures of his gifts, so that all who saw would remember from whom the good things came. With great care she shaped a bowl as high as a five-year-old child and so large that a grown man could not circle it with his arms. On it she pictured the man who shot the first deer with a stone-tipped arrow, the man who made the first snare for the wild birds, the man who first crossed the deep water in a hollowed log, Ang striking fire from the flints, Oma baking the clay dishes. Then she hesitated. These and many things more the Great One had given; what would He give next? What did she want most?
The First Potter