Perhaps first in importance among these influences was the mineral
character of a locality. Where clay occurred of a fine tough texture,
easily mined and manipulated, the work in _terra cotta_ became
proportionately more elaborate in variety and finer in quality. There
are to be found about the sites of some ancient pueblos, potsherds
incredibly abundant and indicating great advancement in decorative
art, while near others, architecturally similar, even where evidence
of ethnic connection is not wanting, only coarse, crudely-molded, and
painted fragments are discoverable, and these in limited quantity.

An example in point is the ruined pueblo of _A´ wat u i_ or
_Aguatóbi_, as it was known to the Spaniards at the time of the
conquest, when it was the leading "city of the Province of Tusayan,"
now Moki. Over the entire extent of this ruin, and to a considerable
distance around it, fragments of the greatest variety in color, shape,
size, and finish of ware occur in abundance. In the immediate
neighborhood, however, are extensive, readily accessible formations
producing several kinds of clay and nearly all the color minerals
used in the Pueblo potter's art. Yet at the greatest ruin on the upper
Colorado Chiquito (in an arm of the valley of which river _A´ wat ú i_
itself occurs), where the fallen walls betoken equal advancement in
the status of the ancient builders and indicate by their vast extent
many times the population of _A´ wat u i_, the potsherds are coarse,
irregular in curvature, badly decayed, and exceptionally scarce. In
the immediate neighborhood of this ruin, I need not add, clay is of
rare occurrence and poor in quality.

A more reliable example is furnished by the farming pueblos of Zuñi.
At _Hé sho ta tsí nan_ or Ojo del Pescado, fifteen miles east of Zuñi,