A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth | Page 5

one of these

cane water vessels is _shó tom me_, from _shó e_, cane or canes, and
_tóm me_, a wooden tube. Yet, although in the extreme western
borders of the deserts, which were probably the first penetrated by the
Pueblos, the cane grows to great size and in abundance along the two
rivers of that country, its use, if ever extensive, must have speedily
given way to the use of gourds, which grew luxuriantly at these places
and were of better shapes and of larger capacity. The name of the gourd
as a vessel is shop tom me, from _shó e_, canes, _pó pon nai e_,
bladder-shaped, and _tóm me_, a wooden tube; a seeming derivation
(with the exception of the interpolated sound significant of form) from
_shó tom me_. The gourd itself is called _mó thlâ â_, "hard fruit." The
inference is that when used as a vessel, and called shopi tom me, it must
have been named after an older form of vessel, instead of after the plant
or fruit which produced it.
While the gourd was large and convenient in form, it was difficult of
transportation owing to its fragility. To overcome this it was encased in
a coarse sort of wicker-work, composed of fibrous yucca leaves or of
flexible splints. Of this we have evidence in a series of gourd-vessels
among the Zuñis, into which the sacred water is said to have been
transferred from the tubes, and a pair of which one of the priests, who
came east with me two years ago, brought from New Mexico to Boston
in his hands--so precious were they considered as relics--for the
purpose of replenishing them with water from the Atlantic. These
vessels are encased rudely but strongly in a meshing of splints (see Fig.
500), and while I do not positively claim that they have been piously
preserved since the time of the universal use of gourds as water-vessels
by the ancestry of this people, they are nevertheless of considerable
antiquity. Their origin is attributed to the priest-gods, and they show
that it must have once been a common practice to encase gourds, as
above described, in osiery.
[Illustration: FIG. 500.--Gourd vessel enclosed in wicker.]
POTTERY ANTICIPATED BY BASKETRY.
This crude beginning of the wicker-art in connection with water-vessels
points toward the development of the wonderful water-tight basketry of

the southwest, explaining, too, the resemblance of many of its typical
forms to the shapes of gourd-vessels. Were we uncertain of this, we
might again turn to language, which designates the impervious wicker
water-receptacle of whatever outline as _tóm ma_, an evident
derivation from the restricted use of the word _tóm me_ in connection
with gourd or cane vessels, since a basket of any other kind is called
_tsí ì le_.
It is readily conceivable that water-tight osiery, once known, however
difficult of manufacture, would displace the general use of
gourd-vessels. While the growth of the gourd was restricted to limited
areas, the materials for basketry were everywhere at hand. Not only so,
but basket-vessels were far stronger and more durable, hence more
readily transported full of water, to any distance. By virtue of their
rough surfaces, any leakage in such vessels was instantly stopped by a
daubing of pitch or mineral asphaltum, coated externally with sand or
coarse clay to harden it and overcome its adhesiveness.
[Illustration: FIG. 501.--Havasupai clay-lined roasting-tray.]
We may conclude, then, that so long as the Pueblo ancestry were
semi-nomadic, basketry supplied the place of pottery, as it still does for
the less advanced tribes of the Southwest, except in cookery. Possibly
for a time basketry of this kind served in place of pottery even for
cookery, as with one of the above-mentioned tribes, the _Ha va su paí_
or Coçoninos, of Cataract Cañon, Arizona. These people, until recently,
were cut off from the rest of the world by their almost impenetrable
cañon, nearly half a mile in depth at the point where they inhabit it. For
example, when I visited them in 1881, they still hafted sharpened bits
of iron, like celts, in wood. They had not yet forgotten how to boil food
in water-tight basketry, by means of hot stones, and continued to roast
seeds, crickets, and bits of meat in wicker-trays, coated inside with
gritty clay. (See Fig. 501.) The method of preparing and using these
roasting-trays has an important bearing on several questions to which
reference will be made further on. A round basket-tray, either loosely
or closely woven, is evenly coated inside with clay, into which has
been kneaded a very large proportion of sand, to prevent contraction

and consequent cracking from drying. This lining of clay is pressed,
while still soft, into the basket as closely as possible with the hands and
then allowed to dry. The tray is