Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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"I Have A Manufacture Of Pottery In My Village," Said Father Zea, When
Accompanying Us On A Visit To An Indian Family, Who Were Occupied In
Baking, By A Fire Of Brushwood, In The Open Air, Large Earthen
Vessels, Two Feet And A Half High.
This branch of manufacture is
peculiar to the various tribes of the great family of Maypures, and
they appear to have followed it from time immemorial.
In every part of
the forests, far from any human habitation, on digging the earth,
fragments of pottery and delf are found. The taste for this kind of
manufacture seems to have been common heretofore to the natives of
both North and South America. To the north of Mexico, on the banks of
the Rio Gila, among the ruins of an Aztec city; in the United States,
near the tumuli of the Miamis; in Florida, and in every place where
any traces of ancient civilization are found, the soil covers
fragments of painted pottery; and the extreme resemblance of the
ornaments they display is striking. Savage nations, and those
civilized people* (* The Hindoos, the Tibetians, the Chinese, the
ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Peruvians; with whom the tendency
toward civilization in a body has prevented the free development of
the faculties of individuals.) who are condemned by their political
and religious institutions always to imitate themselves, strive, as if
by instinct, to perpetuate the same forms, to preserve a peculiar type
or style, and to follow the methods and processes which were employed
by their ancestors.
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