and others white with colored decorations. Various names are used
apparently to designate the different kinds rather than the uses for
which they are intended.

The decorations, when present, are always on the upper side, which is
more convex than the lower, or side on which it is intended the vessel
shall lie when not in use. In the ornamented white ware the lower
portion is usually red or brown.

As all these clay fabrics are the work of North American Indians, it is
scarcely necessary for me to say that they are unglazed, a
characteristic, so far as I am aware, of all aboriginal pottery.

Some of the specimens, especially of the black ware, show a smooth
finish, and may perhaps, without violence to the term, be classed as
lustrous. This is not the effect of a varnish or partial glazing, but is
a polish, produced generally, if not always, by rubbing with a polishing
stone.

Although, as a rule, the paste of which the ware is made is
comparatively free from foreign matter, yet many pieces, especially of
the decorated ware, when broken, show little whitish or ash-colored
specks. These, when found in aboriginal pottery east of the Mississippi,
have, I believe, been without question considered as fragments or
particles of shell broken up and mixed with the paste. This may be
correct in reference to the pottery found east of and in the Mississippi
Valley, but this whitish and grayish matter in the pottery of the
Indians of New Mexico and Arizona is in most cases pulverized pottery,
which is crushed and mixed with the paste. Black lava is sometimes
crushed and used in the same manner.