Canon, Arizona. These people,
until recently, were cut off from the rest of the world by their
almost impenetrable canon, nearly half a mile in depth at the point
where they inhabit it. For example, when I visited them in 1881, they
still hafted sharpened bits of iron, like celts, in wood. They had not
yet forgotten how to boil food in water-tight basketry, by means of
hot stones, and continued to roast seeds, crickets, and bits of meat
in wicker-trays, coated inside with gritty clay. (See Fig. 501.) The
method of preparing and using these roasting-trays has an important
bearing on several questions to which reference will be made further
on. A round basket-tray, either loosely or closely woven, is evenly
coated inside with clay, into which has been kneaded a very large
proportion of sand, to prevent contraction and consequent cracking
from drying. This lining of clay is pressed, while still soft, into
the basket as closely as possible with the hands and then allowed to
dry. The tray is thus made ready for use. The seeds or other
substances to be parched are placed inside of it, together with a
quantity of glowing wood-coals. The operator, quickly squatting,
grasps the tray at opposite edges, and, by a rapid spiral motion up
and down, succeeds in keeping the coals and seeds constantly shifting
places and turning over as they dance after one another around and
around the tray, meanwhile blowing or puffing, the embers with every
breath to keep them free from ashes and glowing at their hottest.

That this clay lining should grow hard from continual heating, and in
some instances separate from its matrix of osiers, is apparent. The
clay form thus detached would itself be a perfect roasting-vessel.

POTTERY SUGGESTED BY CLAY-LINED BASKETRY.

This would suggest the agency of gradual heat in rendering clay fit
for use in cookery and preferable to any previous makeshift. The
modern Zuni name for a parching-pan, which is a shallow bowl of
black-ware, is _thle mon ne_, the name for a basket-tray being _thlae'
lin ne_. The latter name signifies a shallow vessel of twigs, or _thla
we_; the former etymologically interpreted, although of earthenware,
is a hemispherical vessel of the same kind and _material_. All this
would indicate that the _thlae' lin ne_, coated with clay for roasting,
had given birth to the _thle mon ne_, or parching-pan of earthenware.
(See Fig. 502.)

[Illustration: FIG. 502.--Zuni earthenware roasting tra