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 Zuñi.
At _Hé sho ta tsí nan_ or Ojo del Pescado, fifteen miles east of Zuñi,
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 Zuñis 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_, 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.