I might go on, appealing to language to account for nearly every
variety of pottery found existing as a _type_ throughout the region
referred to; but a subject inseparably connected with this, throwing
light on it in many ways, and possessing in itself great interest,
claims treatment on the few remaining pages of this essay. I refer to
the evolution and significance or symbolism of Pueblo ceramic
decorations.
Before proceeding with this, however, I must acknowledge that I am as
much indebted to the teachings of Mr. E.B. Tylor, in his remarkable
works on Man's Early History and Primitive Culture, to Lubbock, Daniel
Wilson, Evans, and others, for the direction or _impetus_ of these
inquiries, as I am to my own observations and experiments for its
development.
The line of gradual development in ceramic decorations, especially of
the symbolic element, treated as a subject, is wider in its
applicability to the study of primitive man, because more clearly
illustrative of the growth of culture. I regret, therefore, that it
must here be dealt with only in a most cursory manner. Large
collections for illustration would be essential to a fuller treatment,
even were space unlimited.
[Illustration: FIG. 542.--Example of Pueblo painted ornamentation.]
Decoratively, Pueblo pottery is characterized by two marked features:
angular designs predominate and ornamental effect depends as much on
the open or undecorated space as on the painted lines and areas in the
devices. (See Fig. 542.) While this is true of recent and modern
wares, it is more and more notably the case with other specimens in a
ratio increasing in proportion to their antiquity.
[Illustration: FIG. 543. & FIG. 544.--Amazonian basket decorations.]
We cannot explain these characteristics, and the conventional aspect
of the higher and symbolic Pueblo ceramic decorations which grew out
of them, in a better way than to suppose them, like the forms of this
pottery, to be the survivals of the influence of basketry. (See, for
comparison, Figs. 543, 544.) I shall be pardoned, therefore, for
elaborating suggestions already made in this direction, in the
paragraphs which treated of the ornamentation of spiral ware, and of
the derivation of basket decorations from stitch- and splint-suggested
figures. All students of early man understand his tendency to
reproduce habitual forms in accustomed association. This feeling,
exaggerated with savages by a belief in the actual relationship of
resemblance, is shown in the reproduction of the decorations of basket
vessels on the clay vessels made from them or in imitation of them.
In entire conformity with this, the succession in the methods of the
ornamentation of Pueblo pottery seems to have been first by incision
or indentation; then by relief; afterward by painting in black on a
natural or light surface; finally, by painting in color on a white or
colored surface.
As before suggested, the patterns on the coiled, regularly indented
pottery (which came to be first known to the world as a type, the
"corrugated," through the earlier explorations and reports of Mr.
William H. Holmes) were produced simply by emphasized indentation,
more rarely by incision, and were almost invariably angular,
reproducing exactly the designs on wicker work. Even in comparatively
recent examples of the corrugated ware this is true; for, once
connected with a type, a style of decoration, both seem to have been
ever after inseparable, with at most but slight modification of the
latter. One of these modifications, in both method and effect, was in
the adoption of the raised or relief style of ornamentation found,
with rare exceptions in the Southwest, only on corrugated ware, and on
the class which in modern times has replaced it there, vessels used in
cookery. Although never universal, this style deserves passing
attention as the outgrowth of an effort to attain the effect of
contrast produced by dyed or painted splints on wicked work before the
use of paint was known in connection with pottery. The same kind of
investigation indicates that the Pueblos largely owed their textile
industries and designs, as well as their potter's art, to the
necessity which gave rise to the making of water-tight basketry. The
terms connected with the rudimentary processes of weaving and
embroidery, and the principal patterns of both (on, for example,
blankets, kirtles, sacred girdles, and women's belts), are mostly
susceptible of interpretation, like the terms in pottery, as having a
meaning connected with the processes of basket plaiting and painting.
This renders the conventional character of Pueblo textile ornaments
easy of comprehension, as well, as the very early, if not the
earliest, origin of loom-weaving among our Indians in the desert
regions of America.
Henceforward, then, we have only to consider decoration by painting.
The probability is that this began as soon as the smooth surface in
pottery was generally made; evidence of which seemingly exists; as
eating bowls are, even to the present day, decorated principally on
the interior; not, as may be supposed, because the exterior is more
hidden from view, but because, as we have seen on a former page, bowls
were made plain inside before the corrugated type formed on basket
bottoms had been displaced by the smoothed type; and were naturally
first decorated there with paint. It must be constantly borne in mind
that a style of decoration once coupled with a kind of ware, or even a
portion of a vessel, retained its association permanently.
It must have been early observed that clay of one kind, applied even
thinly to the exterior of a vessel of another kind, produced, when
burned, a different color. With the discovery that clays of different
kinds burned in a variety of colors, to some extent irrespective of
the methods and the materials used in firing, there must likewise have
been hinted, we may safely conclude, the efficacy of clay washes as
paint, and of paint as a decorative agent.
Among the ceramic remains from the oldest pueblo sites of the
Southwest, pottery occurs, mostly in four varieties: the corrugated or
spiral; the plain, yet rough gray; white decorated with geometric
figures in black; and red, either plain or decorated with geometric
devices in black and white. The gray or dingy brown, rough variety,
resulted when a corrugated or coiled jar had been simply smoothed with
the fingers and scraper before it was fired. A step in advance, easily
and soon taken, was the additional smoothing of the vessel by slightly
wetting and rubbing its outer surface. Even this was productive only
of a moderately smooth surface, since, as learned by the Indian
potters long before, in their experience with the clay-plastered
parching-tray, it was necessary to mix the clay of vessels with a
tempering of sand, crushed potsherds, or the like, to prevent it from
cracking while drying; this, of course, no amount of rubbing would
remove. Hence, by another easy step, clay unmixed with a
grit-tempering, made into a thin paste with water, and thickly applied
to the half-dried jar with a dab or brash of soft fiber, gave a
beautifully smooth surface, especially if polished afterward by
rubbing with water-worn pebbles. The vessel thus prepared, when
burned, assumed invariably a creamy, pure white, red-brown or, other
color, according to the quality or kind of the clay used in making the
paste with which it had been smoothed or washed.
Thus was achieved the art of producing at will fictiles of different
colors, with which simple suggestion painting also became easy. Black,
aside from clay paste, was almost the first pigment discovered; quite
likely because the mineral blacks from iron ores, coal, and the
various rocks used universally among Indians for staining splints,
etc., would be the earliest tried, and then adopted, as they remained
unchanged by firing. Thus it came about, as evidenced by the sequence
of early remains in the Southwest, that the white and black varieties
of pottery were the first made, then the red and black, and later the
red with white and black decoration. Take, as an example, the latter.
Of course it was a simple mode to employ the red (ocherous) clay for
the wash, the blue clay (which burned white) for the white pigment in
making lines, and any of the black minerals above mentioned for other
marking.
In these earliest kinds of painted pottery the angular decorations of
the corrugated ware or of basketry were repeated, or at the farthest
only elaborated, although on some specimens the suggestions of the
curved ornament already occurred. These resulted, I may not fear to
claim, from carelessness or awkwardness in drawing, for instance, the
corners of acute angles, which, "cutting across-lot" would, it may be
seen, produce the wavy or meandering line from the zigzag, the
ellipsoid from the rectangle, and so on.
Precisely in accordance with this theory were the studies of my
preceptor, the lamented Prof. Charles Fred. Hartt. In a paper "On
Evolution in Ornament," published in several periodicals, among them
the Popular Science Monthly of January, 1875, this gifted naturalist
illustrated his studies by actual examples found on decorated burial
urns from Marajó Island. I must take the liberty of suggesting,
however, that upon some antecedent kind of vessel, the eyes of the
Amazonian Islanders may have been, to give Professor Hartt's idea,
"trained to take physiological and æsthetic delight in regularly
recurring lines and dots"; not on the pottery itself, as he seemed to
think, for decoration was old in basketry and the textiles when
pottery was first made.