their industry,
frugality, and provident habits, and one must commend them because they
do not shun work and because in fairness both men and women share in the
labor for the common good."

[Footnote 11: Hough, Walter, Op. cit, pp. 156-58.]

IV. POTTERY AND BASKET MAKING TRADITIONAL; ITS SYMBOLISM

* * * * *

The art of pottery-making is a traditional one; mothers teach their
daughters, even as their mothers taught them. There are no recipes for
exact proportions and mixtures, no thermometer for controlling
temperatures, no stencil or pattern set down upon paper for laying out
the designs. The perfection of the finished work depends upon the
potter's sense of rightness and the skill developed by practicing the
methods of her ancestors with such variation as her own originality and
ingenuity may suggest.

All the women of a pueblo community know how to make cooking vessels, at
least, and in spare time they gather and prepare their raw materials,
just as the Navajo woman has usually a blanket underway or the Apache a
basket started. The same is true of Hopi basketry; its methods, designs,
and symbolism are all a matter of memory and tradition.

From those who know most of Indian sacred and decorative symbols, we
learn that two main ideas are outstanding: desire for rain and belief in
the unity of all life. Charms or prayers against drought take the form
of clouds, lightning, rain, etc., and those for fertility are expressed
by leaves, flowers, seed pods, while fantastic birds and feathers
accompany these to carry the prayers. It may be admitted that the modern
craftsman is often enough ignorant of the full early significance of the
motifs used, but she goes on using them because they express her idea of
beauty and because she knows that always they have been used to express
belief in an animate universe and with the hope of influencing the
unseen powers by such recognition in art.

The modern craftsman may even tell you that the once meaningful symbols
mean nothing now, and this may be true, but the medicine men and the old
people still hold the traditional symbols sacred, and this reply may be
the only short and polite way of evading the troublesome stranger to
whom any real explanation would be difficult and who would quite likely
run away in the middle of the patient explanation to look at something
else. Only those whose friendship and understanding have been tested
will b