Mohave Pottery Part 7

1 jar, "hapurui, water jug"

2 seed jars, described as: "25, water jug, wheat jar, aha-te-kemauvite, in halves, rejoined with mesquite gum"; and "39, jar, top sealed with mesquite gum; contains melon seeds for roasting and pounding; to take them out, the mouth of the jar is set on hot coals"

2 parchers, double-ended

1 jar with rope handle (canteen like pl. 6, _h_? or a water jar carried by a rope around its neck?)

I do not know whether in 1900 I meant the same by jar, jug, pot as now.

My "dish" of then may have included some platters as well as bowls. I was not using the term "bowl"; and "pot" seems to have designated sometimes a cook pot or olla, sometimes simply any open pottery vessel, including bowls. Nor can I imagine now what I may have meant by the "corrugation" on a dish. A cup is mentioned, but called a special kind of kwa?ki. If the "hapurui, water jug" was handled, it would show that handled jugs were called by the same name as widemouthed jars, hapurui.

The two seed jars were evidently of the small-necked and small-mouthed type discussed in connection with the Chemehuevi seed jar no. 13875.

The design names obtained in 1900 were:

Fish bones, fish back, usually written atci?tatr (= at.i.ta?): on four spoons and one "dish."

Spider, haldada (for halyto?a), on one "pot." I sketched the core of the pattern: an hourgla.s.s figure (meeting angles) with double lines from the corners.

Cottonwood leaf, on three spoons and the jar with rope handle

Mat.i.tiav leaf (a bush growing away from river), on one spoon

Turtle (viz., carapace markings), on one spoon

Hotaxpam, on the temative "pot," also on one spoon; described as a red X painted below the eyes by women; hotaxpave, halter, the cross-strap being near the horse's eye

Kari hanyora, "basket pattern," on the outside of a dish

Rain, kovau, on two dish-pots; on the outside in at least one

Rainbow, kwalisei, on the outside of two "dishes" and one spoon. I think these are simply stripes or parallel lines on the under side.

Rainbow occurs also as a design on women's wooden dice, and as a face paint.

Fishnet, once on the outside of a "dish"

Melon markings, kamito hanyora, on one of the seed-water jars

Clouds were given as the name of the "corrugations" on dish no. 46.

I evidently asked a foolish question.

Handbook of California Indians (fig. 64, p. 738) shows a typical bowl and spoon from this Academy collection, which I had drawn before their destruction. The bowl pattern is outside, consists of heavy stripes and thin lines, and was called "rain." The spoon pattern was probably on the inside, was called "fish backbone," and is similar to that of plate 4,_f_, _k_, _s_.

APPENDIX II

A SMALL MOHAVE BOWL

About 1908 I was given or purchased as a souvenir a small bowl which is now Peabody Museum no. 54-41-10/34461. It is a typical bowl except for being smaller than any in the University collection.

It is 123 mm. in diameter, 64 in height; H/D ratio is therefore 52 per cent. The ridge is finished with a horizontally flat edge 4-5 mm. wide.

I estimate the mean thickness of the ware as around 4 mm. The weight is 7 oz. There is a mesquite lashing below the rim with three knots in it.

The inner side is worn by use, and parts of the design are no longer plain. The basic element is the racc.o.o.n hand, of which there were originally 20 to 24 units. Each of these consists of a solid red triangle, isosceles or equilateral, with sides of 15-20 mm. From each triangle project four digits--bars 6-12 mm. long. The hands are scattered rather evenly over the field, but pointing in all directions: toward the center, toward the rim, or across the circle. Between the hand units there are red dots 2-3 mm. in diameter.

The under side carries 41 vertical (radiating) lines 1-2 mm. wide and 30-80 mm. long.

APPENDIX III

GRANITE TEMPER AND LIMONITE PIGMENT EXAMINATION

By

PROFESSOR CHARLES MEYER

The piece of granite, no. 4326, used for temper is high in quartz (20-25 per cent) and potash feldspar (35-40 per cent), with perhaps 10 per cent of black mica now chloritized. The remainder is probably soda-rich plagioclase, a feldspar. This is a very acid granite, silica probably const.i.tuting around 70 per cent of the total ma.s.s. As a result, as the rock surface weathered, it would not wash off as clay but would maintain hard spicules and sharp angles of quartz useful as temper.

The limonite pigment, no. 4295, Fe{2}O{3}n(+)H{2}O, has mostly crystallized on exposure to become toethite, Fe{2}O{3}nH{2}O. If originally derived from a sulphide, none of this seems to remain. Some clay is contained and a little quartz silt; also some carbonate in the form of calcite, which acts as a cement for the whole; but the total of silicates and carbonates, that is, noniron oxide, is not over 10 per cent. On roasting, the water content is driven off, and the remaining Fe{2}O{3} is red. A reducing heating with carbon however produces magnetic powder Fe{3}O{4}, a black pigment.

APPENDIX IV

MOHAVE POTTERY IN OTHER MUSEUMS

In 1934 F. H. Douglas, of the Denver Art Museum, wrote my colleague Gifford about Mohave pottery which he had seen on display in various museums, without special search of catalogues or storerooms. The list may still be useful.

U. S. National Museum: 25 vessels, mostly old, many collected by Palmer, some evidently mislabeled Diegueno or Pimo. One anvil stone. [_Yuma_, a bowl and a 5-necked vase, from Palmer; the Yuma went in for "fancy" or tourist pieces earlier than the Mohave. _Cocopa_, McGee got 4 plates, a Mohave type dipper, unpainted, 2 paddles.]

Peabody Museum, Harvard: 10 vessels collected by Edward Palmer in 1876, viz., 1 very large jar, 2 other jars, 1 tiny jar, 3 bowls, 3 dippers; also 2 pottery dolls, a paddle, an anvil stone, a "vessel of mud and straw." There is also a pottery doll secured by Jules Marcou in 1854--he must have been on the Whipple Expedition! [I have seen this lot and, like everything Palmer got, it is excellent. Together with National Museum pieces, these of Palmer's are the most important collection of Mohave pottery extant. There seem to be no handled vessels; but there are dolls--besides Marcou's. The Palmer collections, formed twenty-five to thirty years before mine, will be the touchstone of the "purity" of mine. From having seen the Palmer material, I am confident that Mohave native ware had not been _seriously_ impaired technologically or stylistically by 1902-1908; but it must have been affected somewhat--the railroad came through in 1886--and it will be desirable to know at what points it had begun to change.--A. L. K.]

Chicago Natural History Museum: 8 vessels (bowls, dippers, jars, canteen), also 3 dolls, collected in 1901. [The date points to Owen, who was in southern California about then. From Yuma, one painted, one unpainted bowl.]

Museum of the American Indian: 15 a.s.sorted pieces, 3 of them unpainted.

[Same number from _Yuma_]. [Possibly Edward Davis of Mesa Grande collected these.]

University of Pennsylvania: [2 _Yuma_ pottery dolls].

Denver Art Museum: 3 human-headed vases, pre-1900. Also 5 brand-new pieces bought at Needles in 1934.

It is curious that none of these collections have been described, except possibly for stray pieces in nonethnographic connections. They aggregate into a group probably at least as large as that discussed here; perhaps considerably larger when the storerooms shall have been examined.