Native American pottery dates thousands of years back, approximately 2,000 years ago when the nomadic American Indians started to settle down. Native Americans learned to make pottery with different shapes and sizes depending on the purpose that the pottery will serve. Usually, Native Indians used pottery as water containers, grains containers, and seed containers for the following planting season. Another use of the American pottery was as a food bowl for cooking or heating food on fire. The oldest pottery discovered was found at Savannah River, Stallings Island in North America near Augusta, Georgia
Ancient Native American Pottery
In the early days, Native American pottery was made for practical purposes than an art piece. The pots were plain and often unsymmetrical although, at some point, it became important for the Native Americans to decorate their pots. Most of the white settlers found the pots’ designs difficult to understand but Native American Indians were hesitant to reveal the meaning of the designs to foreign settlers. Indians used images of nature, humans, birds, animals, and gods as decorations for their pottery because they had always found them sacred.
Nomadic and semi-nomadic Indian tribes produced little to no pottery at all. Pots are very fragile and do not suit the lifestyle of some tribes who moved location frequently. Native Indian tribes who usually stayed in a permanent place were the ones who made pottery. Also, tribes who relied on hunting more did not make pottery as much as the tribes who relied on farming.
Most tribes who made pottery used tempers which are stuff mixed in with the mud clay. It prevented the pottery from cracks when dried or heated. Common tempers used were sand, wood ash, and bones.
How did the Indians discover the Native American Pottery?
The Native American pottery was discovered a long time ago when the Indians masked their woven baskets using mud clay. When the baskets were put on fire, the mud clay hardened than the Native Indians accidentally realized that they could create pots by shaping the clay and cook it on fire. There were primitive pots discovered by archeologists that show basket marks indicating that the pots were made using baskets.
Some people believed that the Native Americans created the pots using potter’s wheel. Native Indians developed the Native American pots by slowly creating them with bare hands using the methods of pinching and coiling. As colonizers began moving to the U.S., Native Americans found a market for the pots that they were creating.
At the present time, Native Indian pottery can be purchased throughout the western and central states. There is a big market for the Native American pottery and several stores are selling beautiful Indian pottery. Most Navajo potters reside in Arizona, where good quality clay can be used in making pottery.
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