Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley Part 1

Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley.

by William H. Holmes.

INTRODUCTORY.

This paper is the third of a series of preliminary studies of aboriginal ceramic art which are intended to be absorbed into a final work of a comprehensive character.

The groups of relics selected for these studies are in all cases of limited extent, and are such as can lay claim to a considerable degree of completeness. It is true that no series of archaeologic objects can ever be considered complete, but in exceptional cases the sources of supply may be so thoroughly explored that the development of new features of importance cannot reasonably be expected. If any series of American ceramic products has reached such a condition, it is that of the middle portions of the Mississippi Valley; yet, even in this case, I consider it unwise to attempt a monographic study, and prefer to single out a particular collection, making it the subject of a thorough investigation.

When the idea of preparing such a paper was first conceived, the collection presenting the greatest advantages was that of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Davenport, Iowa, which was, therefore, chosen.

Other museums, especially those at Cambridge, Saint Louis, and Was.h.i.+ngton, were rich in material from this region, but none of these collections were so h.o.m.ogeneous and satisfactory.

The National Museum has recently received important accessions from the Mississippi Valley, through the agency of the Bureau of Ethnology, and ere the publication of this paper will probably excel all others in the number and variety of its mound relics. Some of its material has already been published by Dr. Charles Rau, Prof. C. C. Jones, Dr.

Joseph Jones, and myself, and several additional examples are given in this paper.

Professor F. W. Putnam has described and ill.u.s.trated many pieces belonging to the Peabody Museum, and Professor W. B. Potter and Dr. Edward Evers have issued an important work on the Saint Louis collections, in Contributions to the Archaeology of Missouri.

This study is intended to pave the way to a thorough cla.s.sification of the mult.i.tude of relics, and to the discovery of a method of procedure suited to a broad and exhaustive treatment of the ceramic art.

I do not expect to discuss ethnical questions, although ceramic studies will eventually be of a.s.sistance in determining the distribution and migrations of peoples, and in fixing the chronology of very remote events in the history of pottery-making races.

Some of the results of my studies of the evolutionary phase of the subject are embodied in an accompanying paper upon the "Origin and Development of Form and Ornament," and a second paper will soon follow. Before the final work is issued I hope to make close studies of all the princ.i.p.al collections, public and private. In such a work the importance of great numbers of examples cannot be overestimated.

Facts can be learned from a few specimens, but relations.h.i.+ps and principles can only be derived from the study of mult.i.tudes.

I shall probably have occasion to modify many of the views advanced in these preliminary papers, but it is only by pus.h.i.+ng out such advance guards that the final goal can be reached.

Since the original issue of this paper in the Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, a careful revision of the text has been made and much additional matter and a number of ill.u.s.trations have been added.

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 cla.s.sify 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 archaeologists 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 ill.u.s.tration 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.

HOW FOUND.--All peoples have resorted, at some period of their history, to the practice of burying articles of use or value with the dead. It is to this custom that we owe the preservation of so many entire pieces of these fragile utensils. They are exhumed from burial mounds in great numbers, and to an equal extent, perhaps, from simple, unmarked graves which are constantly being brought to light by the plowshare. Fragmentary ware is found also in refuse heaps, on house and village sites, and scattered broadcast over the face of the land.

This pottery, at its best, was probably not greatly superior in hardness to our own soft earthenware, and the disintegrating agencies of the soil have often reduced it to a very fragile state. Some writer has expressed the belief that a considerable portion of the ware of this province was sun-baked merely. This view is hardly a safe one, however, as clay, unmixed with lime or other like indurating ingredient, no matter how long exposed to the rays of the sun, would, from ages of contact with the moist earth, certainly return to its original condition. I have seen but few pieces that, even after the bleaching of centuries, did not show traces of the dark mottlings that result from imperfect firing. There probably was a period of unbaked clay preceding the terra-cotta epoch, but we cannot expect to find definite traces of its existence except, perhaps, in cases where large ma.s.ses, such as mounds or fortifications, were employed.

The relations of the various articles of pottery to the bodies with which they were a.s.sociated seem to be quite varied. The position of each vessel was determined by its contents, by its symbolic use, or by the pleasure of the depositor. Uniformity cannot be expected in this more than in other features of burial. In other sections of the country the pieces of pottery are said to have been broken before final inhumation took place, but such was certainly not the practice in this province.

AGE.--There can be no reasonable doubt that the manufacture of this ware began many centuries before the advent of the white race, but it is equally certain that the art was extensively practiced until quite recent times. The early explorers of Louisiana saw it in use, and the processes of manufacture are described by Dumont and others.

Possibly Du Pratz had in mind some of the identical vessels now upon our museum shelves when he said that "the women make pots of an extraordinary size, jars with a medium-sized opening, bowls, two-pint bottles with long necks, pots or jugs for containing bear's oil, which hold as much as forty pints, and finally plates and dishes in the French fas.h.i.+on."[1]

Vessels were certainly made in great numbers by the Natchez and other tribes within our period, and it is reasonable to suppose that they belonged to the great group under discussion. If not, it will be necessary to seek the cause of their total disappearance, since, as I have already said, the pottery of this district, as shown by the relics, is practically a unit.

The introduction of metal utensils was a death-blow to the native industry, although some of the southern tribes, the Cherokees, for example, seem to have practiced the art continuously, in a very limited way, down to the present time. There is but little evidence of the influence of the art of the whites upon the ceramic products of this province, although the forms are sometimes thought to be suggestive of European models. It is certain, however, that the art had reached its highest stage without the aid of civilized hands, and in the study of its many interesting features we can feel a.s.sured that we are dealing with purely aboriginal ideas.

The pottery of this province is remarkably h.o.m.ogeneous in character, and we are warranted in a.s.signing it to a single period of culture, and, in concluding, that the peoples who developed and practiced the art belonged to a group of closely-allied tribes. We can also state without fear of precipitating a controversy that the people who made this pottery were "mound-builders." At the same time, they were not necessarily of the same people as the builders of the mounds of Wisconsin, Ohio, or Georgia or contemporaneous with them.

[Footnote 1: Du Pratz: Histoire de la Louisiane, Vol. II, p.

179.]

USE.--It is difficult to determine the functions of the various forms of vessels. We are safe in stating that in very primitive times nearly all were intended for use in the domestic arts, and that as time went on uses were differentiated--form, as a consequence, undergoing many changes. Early writers on the Southern States mention a number of ordinary uses, such as cooking, the carrying and boiling of water, the manufacture of sugar and salt, and the preservation of honey, oil, and paint.

Only a small percentage of the vessels, and these generally of the pot-shaped variety, show indications of use over fire. It is well known that with most peoples particular forms were devoted to especial ceremonial uses. The construction of vases exclusively for mortuary purposes was probably not generally practiced, although a few examples, notably those ill.u.s.trated in Figs. 372 and 420, point decidedly in this direction.

The simple conditions of life with these people are indicated by the absence of certain forms. Lamps, whistles, toys, bricks, tiles, and other articles in common use with many barbaric nations, are not found in this province. Pipes, so neatly shaped by other mound-building peoples, are here of a very rude character, a point indicating decided distinctions between the tribes of this province and those of neighboring sections.

CONSTRUCTION.--The methods of manufacture have evidently been of a primitive character. The wheel or lathe has not been used. At the advent of the whites, the natives were observed to build their vessels by a process known as "coiling," and by modeling over gourds, and over blocks of wood and ma.s.ses of indurated clay shaped for the purpose.

It is probable that in many cases the support was not a mold in the ordinary sense, but was simply a rounded object of small size held in one hand while the base of the vessel was formed over it by the other.

Rounded pebbles, or the mushroom-shaped objects of clay sometimes found in the mounds, would have served the purpose perfectly. Trowels, paddles, stamps, polis.h.i.+ng-stones, and other implements were used in finis.h.i.+ng.

Baskets were also used as molds, and pliable fabrics, such as nets and coa.r.s.e cloths, were employed in some sections. The methods of baking have apparently not been described in much detail by early writers, but the ware itself bears the marks of those simple processes known to our modern tribes. It is highly probable that the work was done by the women, and that each community had its skilled potters, who built and baked the ware in the open air, going through those simple mummeries that accompany the work among most primitive peoples.

MATERIAL.--The material employed was usually a moderately fine-grained clay, tempered, in a great majority of cases, with pulverized sh.e.l.ls.

The sh.e.l.ls used were doubtless obtained from the neighboring rivers.

In many of the vessels the particles are large, measuring as much as one-fourth or even one-half of an inch in width, but in the more elegant vases the sh.e.l.l has been reduced to a fine powder. Powdered potsherds were also used. The clay was, apparently, often impure or loamy. It was, probably, at times, obtained from recent alluvial deposits of the bayous--the sediment of overflows--as was the potter's clay of the Nile. There is no reason for believing that the finer processes of powdering and levigation were known. A slip or wash of very finely comminuted clay was sometimes applied to the surface of the vessel. The walls of the vessels are often thick and uneven, and are always quite porous, a feature of no little importance in the storage of drinking-water, but one resulting from accident rather than from design.

COLOR.--The paste of this ware presents two marked varieties of color, a dark and a light hue. In a majority of cases it is dark, ranging from a rich black to all shades of brown and gray. The lighter tints are usually warm ochrey grays, rarely approaching reddish or terra-cotta hues. It is highly probable that the differences of color were, to some extent, intentionally produced, and that the material or methods of firing were regulated in a way to produce one tint or another at pleasure. This theory is confirmed by the fact that certain forms of vases are pretty generally dark, while certain other forms are as uniformly light--the latter in nearly all cases being used for the application of color, or of designs in color.

FORM.--This ware exhibits a great variety of forms, many of which are extremely pleasing. In this respect it is far superior to the other prehistoric groups of the eastern United States. The shapes are as varied and elegant as those of the ancient Pueblo pottery, but are inferior to those of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They take a higher rank than the prehistoric wares of central and northern Europe, but as a matter of course lack the symmetry and refinement of outline that characterize the wheel-made wares of Mediterranean countries.

As I cla.s.sify by form farther on, and discuss the origin of form as each form-group is presented, I shall not make further reference to this topic here.

FINISH.--The finish, as compared with the work of civilized nations, is rude. The surface is often simply hand or trowel smoothed.

Generally, however, it was more or less carefully polished by rubbing with an implement of stone, sh.e.l.l, bone, or other suitable substance, the markings of these tools being distinctly visible. Nothing resembling a glaze has been found on pieces known to be ancient. The surface was sometimes washed or coated with a slip or film of fine clay which facilitated the polis.h.i.+ng, and in very many cases a coat of thick red ocher was applied.

ORNAMENT.--The ancient potter of the middle province has taken especial delight in the embellishment of his wares, and the devices used are varied and interesting. They include, first, fanciful modifications of form; second, relief ornament; third, intaglio figures; and, fourth, designs in color.