The earthen vessel was either baked in a rude kiln or inverted over coals of burning wood. We have several very good descriptions of the methods of manufacturing and firing of Indian potters at a later date. Dumont writes in 1848, of the Louisiana Indians: “After having amassed the proper kind of clay and carefully cleaned it, the Indian women take shells which they pound and reduce to a fine powder; they mix this powder with the clay, and having poured some water on the mass, they knead it with their hands and feet and make it into a paste of which they form rolls six or seven feet long, and of a thickness suitable to their purpose. If they intend to fashion a plate or a vase, they take hold of one of these rolls by the end, and fixing here with the thumb of the left hand the centre of the vessel they are about to make, they turn the roll with astonishing quickness around this centre, describing a spiral line; now and then they dip their fingers into water and smooth with the right hand the inner and outer surface of the vase they intend to fashion, which would become ruffled or undulated without that manipulation. In this manner they make all sorts of earthen vessels, plates, dishes, bowls, pots, and jars, some of which hold from forty to fifty pints.” This is a prettier and more domestic picture of the Indian wife than many we have of the draggled, overworked squaw digging in the fields, or carrying the tent-poles on her back like a pack-horse. The whirling coil of clay, the growing earthen jar, the deftly-shaping hand, are certainly picturesque and homely. The Indian women were potters in all the tribes, it being deemed unmanly work for a lordly brave. The Indians of the Mohawk Valley, the Iroquois, made much and varied pottery. In the fine collection of Indian relics owned by A. G. Richmond, Esq., of Canajoharie, N. Y., are some very interesting pieces of pottery which have been taken from Indian mounds—among them two jars of so delicate and friable a character that one wonders how they have ever escaped disintegration and destruction; also a rare fragment wrought with a representation of the human figure.