with the manufacture of certain types of pottery. For a complete description of this the reader is referred to a paper by M. R. Harrington (1908, pp. 399-407). The same student has published an account of the related Cherokee pottery work (Harrington, M. R., 1922). It is to be noted that the modern Catawba potters use no tempering, and that the old Cherokee woman who described and illustrated the process to Mr. Harrington stated that it was sometimes employed, but she did not employ it herself. This seems to represent a process of degeneration.

But the study of pottery in the Southeast is mainly an archeological problem, and concerns a branch of anthropological work into which I do not propose to enter.

MISCELLANEOUS HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS

WOODEN STOOLS

In parts of the Southeast, wooden stools made in one piece were in use similar to the so-called duhos of the West Indies. If they were introduced from the islands, however, it must have been before white contact for when De Soto met Tascalusa, the great Mobile chief, according to Garcilaso (1723, p. 145), he "was seated upon a wooden chair about two feet high, without back or arms, and all of one piece." And that this was no mere inference on the Inca's part is shown by the fact that, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a stool of this kind having four legs constituted the "throne" of the Great Sun, head chief of the Natchez (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 360-361; Swanton, 1911, p. 112). Speaking of these stools generally as found on the lower Mississippi, Du Pratz says:

...

The natives have small seats or stools . . . These seats are only 6 or 7 inches high. The feet and the seat are of one piece. (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, p. 182; Swanton, 1911, p. 61.)

He expresses a doubt whether their use had antedated the importation of European axes considering "their small inclination to sit on them," but this is not justified in the light of the reference above given added to a note by Adair (1775, p. 421), who remarks: "Their stools they cut out of poplar wood, all of one piece, and of a convenient height and shape."

When De Gourgues visited the Timucua chief Saturiwa in 1567, the latter placed him on "a seat of wood of lentisque [gum wood] covered with moss, made of purpose like unto his own" (Laudonnière, 1586, p. 209; Swanton, 1922, p. 354). While these may have been merely parts of the bed with which every house of any size was provided, they were more probably stools. The fact that they were used by chiefs or honored men falls in line with what has already

been noted, and Florida was a very probable "port of entry" for this object or the conception of it.

These stools are reported from as far west as the Caddo Indians, but not in Virginia or the Carolinas (Swanton, 1942, p. 155).

Several of these stools were found by Cushing at Key Marco, and some of them appeared to have been made especially for use in canoes (Cushing, 1896, p. 363).

DISHES AND SPOONS OF WOOD AND HORN

Their wooden dishes, and spoons made of wood and buffalo horn, [says Adair] shew something of a newer invention and date, being of nicer work. manship, for the sculpture of the last is plain, and represents things that are within the reach of their own ideas. (Adair, 1775, p. 421.)

By "newer" Adair can hardly mean post-Columbian, but if he does he is plainly in error, though the use of excavated wooden utensils was no doubt facilitated considerably by iron tools. On the other hand, importation of European vessels would be likely to result in the abandonment of native artifacts. However, we have a number of notices of their use from various parts of the region under discussion. In a Timucua house visited by Laudonnière, he saw "a little vessel of wood" used as a cup, and Le Moyne, the artist, mentions round bottles or wooden vessels in which they carried the black drink, though these last may in reality have been gourds. (Laudonnière, 1586, p. 74; Le Moyne, 1875, p. 12; Swanton, 1922, p. 354.) Wooden spoons were manufactured by the Creeks in Swan's time, "very large and simple in their form. One serves a whole family, who use it round by turns" (Swan, 1855, p. 692). The Quapaw made wooden platters which they exchanged with the Caddo and Tunica, along with other objects, for salt and bows and arrows (Joutel in Margry, 1875–86, vol. 3, p. 443). It is from the tribes toward the northeast, however, that we get most information regarding wooden vessels. Barlowe says that the Algonquian Indians of North Carolina had "wooden platters of sweet timber" (Burrage, 1906, p. 236). Strachey also refers to wooden pots and platters in use by the Powhatan Indians, and, from what he and Smith tell us, it is evident that the wooden food platters kept in the houses of chiefs were very large (Strachey, 1849, p. 59; Smith, John Tyler ed., 1907, pp. 45, 54). Beverley (1705, bk. 3, p. 17) makes little note of these dishes, but says that "the Spoons which they eat with, do generally hold half a pint; and they laugh at the English for using small ones, which they must be forc'd to carry so often to their Mouths, that their arms are in danger of being tir'd, before their Belly." Byrd comments on the large spoons made of bison horn by Virginia Indians "which they say will Split and fall to Pieces whenever poison is put into them" (Bassett, 1901, p. 288).

Lawson has more references to these articles than any other informant. He notes that the Congaree Indians had large wooden spoons "as big as small ladles," but showed little disposition to use them instead of their fingers. He also quotes the narrative of certain explorers who entered Cape Fear River in 1663 and broke up the "pots, platters, and spoons" found in a native house, but some of these may have been of earthenware. In his general discussion of the Indian tribes, he informs us that the Indians who were not particularly skillful as hunters made "dishes and spoons of gumwood, and the tulip tree," among other things, to trade to other Indians, and he himself met two Tuscarora who were going to the Shakori and Occaneechi to sell wooden bowls and ladles for raw skins (Lawson 1860, pp. 56, 122, 101, 337).

At least until recently, some of the Alabama knew how to make wooden spoons. They were in one piece and were of the wood of a tree called itûkȧmo', which grows near the water. These Indians also remember that in olden times spoons were made out of cow and bison horn. The horn was first immersed in hot water in order to soften it, and after that it could be cut easily.

According to a Creek informant, the best spoons were made of boxelder, but sycamore, elm, or other woods might be employed.

At Key Marco, Cushing found a great many wooden dishes:

The trays were also very numerous and exceedingly interesting; comparatively shallow, oval in outline and varying from a length of six and a half or seven inches and a width of four or five inches, to a length of not less than five feet and a width of quite two feet. The ends of these trays were narrowed and truncated to form handles, the upper faces of which were usually decorated with neatly cut-in disc-like or semilunar figures or depressions. Looking at the whole series of them secured by us-no fewer than thirty in all-I was impressed with their general resemblance to canoes, their almost obvious derivation from such, as though through a sort of technologic inheritance they had descended from the vessels which had brought not only the first food, and the first supplies of water, to these outlying keys, but also the first dwellers thereon as well. (Cushing, 1896, p. 364.)

He found also "spoons made from bivalves, ladles made from the greater halves of hollowed-out well-grown conch shells; and cups, bowls, trays, and mortars of wood" (idem).

Spoons, pot stirrers, and gourd vessels, as used by the Yuchi 30 years ago, are thus described by Speck:

Spoons, yáda ctiné, showing some variation in size and relative proportions, are found commonly in domestic service. They are all made of wood, said to be maple. The size of these varies from six or seven to fourteen inches. The bowl is usually rather deep and is widest and deepest near the handle. The latter is squared and straight with a crook near the end upon which an ownership mark consisting of a few scratches or incisions is frequently seen. . . . This type is said to represent, in the shape of the bowl, a wolf's ear and to be patterned after it.

Wooden paddle-shaped pot stirrers, cadi', are nearly always to be seen where cooking is going on. They vary greatly in size and pattern. Ordinarily the top is simply disk-shaped. The use of the stirrer comes in when soup and vegetables are being boiled, to keep the mess from sticking to the pot. Gourds, tä'mbactù', of various shapes are made use of about the house in many different ways. They are easily obtained and require little or no labor to fit them for use. As drinking cups, general receptacles and dippers they come in very handy. (Speck, 1909, p. 42.)

Plate 71, figure 2, shows a gourd bottle seen among the Alabama Indians about 25 years ago.

Caddo spoons are shown in Bulletin 132 (Swanton, 1942, pl. 16, fig. 2).

WOODEN MORTARS

The Fidalgo of Elvas tells us that De Soto's companions were accustomed "to beat out the maize in log mortars with a one-handed pestle of wood," and there is every reason to believe that these mortars were "obtained" from the Indians, for a little farther on he refers to the "mortars, in which the natives beat maize" (Robertson, 1933, pp. 54, 74). These mortars were so much a matter of course throughout the entire area we are considering that there are relatively few references to them and scarcely any attempts to describe them. Smith and Strachey barely mention wooden mortars and pestles, and the former includes them among the articles manufactured by women, the only intimation of the kind in all our literature. (Smith, John, Tyler ed., 1907, p. 96; Strachey, 1849, p. 73.) Lawson (1860, p. 165) speaks of a tree "which we call red hickory, the heart whereof being very red, firm and durable" was used in making "walking sticks, mortars, pestles, and several other fine turnery wares."

In 1595 San Miguel reported that the Guale Indians of the neighborhood of St. Simons Island pounded their corn into flour "in deep and narrow wooden mortars: the mano is a kind of rammer more than two yards (varas) in length and the rammer widens above and is slender in the mortar" (Garcia, 1902, p. 197).

When Oglethorpe visited the Coweta Creeks in 1739, he found that "they do not make use of Mills to grind their corn in but in lieu thereof use a Mortar made out of the Stock of a Tree which they cut and burn hollow and then Pound their Corn therein" (Bushnell, 1908, pp. 573-574).

The [Florida Seminole] mortar is made [says MacCauley] from a log of liveoak (?) wood, ordinarily about two feet in length and from fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. One end of the log is hollowed out to quite a depth, and in this, by the hammering of a pestle made of mastic wood, the corn is reduced

to hominy or to the impalpable flour of which I have spoken. (MacCauley, 1887, p. 517.)

The Chickasaw mortar like the others was

wide at the mouth, and gradually narrows to the bottom. The Indians always used mortars, instead of mills, and they had them, with almost every other convenience, when we first opened a trade with them—they cautiously burned a large log, to a proper level and length, placed fire a-top, and wet mortar round it, in order to give the utensil a proper form; and when the fire was extinguished, or occasion required, they chopped the inside with their stone-instruments, patiently continuing the slow process, till they finished the machine to the intended purpose. (Adair, 1775, p. 437; Swanton, 1918, p. 57.)

The anonymous relation barely mentions their use among the Choctaw but one of my informants declared that in early times mortars were made by burning holes in the side of a prostrate tree, and it was only after European axes were obtained that they excavated the ends. This seems to be an error, and it would hardly deserve serious notice except that MacCauley mentions and figures the same sort of mortar in use among the Seminole 60 years ago. The Choctaw esteemed most mortars made of hickory as conveying the best taste to the flour. The second choice was usually oak. Beech was good, but beech trees were scarce. Some woods were rejected, however, because they communicated a bad taste to anything prepared in mortars made of them, and this was particularly true of maple (Swanton, 1931 a, p. 48).

According to Du Pratz, when the Natchez made these mortars, they used

a pad of kneaded earth [which they placed] on the upper side, that which they wished to hollow. They put fire in the middle and blew it by means of a reed pipe, and if the fire consumed more rapidly on one side than on the other they immediately placed some mud there. They continued this until the mortar was sufficiently wide and deep. (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, p. 177; Swanton, 1911, p. 67.)

A similar method was pursued down to recent times by the Chitimacha (Swanton, 1911, p. 347) and all of the other tribal remnants of the Southeast, though steel tools facilitated the operation very considerably.

Joutel describes the use of mortars of the common type among the Caddo made in the same way (Joutel in Margry, 1875-86, vol. 3, pp. 363, 367). As many as four women might be assigned to the task of making flour in these, by which he probably means that they struck one after the other. It was common practice for two women to do this, but Joutel's reference is the only suggestion that more than that number took part.

In his discussion of the Yuchi Indians, Speck gives us an insight into the social and religious significance of the mortar: