The earliest Hohokam pottery found is simple but well made. At first only plain undecorated wares in gray, brown, or red were produced. The temper contained flecks of mica which show through the surface. Bowls were usually red. Jars, which had a capacity of about two gallons, were normally gray or brown. Before long, painted decorations began to be applied. Designs were simple rectilinear or curvilinear forms. Hatching was widely used. Decoration was in a maroon-red paint on a grayish background, and the red portion was sometimes polished. As time went by, the background became a buff color rather than a gray. Because of this distinctive color combination, the term _Red-on-Buff_ Culture was originally applied to the Hohokam.[32] During Pioneer times, some polychrome ware was made and it is believed that this may mark the first appearance of the use of multiple colors in the Southwest. This pottery has red and yellow designs on a gray background. In many cases grooves were incised on bowl exteriors before the paint was applied. Even after painted pottery was introduced, it never made up more than twenty per cent of the total pottery of the Pioneer era. Figurines, depicting human beings, as well as bowls and jars, were made of clay. These are known from the earliest times. They are quite similar to those of the Mexican Plateau, and it is thought that they may have been introduced from there, together with the knowledge of the cultivation of corn. These figurines have ridgelike noses pinched up from the base, and eyes and mouths represented by slits and dots. These were always modelled rather than made in molds. Some have funnel-shaped heads and may have served as containers. Figurines were usually fired, but this was not invariably the case. Even from the earliest times the Hohokam appear to have cremated the dead, a practice which anthropologists always deprecate. These ancient people could hardly know how much they would inconvenience certain men in the twentieth century by their funerary habits, and undoubtedly they would not have cared. Bones and ashes are rarely found in the Pioneer period but some have been recovered from pits and trenches. The actual cremation is not believed to have taken place here. There were offerings of crushed burned pottery, and late in the period some stone objects were used. [Illustration: Fig. 42—Hohokam figurines. a. Pioneer period. b. Colonial Period. c. Sedentary Period.]