A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth | Page 8

these points of similarity the two kinds of water-vessel should have totally dissimilar names; the basket-bottle being known as the _k'iá pu k'ia tom me_, from _k'iá pu kia_, "for carrying or placing water in," and _tóm me_; the handled earthen receptacle, as the _í mush ton ne_. Yet when we consider that the latter was designed not for transporting water, for which it was less suited than the former, but for holding it, for which it was even preferable, the discrepancy is explained, since the name _í mush ton ne_ is from _i′ mu_, to sit, and _tóm me_, a tube. This indicates, too, why the basket-bottle was not displaced by the earthen bottle. While the former continued in use for bringing water from a distance, the latter was employed for storing it. As the fragile earthen vessels were much more readily made and less liable to become tainted, they were exclusively used as receptacles, removing the necessity of the tedious manufacture of a large number of the basket-bottles. Again, as the pitcher was thus used exclusively as a receptacle, to be set aside in household or camp, the name _í′ mush ton ne_ sufficed without the interpolation _te_--"earthenware"--to distinguish it as of terra cotta, instead of osiery.
[Illustration: FIG. 521.--Water-bottle of corrugated ware, showing double handle.]
[Illustration: FIG. 522.--Water-bottle of corrugated ware, showing plain bottom.]

POTTERY INFLUENCED BY LOCAL MINERALS.
Before discussing the origin of other forms, it may be well to consider briefly some influences, more or less local, which, in addition to the general effect of gourd-forms in suggesting basket-types and of the latter in shaping earthenware, had considerable bearing on the development of ceramic art in the Southwest, pushing it to higher degrees of perfection and diversity in some parts than in others.
Perhaps first in importance among these influences was the mineral character of a locality. Where clay occurred of a fine tough texture, easily mined and manipulated, the work in terra cotta became proportionately more elaborate in variety and finer in quality. There are to be found about the sites of some ancient pueblos, potsherds incredibly abundant and indicating great advancement in decorative art, while near others, architecturally similar, even where evidence of ethnic connection is not wanting, only coarse, crudely-molded, and painted fragments are discoverable, and these in limited quantity.
An example in point is the ruined pueblo of _A′ wat u i_ or _Aguatóbi_, as it was known to the Spaniards at the time of the conquest, when it was the leading "city of the Province of Tusayan," now Moki. Over the entire extent of this ruin, and to a considerable distance around it, fragments of the greatest variety in color, shape, size, and finish of ware occur in abundance. In the immediate neighborhood, however, are extensive, readily accessible formations producing several kinds of clay and nearly all the color minerals used in the Pueblo potter's art. Yet at the greatest ruin on the upper Colorado Chiquito (in an arm of the valley of which river _A′ wat ú i_ itself occurs), where the fallen walls betoken equal advancement in the status of the ancient builders and indicate by their vast extent many times the population of _A′ wat u i_, the potsherds are coarse, irregular in curvature, badly decayed, and exceptionally scarce. In the immediate neighborhood of this ruin, I need not add, clay is of rare occurrence and poor in quality.
A more reliable example is furnished by the farming pueblos of Zu?i. At _Hé sho ta tsí nan_ or Ojo del Pescado, fifteen miles east of Zu?i, clays of several varieties and color minerals are abundant. The finest pottery of the tribe is made there in great quantity, while, notwithstanding the facilities for transportation which the Zu?is now possess, at the opposite farming town of _K'iáp kwai na kwin_, or Los Ojos Calientes, where clay is scarce and of poor texture, the pottery, although somewhat abundant, is of miserable quality and of bad shape.
In quality of art quite as much as in that of material this local influence was great. In the neighborhood of ruined pueblos which occur near mineral deposits furnishing a great variety of pigment-material, the decoration of the ceramic remains is so surprisingly and universally elaborate, beautiful, and varied as to lead the observer to regard the people who dwelt there as different from the people who had inhabited towns about the sites of which the sherds show not only meager skill and less profuse decorative variety, but almost typical dissimilarity. Yet tradition and analogy, even history in rare instances, may declare that the inhabitants of both sections were of common derivation, if not closely related and contemporaneous. Probably, at no one point in the Southwest was ceramic decoration carried to a higher degree of development than at _A′ wat u i_,