University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

When I was a boy, it was the custom of the Catawba Indians
—then reduced to a pitiful remnant of some four hundred persons,
all told—to come down, at certain seasons, from their far
homes in the interior, to the seaboard, bringing to Charleston a
little stock of earthen pots and pans, skins and other small matters,
which they bartered in the city for such commodities as
were craved by their tastes, or needed by their condition. They
did not, however, bring their pots and pans from the nation, but
descending to the low country empty-handed, in groups or families,
they squatted down on the rich clay lands along the Edisto,
raised their poles, erected their sylvan tents, and there established
themselves in a temporary abiding place, until their simple potteries
had yielded them a sufficient supply of wares with which
to throw themselves into the market. Their productions had their
value to the citizens, and, for many purposes, were considered by
most of the worthy housewives of the past generation, to be far
superior to any other. I remember, for example, that it was a
confident faith among the old ladies, that okra soup was always inferior
if cooked in any but an Indian pot; and my own impressions
make me not unwilling to take sides with the old ladies on
this particular tenet. Certainly, an iron vessel is one of the last
which should be employed in the preparation of this truly southern
dish. But this aside. The wares of the Indians were not ill
made, nor unseemly to the eye. They wrought with much cleaner
hands than they usually carried; and if their vases were

sometimes unequal in their proportions, and uncouth in their forms,
these defects were more than compensated by their freedom from
flaws and their general capaciousness and strength. Wanting,
perhaps, in the loveliness and perfect symmetry of Etruscan art,
still they were not entirely without pretensions of their own. The
ornamental enters largely into an Indian's idea of the useful, and
his taste pours itself out lavishly in the peculiar decorations which
he bestows upon his wares. Among his first purchases when he
goes to the great city, are vermilion, umber, and other ochres,
together with sealing wax of all colours, green, red, blue and yellow.
With these he stains his pots and pans until the eye becomes
sated with a liberal distribution of flowers, leaves, vines
and stars, which skirt their edges, traverse their sides, and completely
illuminate their externals. He gives them the same ornament
which he so judiciously distributes over his own face, and
the price of the article is necessarily enhanced to the citizen, by
the employment of materials which the latter would much rather
not have at all upon his purchases. This truth, however, an Indian
never will learn, and so long as I can remember, he has still
continued to paint his vessels, though he cannot but see that the
least decorated are those which are always the first disposed of.
Still, as his stock is usually much smaller than the demand for it,
and as he soon gets rid of it, there is no good reason which he
can perceive why he should change the tastes which preside
over his potteries.

Things are greatly altered now-a-days, in these as in a thousand
other particulars. The Catawbas seldom now descend to
the seaboard. They have lost the remarkable elasticity of character
which peculiarly distinguished them among the aboriginal
nations, and, in declining years and numbers, not to speak of the
changing circumstances of the neighbouring country, the ancient
potteries are almost entirely abandoned. A change has taken
place among the whites, scarcely less melancholy than that which
has befallen the savages. Our grandmothers of the present day
no longer fancy the simple and rude vessels in which the old
dames took delight. We are for Sêvre's Porcelain, and foreign
goods wholly, and I am saddened by the reflection that I have
seen the last of the Indian pots. I am afraid, henceforward, that

my okra soup will only be made in vessels from Brummagem;
nay, even now, as it comes upon the table, dark, dingy and discoloured
to my eye, I think I see unequivocal tokens of metallic
influence upon the mucilaginous compound, and remember with
a sigh, the glorious days of Catawba pottery. New fashions, as
usual, and conceited refinements, have deprived us of old pleasures
and solid friends. A generation hence, and the fragment of an
Indian pot will be a relic, a treasure, which the lover of the antique
will place carefully away upon the upper shelf of the sanctum,
secure from the assaults of noisy children and very tidy
housekeepers, and honoured in the eyes of all worthy-minded
persons, as the sole remaining trophy of a time when there was
perfection in one, at least, of the achievements of the culinary art.
I am afraid that I have seen the last of the Indian pots!

But let me avoid this melancholy reflection. Fortunately, my
narrative enables me to do so. It relates to a period when this
valuable manufacture was in full exercise, and, if not encouraged
by the interference of government, nor sought after by a foreign
people, was yet in possession of a patronage quite as large as it
desired. To arrive at this important period we have only to go
back twenty years—a lapse made with little difficulty by most
persons, and yet one which involves many and more trying changes
and vicissitudes than any of us can contemplate with equanimity.
The spring season had set in with the sweetest of countenances,
and the Catawbas, in little squads and detachments, were soon
under way with all their simple equipments on their backs for
the lower country. They came down, scattering themselves along
the Edisto, in small bodies which pursued their operations independently
of each other. In this distribution they were probably
governed by the well known policy of the European Gipseys,
who find it much easier, in this way, to assess the several neighbourhoods
which they honour, and obtain their supplies without
provoking apprehension and suspicion, than if they were, en masse,
to concentrate themselves on any one plantation. Their camps
might be found in famed loam-spots, from the Eutaws down to
Parker's Ferry, on the Edisto, and among the numerous swamps
that lie at the head of Ashley River, and skirt the Wassamasaw
country. Harmless usually, and perfectly inoffensive, they were

seldom repelled or resisted, even when they made their camp
contiguously to a planter's settlements; though, at such periods,
the proprietor had his misgivings that his poultry yard suffered
from other enemies than the Wild-cat, and his hogs from an assailant
as unsparing as the Alligator. The overseer, in such
cases, simply kept a sharper lookout than ever, though it was not
often that any decisive consequences followed his increased vigilance.
If the Indians were at any time guilty of appropriation,
it was not often that they suffered themselves to be brought to conviction.
Of all people, they, probably, are the most solicitous to
obey the scripture injunction, and keep the right hand from any
unnecessary knowledge of the doings of the left.