Note 7 — RAW MATERIALS; COLLECTION, AND PREPARATION

Stevenson, to whom with Mrs. Stevenson we are indebted for practically our only comparative material, wrote in 1879 of Zuñi: “The clay mostly used by the Zuñians in the manufacture of pottery is a dark, bluish, carbonaceous clayey shale found in layers usually near the tops of the mesas” (1883, p. 329). Later, Mrs. Stevenson described at some length the ceremony of securing pottery clay (1904, p. 374). Among the San Ildefonso Indians of today there is no outward evidence of any such ceremony.