Almost every tribe the world round seems to have acquired at a very early stage in its progress a knowledge of plaiting rushes, strips of bark, or other simple substances, for use as beds, covering of shelters, etc., and in this knowledge may be discovered the beginnings of several arts of the first importance to man: basketry, weaving, and pottery. Basketry and pottery are mother and daughter. Plaiting together straws or rushes was a simple operation and must have occurred to the most primitive tribes spontaneously as the need for some such thing arose. Having produced a mat and used it for various purposes, the turning up of the sides, or edges, for the purpose of retaining things upon it, thereby producing a shallow basket or tray, was an easy step, and by such stages did basketry grow to perfection.[77] The Amerinds excelled particularly in this art, and there were few tribes without ability to make baskets and other wicker-work, the character and excellence of which depended to a considerable extent on the material available. Wicker jugs, rendered water-tight by means of pitch, were invented and used for cookery, hot stones being introduced through the wide mouth, to bring the contents to the required temperature, and it was the effort to protect the basketry used in the various culinary operations from the effects of the heat that led to coatings of mud or clay, which being hardened by the fire, disclosed the great secret. There is still in use among some of the more primitive tribes of America a “boiling-basket,” that is, a wicker jug rendered waterproof, and in which food is cooked as indicated. In Zuñi this basket was known as a “coiled cooking basket,” and the corrugated earthen pot used to this day is called a “coiled earthenware cooking basket.” And the Navajos still call earthenware pots, “kle-it-tsa” or mud-basket. In these terms is seen a clear indication of the origin of pottery among the Amerinds in basketry. Cushing found these boiling-baskets in use a few years ago among the Havasupai, who live an isolated life in northern Arizona, and I saw similar jugs among the Amerinds of Utah twenty years ago, and some more recently among the Moki, the latter, however, not using them for boiling purposes, and perhaps not being the makers of them. They are bottle-shaped, but with wide mouths, and provided near their rims with a sort of cord or strap for a handle attached to two loops or eyes. In some of the pots derived from this form these loops are represented by little knobs of clay, or by an ornament. [Illustration: NORTH-WEST COAST FEATHER ORNAMENTATION ON BASKETS] [Illustration: TINNÉ WORK-BASKET] [Illustration: MOKI WICKER WATER-JUG ] [Illustration: HAVASUPAI CLAY-LINED ROASTING TRAY]