Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XX. Pottery. IT has been truthfully remarked that articles of fictile ware are at once the most fragile alld the most enduring of human monuments. A piece of common pottery, liable to be shivered to pieces by a slight blow, is more lasting than epitaphs in brass and effigies in bronze. These yield to the varying action of the weather; stone crumbles away, ink fades and paper decays; but the earthen vase, deposited in some quiet but forgotten receptacle, survives the changes of time and, even when broken at the moment of its discovery, affords instruction in its fragments. In their power of traversing accumulated ages and affording glimpses of ancient times and peoples, nctile articles .have been compared to the fossils of anilnals and plants which reveal to the educated eye the former conditions of our globe.1 Perhaps nothing of a pb)Tsical character more clearly determines the degree of civilization attained by a nation than the progress made in the fictile art. In the rudest stages of human existence vessels of some sort are required for the conveyance of water and the prep1 "Encyclopredia Britannica," vol. xviii., p. 430, eighth edition. 442 ANTIQUITIES OF THE SOUTHERN INDIANS. aration of food. Hence, in those renlote ages vvhen ,ve catch illc1istinct glimpses of man, as an aninlal, ,vrestling ,vitIl the lo,vest wa11ts of his nature and scarce able to defelld himself against tIle inclement seasons a11d the attacks of ,vild beasts, ,ve find only the 111eanest forms of domestic utensils, such as gourds, clrinking-cups of conch or horn, barl{ basins, ,vooden troughs~ skill bags, and coarse earthen pots and pans. TIle conformation alld composition of such primitive pottery indicate the illexperience al1d avvkwardness of the artificers, and convey a decide(l inlpression of tIle barbarity of the race to which they belonged. As tIle darkness of a half-clacl, nomadic existence is gradtlally dispelled by the da,vnillg light of civilization, and men begin to elnerge from the savage state, the first step in this develo})Inent is marked by a change for the better in the ceramic art. The archaic type of pottery is abandoned for forms far more graceful and intellectual, and the crude clay discarded for material more durable and attractive. From its rllde beginning to its present stage of 11icturesque and beautiful development, the ])otter's art JUtS al"rays been invested ,vith peculiar interest and llistoric value. It may be regarded as the faithful chronicler of man's progress-a fair exponent of the degree of his barbarity or civilization, and often the recorder of events and periocls which ,vould otllerwise have faded from the recollection of succeeding generations. Hieroglyphically impressed upon the sundried bricks of Egypt are the names of a kingly series ",vhich, but for these relics, would have irretrievably perished. The sites of ancient Mesopotanlia and Assyria are traced by means of the cuneiform inscriptions upon the clay bricks of which their proudest edifices ,vere constructed. The ROlnan bricks have also borne HISTORICAL VALUE OF :FICTILE WARE. 443 their testimolly. Many of them retain the names of the consuls of imperial Rome, ""vhile others l)fove that the proud nobility of the Eternal City" derivell their revenues from the kilns of their Canlpanian and Sabine farms.l Grecian colonization and its ffistlletic illfluences, remarks Professor Wilson,2 are traced along tIle shores of the Mediterranean and the Euxine by bealltiful fictile ,yare and sepulchral pottery. Etruria's history is written to a great extent in the same fragile yet enduring characters. The footprints of the ROlnan conqueror are clearly defined to the utmost limits of inlperial dominion by the like evidence; and sepulchral })ottery is frequently the only conclusive proof which enables the European ethnologist to discriminate bet "veen the grave of tIle intruding conqueror and that of the aboriginal occupant of the soil. Apart, therefore, from the exquisite beauty of many remains of fictile art, which confers on them a high intrinsic value, the ,yorks of the potter have been minutely studied by the archooologist and are constantly referred to as historical evidence of the geographical liulits of allcient empires. Few peoples, how degraded soever, have failed to bequeath some specimens of pottery-crulle and misshapen though they be-to rescue the fact of their former existence from utter oblivion. The absence of pottery in the Reindeer period in France fU11 nishes a decided exception...