Yet, although in the extreme western borders of the deserts, which
were probably the first penetrated by the Pueblos, the cane grows to
great size and in abundance along the two rivers of that country, its
use, if ever extensive, must have speedily given way to the use of
gourds, which grew luxuriantly at these places and were of better
shapes and of larger capacity. The name of the gourd as a vessel is
_shoṕ tom me_, from _shó e_, canes, _pó pon nai e_, bladder-shaped,
and _tóm me_, a wooden tube; a seeming derivation (with the exception
of the interpolated sound significant of form) from _shó tom me_. The
gourd itself is called _mó thlâ â_, "hard fruit." The inference is
that when used as a vessel, and called _shoṕĭ tom me_, it must have
been named after an older form of vessel, instead of after the plant
or fruit which produced it.

While the gourd was large and convenient in form, it was difficult of
transportation owing to its fragility. To overcome this it was encased
in a coarse sort of wicker-work, composed of fibrous yucca leaves or
of flexible splints. Of this we have evidence in a series of
gourd-vessels among the Zuñis, into which the sacred water is said to
have been transferred from the tubes, and a pair of which one of the
priests, who came east with me two years ago, brought from New Mexico
to Boston in his hands--so precious were they considered as
relics--for the purpose of replenishing them with water from the
Atlantic. These vessels are encased rudely but strongly in a meshing
of splints (see Fig. 500), and while I do not positively claim that
they have been piously preserved since the time of the universal use
of gourds as water-vessels by the ancestry of this people, they are
nevertheless of considerable antiquity. Their origin is attributed to
the priest-gods, and they show that it must have once been a common
practice to encase gourds, as above described, in osiery.