perfection, as within the limits of these ancient Pueblo regions. To
this statement not even the prolific valleys of the Mississippi and
its tributaries form an exception.

On examining a large and varied collection of this pottery, one would
naturally regard it either as the product of four distinct peoples or
as belonging to four different eras, with an inclination to the
chronologic division.

When we see the reasonable probability that the architecture, the
primeval arts and industries, and the culture of the Pueblos are
mainly indigenous to the desert and semi-desert regions of North
America, we are in the way towards an understanding of the origin and
remarkable degree of development in the ceramic art.

In these regions water not only occurs in small quantities, but is
obtainable only at points separated by great distances, hence to the
Pueblos the first necessity of life is the transportation and
preservation of water. The skins and paunches of animals could be used
in the effort to meet this want with but small success, as the heat
and aridity of the atmosphere would in a short time render water thus
kept unfit for use, and the membranes once empty would be liable to
destruction by drying. So far as language indicates the character of
the earliest water vessels which to any extent met the requirements of
the Zuñi ancestry, they were tubes of wood or sections of canes. The
latter, in ritualistic recitation, are said to have been the
receptacles that the creation-priests filled with the sacred water
from the ocean of the cave-wombs of earth, whence men and creatures
were born, and the name for one of these cane water vessels is _shó
tom me_, from _shó e_, cane or canes, and _tóm me_, a wooden tube.