persons in each village, who were professed potters;
Tradition says that it was the praeticeto
mingle some blood in wetting and tempering
the clay.
It was impossible that this art, so rude and
laborious, and so ill-suited to perform its offices
when done, could survive and continue to he
practised for any length of time after the tribes
had been made acquainted with the products of
the European potteries, rude as these .were comparatively
speaking, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Architecture, as it existed in the north and
west, was confined, we may suppose, to earthen
structures, crowned with wood, in the- shape of
beams and posts. And it isnonly as it -exhibited
a knowledge of geometry, in the combination of
squares and circles, to constitute a work of-; defence,
that it |s deserving'of notice. The knowledge
of the pyramid and its durability, is one
of the naost ancient geometrical discoveries in
the world, and it is quite clear, in viewing the
mounds and teocalli of North America, that , the
aborigines possessed, or had not forgotten it.
In most of the works of defence, in the western
country, the circular pyramid, or mound of earth
of various sizes, formed a striking feature; whilst
in relation to the mounds used for religious ceremonies,
as we must suppose the larger mounds
to have been, its completeness of plan and exact
truncation, parallel to the plain or basis, denotes
the prevalence among them, of this ancient
architectural idea. We detect also, in a survey
©f the old works, the Square, the parallelogram,
thè-'ïcirele, and . the ellipsis, And these figures
Vyere variously employed in the arrangement of
masses of earth, to produCea rampart a nd a moat.
- The domestic economy required implements
to perform the arts which we- express by the
words sewing and weaving. The awl and needle
were made from va-riouSiSpecies of animal bones
of the land and watery Tbe: larger awl used to
perforate bark, in sewing together the sheathing
of themorthern canoe, made from the rind of the
betula, was j sqiiaied and brough t to a tapering
point. Avery close grained and^compact species
of bone was employed for the finedodge awl used
■for sewing dressed skins for'garments. After
this skin had been perforated,- a thread of deer’s
sinew was drawn through, from the-'eye of a
slender bone needle. - Thera was, besides this,
a species of shuttle of bone, which was passed
backwards and forwards, in introducing the bark
woof of matstiand bags; two kinds of articles,
thé work of which was commonly made from
the scirpus lacustris, or larger hhltush. It was
only necessary to exhibit the square and round
awl, and gross and fine needle of steel, to supersede
these primitive- and rude modes of seqm-
siress-WGrk and weaving.* |
In an examination of Indian antiquarian articles,
taken torn the graves and mounds, there
is some glimmering of the art ofidésign. There
is no other branch of art to which we can refer
30