Chapter I: South America

Antiquity of American People.--Scope of Inquiry.--PERU: Its Old
Inhabitants.--Course of Ceramic Art.--Doubts regarding Origin of
Peruvian Civilization.--Periods.--The Incas.--Pizarro.--Geological
Evidence of Antiquity.--Unbaked Bricks.--Pachacamac.--Its
Graves.--Opposite Types.--Effect of Religion.--Symbols.--Forms of
Pottery.--Water-Vessels.--Human Forms.--Leading Features of
Decoration.--Colors Employed.--Processes.--Customs Learned from
Pottery.--BRAZIL: Ancient Specimens.--Modern Ware.--Bricks and
Tiles.--Talhas.--Moringues and other Water-Vessels.--Colombia.

The ceramics of America bring us into a field hitherto unexplored, and showing few footprints of the investigators who have been led to its borders. We are here confronted by a state of things to which we have hitherto been strangers. As creatures belonging to the New World we have been taught to look with a respect in which America has no share upon the aged civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, and China. Their ancient inhabitants were the patriarchs of the world, the pioneers of civilization; we are the latter-day heirs to the arts and sciences of which they laid the foundations. The present citizens of those lands are the children of æons, we the mushroom growth of centuries. Research has already partially succeeded in endowing America with so much of the venerable as can be conferred by age. Such notions as those above referred to are being rapidly dissipated. We have long known that the hemisphere we inhabit was styled new, not because its geological formation is of later growth than those of the Old World, nor because its inhabitants are the after-math of the world’s population, but because five hundred years ago it was new to the navigators of the East. We now know that, from Lake Superior to Peru and Chili we can traverse the sites of old settlements and find the vestiges of peoples who lived we cannot tell how many hundred or thousand years ago. In the history of ceramic art America in no way differs from Europe or Asia. We can begin with the sun-dried bricks of the Peruvians, or Mound-builders, and end with the porcelain of Greenpoint. As Europe loosed its hold upon the earlier arts of Greece and Rome, was dismembered, and was for centuries plunged in darkness by the incursions and dispersal of barbarians, and then, as it revived, developed a new artistic sense and greater strength, so America passed through a precisely similar ordeal.

Two thousand years ago--possibly many more--art and civilization existed here, and continued to expand until Europeans came and checked their farther growth. America is not even singular in this, that a broad chasm divides the old from the new.

There are thus two great periods which we shall be called upon to consider. There is, first, the ancient, when the aboriginal people were building curious and wonderful monuments of their presence, and modelling the quaint vessels now found in our museums. There is, then, the second period, limited to little more than half a century, in which art wears a modern guise, when the products of American potteries become a recognized item in the industry of the country, and the manufacture is substantially founded upon a broad commercial basis. Our inquiry will not, therefore, be entirely confined to a recent past and a present chiefly remarkable for the promise that it contains. We shall, in a hasty review, turn back across the centuries intervening between the present time and the advent of Europeans with Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro, across the barbarism of the Indian period, across even the earlier times, when the Aztecs in the North, and the Peruvians under the Incas in the South, were cultivating their peculiar forms of civilization, to a more remote past occupied by those elder children of Time, to whose heritage these peoples appear to have succeeded. Afterward will come the indulgence of the characteristic tendency of the nineteenth-century American, who is more addicted to looking to the future than to the past. In the mean time, we must try to accustom ourselves to the fact that, for the purposes of a continuous history, the potters of our own time are the successors of those who deposited their urns in the mounds of the Mississippi valley and in the tombs of Peru.

It will probably be both the only historically consequent and the most lucid method to treat the different countries from south to north. We begin with Peru. We need not go into the theories, mostly fanciful, by which an origin and genealogy are found for the ancient inhabitants of America. We cannot even undertake to solve the question whether the New World may not be the Old.

The evidence in support of America’s having been the resting-place of the lost tribes of Israel, of its having been visited from the Pacific by Malays, from the Atlantic by Phœnicians, of the truth of the old legend of Atlantis, a land which lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules, is in great part composed of inferences from assumptions. Reason would point to Behring Strait as the point at which the first inhabitants entered, but even that supposition may account for nothing more remote than the arrival of the Indians of North America. Or, to find a genealogy for the same people, we might adopt Mr. Griffis’s very plausible theory of a Japanese descent, based upon the fact that “for twenty centuries past Japanese fishing-boats and junks, caught in the easterly gales and typhoons, have been swept into the Kuro Shiwo, and carried to America.” It is more pertinent to our purpose to find that, amidst a civilization which bears a stamp of originality, ceramic art followed the course it had taken in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Similarity in forms, even in symbols, may argue nothing more than a mysterious identity in the workings of humanity toward artistic and religious expression. They cannot, without other evidence, be held to prove an identity of origin. This preliminary observation is made that we may not fall into the baseless theorizing which is the bane of science. External resemblances have, before this day, sadly misled scientists, with whom possibilities have become probabilities, and probabilities have unconsciously passed into assumed facts.

Let us take the parallel supplied by the search for the primitive tongue before language became the subject-matter of a science. For centuries the idea was entertained that the honor of priority was to be accorded to the Hebrew. In the sixteenth century Goropius, of Antwerp, proved, beyond a peradventure, that the language of Paradise was Dutch. Erro advocated the claims of Basque; and about a century after Goropius had settled the question, it was gravely recorded in the minutes of the Chapter of Pampeluna, that, though it could not be asserted with confidence that Basque was the primitive language of mankind, yet “it was impossible to bring forward any reasons or rational objection to this proposition, that it was the only language spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise.” Assume the positive, and leave it to objectors to prove the negative! Science came afterward, and found that not fanciful verbal resemblances, but similarity of grammatical construction, was the test of radical affinity, and all the above fine theories were exploded. The rule will hold good with pottery. If two potters at two places far remote from each other, possibly as far removed in point of time, should produce similar forms, it would be rash at once to conclude that they were inspired by the same idea or followed the same model. The adoption of such a course would amount to a resuscitation of the extinct philological rule of comparing the words in different tongues to demonstrate relationship. We shall find a point for this caution as we proceed.

When Peruvian civilization began we have no means of ascertaining. Repeated changes have swept over it. It rose and fell, and rose and fell again, at epochs only partly within our ken. Of the overwhelming antiquity claimed for it some of the facts brought together by Mr. J. D. Baldwin may give an idea. Montesinos, a Spaniard, who believed Peru to be the Ophir of Solomon, dates its ancient history from the year B.C. 2500. His first period extends down to the first or second century of our era, when the ancient kingdom was broken up into fragments, and shorn of its earlier glory. Then came a long interval of confusion, strife, and internecine struggle, which ended with the advent of Inca-Rocca, the first of the Incas. The Incas had extended their sway over the old limits of Peru, when Pizarro came, in 1531, and with his Spanish followers swept everything back into chaos. A greedy lust for gold was the sole impulse of the treacherous and brutal invaders. Perfectly dead to every sense of honor, stained with the reddest hues of crime, too rapacious to withhold their hands from the commission of any brutality, too crassly ignorant to care for knowledge, the Spanish buccaneers turned Peruvian progress back in its course, and struck such a blow at the vitality of the country that it has never recovered.

It will at once be thought that B.C. 2500 is a very remote date at which to begin the history of a country in the New World, but let us see what countenance science lends to such a chronology. Professor Orton says: “Geology and archæology are combining to prove that Sorata and Chimborazo have looked down upon a civilization far more ancient than that of the Incas, and perhaps coeval with the flint flakes of Cornwall and the shell mounds of Denmark. On the shores of Lake Titicaca are extensive ruins which antedate the advent of Manco Capac (the second of Montesinos’ oldest dynasty of kings), and may be as venerable as the lake-dwellings of Geneva.” Mr. James S. Wilson, in 1860, found “ancient, or fossil, pottery” on the coast of Ecuador. To help in assigning it an age, the fact is all-important that it was found _below_ a marine deposit several feet in thickness. This pottery, then, was made; the land was submerged at a rate almost incalculably slow; it was covered with a marine deposit; the land was then upheaved to its former level, again at a very slow rate, and seventeen years ago, the pottery came to light, like a fossil taken from the rocks, to tell us that at an age so remote that it is hard even for imagination to reach it, the Peruvians were accustomed to working in clay. Compared with this people the Incas are creatures of yesterday, and the earliest date of Montesinos is hardly mediæval. The difficulty is to assign an exact, or even an approximate, date to the ceramic remains we possess. Many of them belong to an era preceding that of the Incas, but no more precise language can be employed in specifying their age. The conditions, moreover, are such that an erroneous deduction might easily be made. The great road from Quito to Chili, for instance, is built chiefly of stone. The same material was used for the inns along its course, and for many other buildings. This road must, at least in part, be ascribed to a period anterior to that of the Incas. At a later date, when the least ancient part of Pachacamac, the ruined city of the Incas, near Lima, was built, sun-dried bricks appear as the chief building material. Pachacamac was originally built by the natives of the coast, and among its ruins are those of one of their temples, composed of adobes painted red. The Inca Mamacuna on the same site is composed of the same material. This is a reversal of previous experience. We have hitherto associated unbaked bricks with the earliest attempts of the potter. If we argue from Asiatic or European usage, the most ancient Peruvians would appear as primitive settlers ignorant of art, which we have already seen they were not.

The best articles of pottery have been taken from the tombs. The connection of moulded clay with the burial of the dead was thus universal. We have seen the Egyptian mummy surrounded by vases and jars, urns holding or covering the ashes of the ancient British dead, the hut-shaped urn of the Teuton, the remains of the Roman legionary deposited in an _olla_ covered by tiles or bricks, and the _tuguria_ of Etruria; and here, in Peru, is a precisely similar custom regulating the burial rite.

At Pachacamac Mr. Squier found three strata of mummies. Most of these were taken from little vaults of adobes, roofed with sticks and rushes. In one of them he found, lying beside the dead family, the implements of the husband’s business as fisherman, the wife’s domestic articles, including a primitive spindle, a girl’s work-box under her body, small contrivances of hollowed bone for cosmetics, and between her feet the dried body of a pet parrot. An infant’s body had a rattle beside it. “Besides the bodies there were a number of utensils, and other articles in the vault; among them half a dozen earthen jars, pans, and pots of various sizes and ordinary form (Fig. 363). One or two were still incrusted with the soot of the fires over which they had been used. Every one contained something. One was filled with ground-nuts, familiar to us as peanuts; another with maize, etc., all except the latter in a carbonized state.” Probably the nuts and maize were deposited for the use of the deceased in the future, and the supposition helps to increase the illusion that we are away from Peru, and back among the graves of Ancient Egypt. To this superstition, common, as we have seen, to nearly all peoples, we are therefore indebted, not only for our knowledge of Peruvian pottery, but for much of our information regarding the people themselves. No other place could have equalled the grave in safety for the preservation of the records which have been passed from its secrecy into our hands. The imaginary wants of a future state led the poor and the Inca to be laid in their respective vaults with the articles they had used here, and which they were supposed to stand in equal need of hereafter. “Every Inca,” says Mr. Ewbank, “had his cooking utensils in his cemetery; not only his gold and silver ware, but, observes the native historian, ‘the plates and dishes of his kitchen.’” The favorable conditions of soil and climate under which they were interred increase the difficulty of telling their age by examination merely. They might from their appearance have been buried for generations or for ages. It is, however, evident, from the character of the deposits and the assumed wants they anticipated--corn, cooking-vessels, toys, pets, fishing-lines, spindles--that the Peruvians shared the belief held by Christians, that here they were strangers and sojourners. They prepared for the next life by taking all their movables with them, as if merely changing their place of abode.

The tombs being thus the great receptacles of Peruvian antiquities, what do we find to be the general character of the art represented in the pottery? The same that is found in the architecture or statuary of the country, viz., the greatest possible disparity in both design and workmanship. On one hand are creations of art, the conception of an artist carried out by an artist’s hand; on the other are the most outrageous concessions to an idolatrous barbarism. In a similar manner, earthen-ware vessels of diametrically opposite types are found side by side in the same tomb. To perplex us still farther, French writers have advanced the theory that for a very long period art in South America gradually but surely declined. They state that from a primitive simplicity and purity of style it sank step by step into barbarism.

This may or may not be true, but in any case the two sets of facts may be thus explained. We have seen that in Egypt religion set a limit to art. Practically the matter resolved itself into this, that the potter-artist could rise above neither the god he worshipped nor the sacred symbol he revered. Priestcraft is necessarily conservative. Change and improvement involve a departure from the old, and the ancient gods might be left behind and their shrines deserted, were art to rise above the delineation of the artistic abominations which were encased in sacred tradition as the symbols of deity. The image cannot change any more than the god. In Egypt nearly every form of life--bird, beast, and plant--was monopolized by its religious system and petrified into a traditional form. It is possible that a similar influence was at work in Peru. The rude forms may really have been what we have styled them, “concessions to an idolatrous barbarism.”

It is necessary in the case of Peru, as in that of China or Egypt, to make an attempt to discover the essentials of its religion, that we may understand its ceramic art. With Peru, however, we must in part work backward, by first constructing a system from what we find upon pottery. Mr. Squier gives much valuable information on this point. “To them,” he says, referring to the sacred vessels of pottery devoted to religious and mortuary services, “in default of other probable or possible means of recording a religious symbolism, we must look for all the scanty illustrations we are ever likely to obtain of the religious ideas and conceptions of their makers.” Pachacamac took its name from the chief divinity of the people prior to the coming of the Incas, and means, “He who animates the universe,” “The creator of the world.” The idea of a supreme being may thus be inferred to have been the foundation of a system which, like many other ancient religions, resorted to symbols, and thence by an easy transition assumed in popular practice the form of idolatry. We thus find that when the Inca Yupanqui invaded the Chimus, he called upon them to renounce their worship of fishes and animals, and turn to that of the sun. There is no reason for believing that the creed of the Incas was superior to that of the Chimus. It appears rather that, in broadly condemning that people for their worship of animals, the Inca mistook the use of symbols for the adoration of the animals so used. Our researches in Egypt and elsewhere would lead us to the conclusion that if the worship of animals existed anywhere, it resulted from a misapprehension by the ignorant of the purpose of symbolizing by living things the attributes of a higher power. As in Egypt, so in Peru the religion may be said to have been dual. On the one hand is the worship of a supreme power, and the personification of visible agencies in air, earth, and water. On the other is a lower form, an idolatry bordering upon fetichism. Under the higher form water is personified, and the god thus constructed is accompanied by befitting symbols of his domain--the turtle, fish, or crab; the earth is personified, and has as symbols the serpent and lizard; the air is also personified, and the figure carries in his hand a spear, as representing the thunder-bolt, his symbol. Mr. Squier gives an engraving of a design upon a Chimu vase, in which the powers of earth and sea are arrayed in combat. The latter is armed with the claws and shell of a crab, hence assumed to be his symbol. The former bears on his front a serpent’s head, wields a horned serpent in one hand, and has two similarly horned reptiles hanging at his back: hence the serpent is accepted as his symbol. Probably coeval with a form of belief which sought such expression, was another under which images were resorted to, and set up as the recipients of the worship originally directed to a higher power. It is not impossible that the worship of a supreme being, and of his attributes and symbols, may have been coexistent among the same people. On the contrary, such actually appears to have been the case; and if the highest form of belief existed along with the lowest form of expression, it is not hard, as already pointed out, to find a reason for the coexistence of the highest and lowest forms of art.

As to the French theory of a long-continued decline of Peruvian art, if we assume its truth, it may be explained in the light of Peruvian history. The supposition has reference, apparently, to the earliest Peruvian elevation, prior to the dismemberment of the empire. Before the coming of the Incas art must have suffered from the civil discord, and under the Incas its recovery was probably hindered by the wars which extended down to the Spanish conquest. After Pizarro--a second death.

Let us now examine some of the forms of Peruvian pottery. It would be impossible to classify or enumerate them all. Nature and religion contributed decorations and forms. The beings of earth, sea, and air--men, fishes (Fig. 364), animals, and plants (Fig. 365)--were modelled in clay, and decorations were drawn from the same sources and from the customs of the people. The only classification of a comprehensive character is that into coast and inland. The former of these divisions comprises the greater part of the specimens now existing, including, of course, all from Pachacamac, Huacho, Santa, and Truxillo, or Chimu. The latter includes all that comes from Cuzco (Fig. 367) and other places in the interior.

Visitors to the Centennial Exhibition may remember to have seen a large array of vases and household utensils sent from Lima. In the collection of Mr. W. B. Colville were several clay idols, belonging to the period before the advent of the Incas. Some of these were wrapped in cloth, and none possessed any claims to artistic finish or design. A similar image was exhibited by Brown University, in the Rhode Island section. All were mere caricatures of the human form. Along with them, in the space allotted to Lima, were several hundreds of quaintly shaped water-vessels and bottles. In some of these were to be found those compound typical forms distinctively American. In others appeared forms which at once recalled the Egyptian. Of the latter the most remarkable were the double or twin bottles joined together by bands at the neck and base, after a fashion observed in Egypt and also in Mexico. It is unnecessary to conclude from this fact that Egypt had an ancient connection with Peru. Sometimes on one of the bottles a head was placed as a cover to the orifice, others had both necks plain and open.

The more characteristic forms belonged to the class comprising the water-vessels. Of these the favorite form appeared to be what might be described as a pot-bellied graybeard ornamented with a rude semblance of the human face, hands, and feet. It was made of all sizes. Another might be taken as the prototype of the modern round-bodied glass water-bottle, or carafe. A third had the arched syphon handle characteristic of an entire class; and on the body, under the span of the arch, was the figure of an animal, too rudely modelled for us to give it a name. On a small proportion of those mentioned weak and undecided colors were applied in a primitive style of decoration, and in others the ornamentation consisted of lines and dots or studs.

The Peruvian potters bestowed a large share of their inventive talent upon water-vessels, and the reason is not difficult to find. According to its present limits, Peru extends from the third to the twenty-first degree south latitude. In the sixteenth century it included the entire territory now divided into Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chili. The country in which its remains are found extended over two thousand miles south of the equator. In some parts of this vast territory rain occasionally falls, in others never. In this fact we see the necessity for ample means of slaking thirst. The quaint forms are largely due to the dread of small creeping animals finding their way into the jars or flagons. The latter were, therefore, made in the comparatively intricate shapes already described, and in others still more complex and more highly ornamental.

The largest class comprises those with the bifurcate spout, which serves at the same time for a handle. This is found attached to vessels of every conceivable form. The simplest shape is that seen in the specimen from the Smithsonian Institution (Fig. 368), the body of which, however, is somewhat peculiar, by reason of its rising from the base in a coil of spiral folds. Several modifications of this style are seen in the engraving (Fig. 369). The presence of this spout in any of its forms is of special interest as distinctive of pottery from the coast settlements. Its modifications include a vast number of interesting examples more or less artistic. From the single vessel with bifurcate spout we may pass to others in which there are two openings joined together by a handle. Higher than these are the vases, in which, with only one orifice, the body is double.

In one the receptacle for the water consists of a series of four chambers, with pointed bases arranged in a circle, and joined together (Fig. 370). The handle is the arch, with spout on the top. In some the vessel assumes the form of a fish, with a handle on the ridge of the back, or of an animal with semi-human face. The twin shape is exceedingly varied. A very fine specimen has the bottles with round, flattened bodies, and one of them surmounted by a diminutive human figure holding a cross on the right shoulder, while from the left the handle crosses to the tall, slightly tapering neck of the twin bottle. The flat sides of the bottles are decorated with studs and zigzags, which might be construed into serpentine forms. A bird sitting in the cavity of one neck sometimes takes the place of the heads already alluded to. In some of the double bottles the communication is through the handle. In others it is effected by joining the bodies together, as in the curious specimen (Fig. 371), in which the rudely modelled kneeling figure of a man eating and drinking is joined to the twin compartment at the back by the passage-way between the two sections. There are many other varieties; but the most remarkable specimens are those in which an attempt is made to simulate the human head and form. The former is carved in coarse lines covering the entire expanse of a heavily formed vase, the handles of which, low down on the body, represent the ears. Even lower than this, and parallel with the most primitive _bessa_ of Egypt, are other wide-mouthed jars of a type altogether different, designed to serve a purpose entirely distinct from those last considered. From these as a base we can rise to what we must regard as the _chefs-d'œuvre_ of ancient American art.

It is curious to observe, en passant, a similarity of usage between Peru and Greece (Figs. 372 and 373) in selecting the human head as the model of a drinking-cup; but let us observe the Peruvian type. In one (Fig. 373) the head is thrown back, and from the forehead to the crown passes the syphon handle. To balance this backward weight the face is thrust forward, and the expression is affected by the position. We see that the artist has made allowance for this in the lines round the mouth and the slightly parted lips. A faint suspicion of weakness is thus left upon the countenance. Taking it in profile, one almost wonders where the artist found a model for the large but well-formed nose and strong underjaw. Even finer is another head (Fig. 374), covered with a close-fitting cap falling in heavy flaps behind. In this the face is, we would say, of the best Saxon type, full of strength, vigor, and determination. Not a weak line can be found. With it before us, all wonder as to the civilization of ancient Peru is at an end. Apart altogether from the workmanship, there are moral qualities traceable in the model which convince us that with such men civilization was a condition of life; not a labor, but a necessity. The face wears the placid, self-confident, powerful expression of one born to be a ruler of men. That the artist has caught such a look of strength in repose may imply either his mastery of portraiture or his familiarity with a high type of manhood.

Belonging to a lower order of the same class is that given in the engraving (Fig. 375), the head of a man whose whole history is written in indelible lines in his face. The head is that of Ruminhauy, or Rumminaui, a Peruvian cacique. The piece is from the collection of Senhor Barboza, Rio de Janeiro, and originally belonged to General Alvares, “the last Spanish political chief and commandant of the province of Cuzco.” Mr. Ewbank saw it at Rio, and gives a description of it, and a sketch of the monster whose features are thus preserved. The piece is of reddish clay, modelled by hand, nine inches in height, and with an internal depth of six inches. Everything indicates that the work is a likeness. Little peculiarities, such as the want of a tooth and a scar on the cheek, cannot be explained upon any other hypothesis. The piece is comparatively recent. When, in 1531, Pizarro entered Peru at Tumbez, the Inca, Huayna Capac, had divided his kingdom between his two sons, Huascar and Atahualpa, between whom a struggle ensued for the sole power, and resulted in the death of Huascar. Atahualpa was afterward seized by Pizarro, and, under circumstances of gross treachery and brutality, was put to death. It was then that Ruminhauy comes upon the scene in the history of Garcilasso de la Vega. Scheming to succeed Atahualpa, he invited his brother and children to a banquet, and, after making them drunk, murdered them. With the skin of Atahualpa’s brother he covered a drum, and left the scalp hanging to it. His next atrocity was the burying alive of a number of women, young and old. “Thus,” says Garcilasso, as quoted by Mr. Ewbank, “did this barbarous tyrant discover more inhuman cruelty and relentless bowels by this murder committed on poor silly women, who knew nothing but how to spin and weave, than by his bloody treachery practised on stout soldiers and martial men. And what farther aggravates his crime was, that he was there present to see the execution of his detestable sentence, being more pleased with the objects of his cruelty, and his eyes more delighted with the sad and dismal sight of so many perishing virgins, than with any other prospect. * * * Thus ended these poor virgins, dying only for a little feigned laughter, which transported the tyrant beyond his senses. But this villany passed not unpunished; for, after many other outrages he had committed during the time of his rebellion against the Spaniards, and after some skirmishes with Sebastian Belalcaçar (who was sent to suppress him), and after he had found by experience that he was neither able to resist the Spaniards, nor yet, by reason of his detestable cruelties, to live among the Indians, he was forced to retire with his family to the mountains of _Antis_, where he suffered the fate of other tyrannical usurpers, and then most miserably perished.” These details, beside giving a ghastly kind of interest to the object engraved, enable us to form an opinion of the artist’s ability. Aside from the possibility that the piece has preserved the actual features of the monster, it certainly gives expression to all the bad qualities with which the historian has clothed Ruminhauy, and contrasts strongly with those given above, and with that (Fig. 376) from the Smithsonian Institution.

After these individual examples a few of the leading points of Peruvian decoration and technique must be noticed. We have seen that in forms the leading tendency was toward the reproduction of the natural object. Mingled as the high is with the low, the ultimate aim appears to have been the excellence contained in similitude. In decoration we find designs with which old-world experience has made us more or less familiar. The vessels on which they appear illustrate the tendency not toward a purely ornamental art, but toward the artistic embellishment of the useful. Like all other nations, the Peruvians rose from use to beauty, and having devised the shape best subserving the useful object, they then attempted its ornamentation. In doing so they resorted to decoration closely allied with the European and Asiatic. Their fret is the same as that distinguished by the name “Grecian,” although it originally came from Asia. Their scrolls also occasionally bear a close resemblance to the European. The faces already referred to are either incised, engraved, or laid upon the surface. Those engraved leave the impression of having been cut into a body made sufficiently thick to permit of the successful application of such a method of decoration. They have no appearance whatever of having been made from a mould. Of the same general character is the drinking-vessel (Fig. 377). The design, the import of which it is difficult to determine, is graved in a panel covering the greater part of one side of the piece. Other pieces have the figures similarly graved upon panels studded with dots, for the evident purpose of heightening the relief. On one of this class is a long-billed bird, and on another, which is here given (Fig. 378), the design consists of a nondescript animal. A singular resemblance to a Chinese habit is discoverable in the employment of monkey forms, either for handles or otherwise, where the Chinese used those of lizards. On one of the double-bellied bottles common to Peru, China, and Japan, we find two monkeys clinging to the upper sphere, as if supporting it.

The chief colors employed were red, black, and brown. It appears probable that they were mineral colors fixed by firing, since we cannot otherwise account for their preservation. The Chilians are said (Hartt) to have baked their pottery in holes dug in the hill-sides, and to have applied to it a sort of varnish made of mineral earth. It is worth noting, however, that the Peruvians possessed vegetable dyes of which we have no practical knowledge. All the wonderful colors used for dyeing cloth, which preserved their original hue and brilliancy after ages of exposure or burial in the tombs, are vegetable. The lasting quality alone does not, therefore, compel the conclusion that the colors on pottery are mineral.

The consideration of the uses of these colors, and of several other kinds of decoration, may be combined with that of the customs and tastes of the Peruvians as reflected in their clay records. Travellers reaching Peru from the sea tell of encountering, as they neared the shore, numbers of the natives paddling their _caballitos_. These quaint apologies for boats are merely bundles of reeds tied together, across which the boatman strides, and rows, Indian fashion, with a double-bladed paddle. The prow is turned up in front. So crazy a craft would seem to be among the things least calculated to inspire the potter with an idea. It did, however, prove suggestive (Fig. 379), and the _caballito_ has been found in clay on the sites of different coast settlements.

We also learn from their ceramic decorations that the Peruvians of Chimu lived in buildings of a single story with slanting roof, and having a hole in the gable for light or ventilation. That they had a taste for music is placed beyond dispute by their vessels and instruments of clay (Fig. 380). Some of their ruder devices are very singular. Mr. Ewbank mentions a whistle formed in the body of a small bird of baked clay. The relic, he says, was very old, and the head missing. “The tone was shrill and clear, and was pleasantly modified by partially or wholly closing with the finger an opening in the breast.” The water-vessels are also sometimes so constructed that the handle passes from the spout on one side to a similar projection on the other, on which is a bird or animal’s head. The air rushing through a hole left in the latter, as the vessel is being filled or emptied, frequently causes a sound resembling that peculiar to the bird or animal. To this class of “whistling jars” belongs the double vessel (Fig. 371) representing a man at lunch. Musicians and musical instruments are painted upon vases, and, as in the cut (Fig. 381), the vessel itself may be a representation of a musician.

The decorations hitherto observed have consisted of gravings in the paste, dots, and colors. The black-ware jar (Fig. 382) is a farther exemplification of the first of these methods. The head and the ears of corn which divide the surface into four sections have all been apparently carved in an originally thick body. By cutting it down the ears are left in high relief. The specimen is evidently very old. The vessels decorated with paintings are generally of a totally different artistic order, although a few, such as the cup here given (Fig. 383), combine painting with a rude attempt at modelling. The handle consists of a monkey with its forepaws, or hands, resting upon the edge of the cup. It was taken from a grave at Arequipa, eleven feet below the surface of the soil, and was brought to this country and presented to the Smithsonian Institution by United States Consul Eckel, Talcahuana, Chili. The decoration is dark brown on a creamy ground. Similar to it, but having the mitred head of an Inca on the handle, is the cup on the left of the adjoining cut (Fig. 384). The other vessels, with the exception possibly of the lower one, have been used as pans or boilers, the largest showing marks of the fire, and all being destitute of ornament with the exception of the painted stopper of the largest specimen. It thus appears the Peruvians used earthen-ware for culinary purposes, and several vessels of this kind are elaborately painted in black and red on the yellow ground. In the illustration (Fig. 385) Nos. 1 and 3 are of this class. They were apparently designed either to be suspended above an open fire, or to rest in a stove-cover perforated for their reception. To serve the purpose of a lid hollow stoppers, like No. 4, were used. The lower part of the vessels is undecorated. The flat-bottomed pitcher and bowl, Nos. 2 and 5, are especially worthy of attention for their decoration. The light red body of the former is covered with a dark chocolate ground-color, in which the design appears in white--a mingling of the star, circle, and chain pattern. Other varieties are seen in the pieces (Fig. 386) from Senhor Barboza’s collection. On the left is a caldron, flat-bottomed and with side rings. The greater part of its ornamentation has been worn away. The remaining three pieces are supposed to have been used for carrying liquids, and that on the right has, besides the rings on the body, perforated ears immediately below the lip. The decoration of the small round-bottomed pichet consists of incised lines. The long-necked bottle is ornamented in colors, in regard to the arrangement of which the piece may be taken as representing a large class of vessels in which the decoration--consisting of squares, the larger containing the smaller--is arranged vertically. The art is of the same order as the geometrical designs and concentric circles of Phœnicia and early Greece. We find it again in the shallow ladles (Fig. 387), notably in that on the right, which was found near St. Sebastian, Cuzco, in 1820.

On these pieces yellow is combined with the red, white, brown, and black we have hitherto met. A yet richer palette was brought to the decoration of the flat circular bottle (Fig. 388), the upper part of which is painted upon the red paste in black, white, green, and purple lines.

As to the processes to which the Peruvians resorted, Marryat quotes a passage from Southey’s “History of Brazil” which gives a little light. “The Tupinambas,” he says, “were in many respects an improved race. The women were skilful potters. They dried their vessels in the sun, then inverted them, and covered them with dry bark, to which they set fire, and thus baked them sufficiently. Many of the American tribes carried this art to great perfection. There are some who bury their dead in jars large enough to receive them erect.

“The Tupinambas, by means of some white liquid, glazed the inside of their vessels so well, that it is said that the potters in France could not do it better. The outside was generally finished with less care. Those, however, in which they kept their food were frequently painted in scrolls and flourishes, intricately intertwisted and nicely executed, but after no pattern; nor could they copy what they had once produced. This earthen-ware was in common use; and De Lery observes that in this respect the savages were better furnished than those persons in his own country who fed from trenchers and wooden bowls.” Other Indian tribes used water-colors after burning, and also a vegetable varnish. How far these customs extended we cannot define by geographical limits. It shows the tendency of this people, already remarked in the Peruvians, to making beauty subservient to use. An inside glaze in connection with a rough exterior is something rarely to be found elsewhere. That the Peruvians used moulds is almost certain. Mr. Hartt is of the opinion that many of their vessels were moulded in two parts and then luted together, and that some of the moulds were made from natural objects. He also suggests that the mould was sometimes made from a pattern vessel, and then baked.

To conclude as to Peru, its ceramics may yet be more fully and systematically studied. At present it is instructive to remark how, on the assumption of its art being original and not derivative, it sought expression in ways so nearly identical with those of the Old World. A theory of chronology cannot, in the present condition of our knowledge, be constructed. The works passed in review evidently belong to epochs far apart from each other, and probably to different branches of the people inhabiting Peru. Some of the specimens are undoubtedly very old, and others, including the painted wares, cannot be ascribed to a very remote era. The head of Ruminhauy cannot be referred to a more distant date than the middle of the sixteenth century, and the modern work, though inferior to that we have noticed, is too closely allied to it, in composition and the style of decoration, for us to feel justified in according to much of the older painted pottery a greater age than two or three hundred years.

Of modern Brazil we would expect much, if we take its ruler, the indefatigable and enlightened Dom Pedro, as a representative of his people. Our knowledge is extremely meagre. In an otherwise admirable section at the Centennial Exhibition, the pottery was of little consequence. The best works were unglazed terra-cottas, Greek in form, and decorated with Greek subjects. There were also some vases of red clay representing native Brazilian forms decorated with reliefs, medallions, and faces, in light-brown clay. In others the colors were reversed, the light brown clay forming the body and the red the ornaments. Some of the better specimens are now in the Smithsonian Institute, at Washington.

Of the ancient Brazilian pottery Mr. Thomas Ewbank describes a basin (Fig. 389) in the Rio Museum. It is made presumably by hand, as no marks of the wheel are observable, of a grayish yellow clay imperfectly burned, covered with a light and poor kind of glazing, and is overrun by minute cracks. It is colored inside and out with red, yellow, and brown. The outside was black with smoke, and suggests that the vessel may have been used as a pot or caldron. The decoration consists of a dark-red band just below the rim, and a tangled mass of lines and dots. Some of the tribes, and among them the Coroados of the Parahiba River, used earthen jars for the reception of the mummies of their chiefs (Fig. 390). Mr. Ewbank also gives some interesting details regarding the making and quality of modern Brazilian pottery. On one estate which he visited he found a number of female slaves engaged in making bricks and tiles. The native Brazilian gives no encouragement to foreign trade, preferring the pottery of his own country as better suited to the domestic usages among which he lives. Water-vessels form the staple of the industry, entire cargoes sometimes consisting of _talhas_ and _moringues_, for holding water and drinking. The large centre piece in the illustration (Fig. 391) is a _talha_, and may be seen in almost any Brazilian house. It will hold from ten to fifteen gallons. The four vases in the engraving, two on either side of the talha, are varieties of the same vessel. Of the drinking-vessels the most common is that called the “monkey” (Fig. 392, _a_). Although it holds from a gallon and a half to two gallons and a half, it is used without the intervention of a tumbler, the smaller spout being applied to the lips. In the same engraving, _b_, _c_, _d_, and _e_ are table moringues, as are those at _i_, _i_. The decanter, _h_, is common porous earthen-ware, admirably suited for keeping its contents cool. The ewer and basin, _f_ and _g_, are highly colored earthen-ware from Bahia, and between them stands an Indian moringue of ingenious construction. It is filled from the bottom by means of the tube marked by a dotted line. The cup-like vessel at _k_ is one of the ordinary kind of censers.

To show that the Peruvians did not necessarily use mineral colors for their pottery, Mr. W. H. Edwards’s description of the processes he found among the wild tribes on the Amazon may be referred to. Their colors were of the simplest kind: indigo blue, black from the juice of the mandioca, green from another plant, and red and yellow from clays. A small kind of palm was made into a brush to apply the pigments. The designs consisted of squares, circles, and rudely drawn figures. A resinous gum was rubbed over the vessels after they had been warmed, and answered all the purposes of a glaze.

Before leaving the South American continent attention may be directed to a single specimen from Colombia. It is (Fig. 393) an unpainted bowl of corrugated ware, and is of importance to the present inquiry, as belonging, apparently, to a class of pottery of which examples have been found in many parts of the North American continent. These will be treated of hereafter.