I wish in this place to express my obligations to the officers and members of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, and especially to Mrs. M. L. D. Putnam and Prof. W. H. Pratt, whose generous aid has been of the greatest service to me.
CERAMIC GROUPS.
In studying the collections from the Mississippi Valley, I find it convenient to classify the ceramic products in three great groups, which belong to as many pretty well-defined districts; these I have named, for convenience of treatment, the Upper Mississippi, the Middle Mississippi, and the Lower Mississippi or Gulf provinces. Other pottery occurs within the limits of these areas, but the examples found in the museums are so few that very little of importance can be learned from them.
The three groups enumerated are not equally represented. The great body of our collections is from the middle province. The ware of the Lower Mississippi or Gulf district, of which we have but a small number of pieces, has many features in common with the pottery of the middle district, and at the same time is identical in most respects with that of the Gulf coast to the east. No well-defined line can be drawn between them; but the ware of the north is wholly distinct and need never be confounded with the other groups.
MIDDLE MISSISSIPPI PROVINCE.
Distribution.—It must not be inferred that there is perfect uniformity in the pottery of this, or any other, extended region; local peculiarities are always to be found. The products of contiguous districts, such, for example, as those of Mississippi County, Arkansas, and New Madrid County, Missouri, have much in common, and will at once be recognized as belonging to the same family, yet the differences are so marked that the unskilled observer could point them out with ease.
As indicated by decided family resemblances, the wares of this group extend over the greater part of the States of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, cover large portions of Mississippi, Kentucky, and Illinois, and reach somewhat into Iowa, Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. The types are better marked and the products more abundant about the center of this area, which may be defined roughly as including contiguous parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, with a pretty decided focal center, at least in the abundance of 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.