A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth | Page 9

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_, yet the Oraibes, by descent the
modern representatives of the _A´ wat u i ans_ are the poorest potters
and painters among the Mokis. Near their pueblo the clay and other
mineral deposits mentioned as abundant at _A´ wat u i_ are meager and
inaccessible. Still, it may be urged that time may have introduced other
than natural causes for change; this could not be said of another
example pertaining to one period and a single tribe. I refer again to the
Zuñis. The manufactures of Pescado probably surpass in decorative
excellence all other modern Pueblo pottery, while both in their lack of
variety and in delicacy of execution of their painted patterns the fictiles
of Ojo Caliente are so inferior and diverse from the other Zuñi work
that the future archæologist will have need to beware, or (judging alone
from the ceramic remains which he finds at the two pueblos) he will
attribute them at least to distinct periods, perhaps to diverse peoples.
POTTERY INFLUENCED BY MATERIALS AND METHODS
USED IN BURNING.
Other influences, to a less extent local, had no inconsiderable effect on
primitive Pueblo pottery: materials employed and methods resorted to
in burning.
Only one kind of fuel, except for a single class of vessels, is now used
in pottery-firing; namely, dried cakes or slabs of sheep-dung. Anciently,
several varieties, such as extremely dry sage-brush or grease-wood,
piñon and other resinous woods, dung of herbivora when obtainable,
charcoal, and also bituminous or cannel-coal were employed. The
principal agent seems, however, to have been dead-wood or spunk,
pulverized and moistened with some adhesive mixture so that flat cakes
could be formed of it. I infer this not alone from Zuñi tradition, which
is not ample, but from the fact that the sheep-dung now used is called,
in the condition of fuel, _kú ne a_, while its name in the abstract or as
sheep-dung simply is _má he_. Dry-rot wood or spunk is known as _kú
me_. In the shape of flat cakes it would be termed _kú mo we_ or _kú
me a_, whence I doubt not the modern word _kú ne a_ is derived.
Of methods, four were in vogue. The simplest and worst consisted in
burying the vessel to be burned under hot ashes and building a fire

around it, or inverting it over a bed of embers and encircling it with a
blazing fire of brush-wood, as is still the practice of the Maricopas and
other sedentary tribes of the Gila. The most common was building a
little cone or dome of fuel over the articles to be baked and firing; the
most perfect was to dig or construct under ground a little cist or kiln,
line it evenly with fuel, leaving a central space for the green ware, and
slowly fire the whole mass.
Irrespective of the kind of fuel used, the baking by ash-burial made the
ware gray, cloudy, or dingy, and not very durable. Pottery burned with
sage or grease-wood was firm, light gray unless of ocherous clay, less
cloudy than if ash-baked, yet mottled. Turf and dung, although easily
managed, did not thoroughly harden the pottery, but burned it very
evenly; dead wood or spunk-cakes baked as evenly as any of the
materials thus far mentioned, and more thoroughly than the others.
Resinous or pitchy woods, while they produced a much higher degree
of heat, could be used only when color was unimportant, as they still
are used to some extent in the firing of black-ware or cooking pots. The
latter, while still hot from a preliminary burning, if coated externally
with the mucilaginous juice of green cactus, internally with piñon gum
or pitch, and fired a second or even a third time with resinous
wood-fuel, are rendered absolutely fire-proof, semi-glazed with a black
gloss inside, and wonderfully durable. Tradition represents that by far
the most perfect fuel was found to be cannel coal, and that, where
abundant, accessible, and of an extremely bituminous quality, it was
much used. The traces of little pit-kilns filled with, cinders of mineral
coal about many of the ruins in the northwestern portion of the Pueblo
region, coupled with the semi-fusion and well-preserved condition of
most of the ancient jars found associated with them, certainly