Ok, Smoke, but aside from the terminological slip of describing the  
clay...what do you know about the pipe?
 
And, by the way, red clay can also be residual clay. Out here in the Far  
Southwest, we found broad deposits of red residual clay associated with  
decomposed granite. The parent rock determines the coloration, as our  batholithic 
rocks are iron-rich and the oldest geological material in the region  and our 
mountains were once slow cooling volcanic materials buried exceedingly  deep in 
the old soil mantle, since eroded and uplifted to form mountains and  shallow 
buried parent rock. Our red residual clays were used by prehistoric  people to 
make low-fired reddish brown pottery, as well as "cloud blower" pipes  for 
spiritual purposes. The earliest date for our red residual clay pottery is  1,000 
years ago and it is still mined today by ethnic Yuman-speaking  people. 
During early contact with the Kumeyaay people, and as their  material culture 
changed to mimic European American tools and devices (clay  spoons, clay dolls, 
clay pipe shapes, clay water pitchers, clay pots with foot  rings). 
 
Out here, prehistoric sedimentary clays were created by hydraulic water  
transport that eroded the red residual clays and transported clay ions in  
suspension until slow water allowed the material to settle in impoundments far  out 
in the eastern deserts. The entire process of stripping iron-rich red  residual 
clay causes our clay to lose most of the iron and attach to other  minerals. 
Although some of the sedimentary clays come out pink or orange tinted,  some 
also comes out yellow or gray or white. Prehistoric people mined those  
sedimentary clays at least 1,300 years ago, but those traditions seem to have  either 
died out around 400 years ago (with the desiccation of an enormous  
freshwater lake) or changed when people relocated to the Lower Colorado River.  The 
river people mined residual and sedimentary clay at least 1,300 years ago  and 
still do today on a very small scale. To my knowledge, the 18th and 19th  
century Mojave Indian pottery does not include European American tool and  pipe 
shapes like the local Kumeyaay over here (300 miles west) did in the 19th  
century. 
 
Neither the Kumeyaay, Mojave, nor European Americans out here made clay  
pipes using molds. The reddish clay pipe image presented on histarch is clearly  
the kind made with a mold. I would really like to read what Smoke thinks about  
the shape and all, rather than get a lecture on clay sources.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.



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