[Illustration:  Fig. 113.—­From the ancient pottery of Alabama.]

Two other examples of cord ornamentation, which may be duplicated from the pottery of almost any of the Atlantic States, are presented in Figs. 114 and 115, the first from a fragment of pottery from Charles County, Maryland, and the other from the pottery of Alabama.

  [Illustration:  Fig. 114.—­Cord-markings from ancient pottery of
  Maryland.]

  [Illustration:  Fig. 115.—­Cord-markings from ancient pottery of
  Alabama.]

It will readily be seen that it is extremely difficult to draw a line between an ornamentation produced by the use of single or grouped cords and that made by the use of fabrics.

It is not less difficult to say just how much of this use of cords and fabrics is to be attributed to manufacture simply and how much to ornament.

Although the restorations here presented certainly throw considerable light upon the textile fabrics of the ancient inhabitants of the Atlantic States, it cannot be affirmed that anything like a complete idea of their fabrics has been gained.  Impressions upon pottery represent a class of work utilized in the fictile arts.  We cannot say what other fabrics were produced and used for other purposes.

However this may be, attention should be called to the fact that the work described, though varied and ingenious, exhibits no characters in execution or design not wholly consonant with the art of a stone-age people.  There is nothing superior to or specifically different from the work of our modern Indians.

The origin of the use of fabrics and of separate cords in the ornamentation of pottery is very obscure.  Baskets and nets were doubtless in use by many tribes throughout their pottery making period.  The shaping of earthen vessels in or upon baskets either of plain bark or of woven splints or of fiber must frequently have occurred.  The peculiar impressions left upon the clay probably came in time to be regarded as ornamental, and were applied for purposes of embellishment alone.  Decorative art has thus been enriched by many elements of beauty.  These now survive in incised, stamped, and painted designs.  The forms as well as the ornamentation of clay vessels very naturally preserve traces of the former intimacy of the two arts.

Since the stereotyping of these pages I have come upon a short paper by George E. Sellers (Popular Science Monthly, Vol.  XI, p. 573), in which is given what I believe to be a correct view of the use of nets in the manufacture of the large salt vessels referred to on pages 398 and 409.  The use of interior conical moulds of indurated clay makes clear the reasons for the reversed festooning of the cords to which I called attention.

INDEX

Cord-markings on pottery 423

Diagonal textiles 416