In beginning the bottom, either a small piece of clay was patted flat into a form like a cookie and fitted into the bottom of the mould, or else a strip of clay was coiled round and round into a mat shape, working the coils together with the fingers. The sides were almost always built up with coils of clay, then, with the fingers and some rude tools--smooth stones, bits of shell or pieces of gourd--they were smoothed and polished. Soon the potters began to decorate their vessels with patterns cut or pressed into the damp clay and even painted them with coloured clay, ground fine and mixed with a liquid. The clay objects you enjoyed making in kindergarten were not very strong. A bowl or cup that is moulded from such clay will not hold water for very long either. It will soon soften and fall to pieces. That is what happened to the first clay bowls and cups. If clay is baked in the sun it becomes a little harder and more useful--but not much--so the first clay workers found that they must bake their clay pots more thoroughly if they were to be really strong. Some of the old potters--like the Catawba Indians--baked their vessels before the fire, and as the clay they used was very good they found it made them hard enough. In other tribes the potters made a bed of bark, set fire to it and baked the pot until when it came out it was red hot. At first the clay workers used the clay just as they found it, but when they began to make large pots and cauldrons to cook in they found that powdered shell or sand mixed with the clay made them stronger and less liable to crack in baking. [Illustration: FIG. 57] The cooking vessels had almost always rounded bottoms, because in those days the floors of houses were of sand or soft earth into which the rounded bottoms would set and hold the pots upright. These pots were set directly over the fire and kept in position by stones or sticks of wood. Some that had handles or flaring rims could be hung over the fire by cords or vines. [Illustration: FIG. 58] The Indians moulded all sorts of things out of clay besides these utensils. Drums were made by stretching buckskin over the tops of earthen pots. Then there were whistles and rattles, trowels, modelling tools, figures of men and animals, and many toys like those shown in Figs. 57, 58 and 59. Beads were also made of clay, and so were tobacco pipes in many shapes. One would have the face of a man on the bowl, another a goat with open mouth, or a bird with its neck outstretched and bill parted, and on another the bowl would be formed by a natural-looking snake coiled up for a spring. [Illustration: FIG. 59]